Homeless To Harvard- How Liz Murray Did The Impossible

Liz Murray's unbelievable story. She is a New York Times best-selling author. They even made a Hollywood film about her. To go from a 15-year-old eating out of dumpsters to graduating from Harvard, how did you make that happen? Nightmare doesn't cover it. It changed my world. I found myself at 15 years old sleeping in New York City streets. It's definitely not Harvard material. I smelled. I would just eat from the garbage. They let people like us into Harvard. Why would a homeless person get into Harvard? I knocked on every door I could. I was told no so many times. Would you have taken me if I knocked on your door? My mother tried to sell my sister's coat to a drug dealer. I watched my parents shooting up drugs. Before I knew it, my mother's in hospice. My father's in homeless shelters. The clumps of my mother's hair would come out in my hands. The check would be gone and that's when we would go hungry. You can only live this way for so long before something happens. Do you even know how hard it is to get into Harvard? When I was 11 years old, my mother tried to sell my sister's coat to a drug dealer. She used to sell things around the house to get high. The toaster, her shoes, my bike, anything. Thanksgiving turkey one year out of the freezer. I mean, anything to get high. One night, she tried to do this with my sister's coat. That night, the drug dealer saw it was a child's coat and he decided, I'm not buying that from you. I'm not exchanging it. And he gave her this coin. And it was an NA coin, Narcotics Anonymous. In the back of the coin, they had the serenity prayer. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. My mother came home. She came in and just kind of slammed this coin down. I'm 11 years old. I take it into my hands. And I remember rubbing my thumb over this little inscription, not knowing really what these words meant. But there was something about the mystery and the beauty of the coin that made me keep it. I watched my parents shooting up drugs so frequently that that was just the way that our lives went. To have my mother talk to me for hours and tell me how much she loved me and share her stories with me and be there for me in those ways. And yet at the same time, not be able to feed us properly. First of every month, the mailman brings everybody's disability check. We'd get the check. And then the first stop would be down Grand Avenue. So my parents could get drugs. And three days later, the check would be gone. And that's when we would go hungry. There was a point where it all finally caught up with them. You can only live this way for so long before something happens. You know, and mom, she became HIV positive first. She got sick and came into my room one night to tell me. And the nightmare doesn't cover it. It changed the shape of my world. Eventually, both my parents contracted HIV. And by the time that I was the age that most people are when they're planning their prom or applying to college, what happened in my life instead was that my mother went from having HIV to full-blown AIDS. Before I knew it, my mother's in hospice and my father's in homeless shelters. And I was 15 years old. So I slept on the subway. Then I slept in the hallway until I did realize I was, in fact, very much homeless. I used to visit my mother in the hospital for five hours. Like, I would sit with her all day. We used to listen to the radio, and we'd sing songs together. And I'd help her wash her hair while we played the radio, and clumps of my mother's hair would come out in my hands. I said, Ma, you know what? I love you. I gotta go. I'm gonna hang out with my friends. I'll be back later. And she was laying on the mattress, and she was staring out the window, and she was dying alone in this hospital room. And I remember at the time telling myself, well, Liz, you gotta visit mom. Always thinking that there would be another time. She died on a Wednesday morning, and she was alone when she passed away. They donated a pine box. Someone took a black magic marker. They misspelled her name, and they wrote the words head, and then feet on the box with an arrow. And I'm standing there, and I'm looking at this pine box, and what came back to me and flooded me with images and feelings was, okay, I remember when mom used to sit at the foot of my bed, and she would share her dreams with me. How one day she was going to be sober. One day things would be better. And she always told me, Lizzie, it's gonna be a better life later. And you know what I carried around with me at the time was my mother's picture in my back pocket. It's crumpled up with cracks on it. I used to take that picture out right after I buried her, and I would look at that picture, and it was when she was homeless that picture was taken. And what I realized is that I may not have been doing drugs, but in every other way I was living her life. It was so clear to me that you could go your whole life saying I'm gonna do it later. With that in mind, I just started knocking on the door to go back to school. I gave my friend's address, and I went from one school to the next, and I got turned down flat. People kind of looked at me and said, you should be applying to college, but you're applying to high school. And I remember being so frustrated at having so many doors slammed in my face, and I wasn't gonna go, and I almost gave up. There was this one afternoon I was standing in Midtown Manhattan. I literally could have gone one way or the other. I go to the next interview, and I try again, or I just give up, take the train for an hour, go back to the Bronx where I'm from, save the little bit of money that I begged for change to have, and I go buy a slice of pizza. Forget the interview. Pizza or interview, and pizza or interview. And teetering between those two choices, and I told myself, oh, I'll go back to school later. And an alarm bell went off. I'm a high school dropout who's quickly becoming the same age as a high school graduate. I'm falling behind. Chaos is around me. I'm sleeping on the streets, and I have this coin. And I came to finally understand the meaning, the difference between the things I could and could not control. I could not bring my mother back as much as I wanted to, and I love her so much. I could not change the fact my father was in a shelter, or that I was sleeping on the street. I could not control so many of these things, but if I could just focus on what I could control. There I stood on that corner trying to make this decision, pizza or interview, and pizza or interview. Somebody had to break the cycle. And if not now, then when? And I ditched the pizza, I went for the interview, and I told myself that even though it wasn't likely, at the very least it was possible that the school would take me. And finally, someone opened the door. We'll never forget Liz Murray's unbelievable story. In two years, she finished four years of high school and graduated top two of her class, all while being homeless. That hard work paid off when Liz was accepted to Harvard University. Had an instant bestseller. A New York Times bestselling author. Finally, I saw that one day at a time, I was carving out a new life for myself. And then I fell in love with what would be possible. I didn't know that I would actually be able to lift myself out of homelessness, go on to Harvard, graduate, and entirely change my life. I now am a mom. I've started a family. My husband, James Liam, my son, who just turned six. My daughter, Maya. I sing them to sleep. And it took me some time to realize that the songs, the phrases, everything, that's what my mother did with me. And I hadn't thought about those phrases or songs in years. Having children has really shown me that that love imprints on you. Everything has changed. Life is beautiful. Life is a miracle. You don't have to be stuck in the situations that you're in. If there's something in your life that is holding you back, you have to identify what that is. Because I promise you, there is a way to break past it. Absolutely no one knows what's possible until they're already doing it. And each and every moment is always another chance. No matter what your history is, no matter where you've come from, every moment is a new possibility. Life does not wait for anyone. Your life is right now.