American - Businesswoman | September 23, 1980 -
I'd been living on the streets of New York, and I was sleeping at my friends' houses, sometimes in the subway.
Liz Murray
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Ma was legally blind due to a degenerative eye disease she'd had since birth. This meant she was entitled to welfare, and our lives revolved around the first day of every month when her payment was due.
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Shortly after I turned 13, Child Welfare took me into care. I was sent to a residential centre where girls with behavioural problems were 'evaluated'. My time there comes back to me now only in flashes of smells, images and sounds.
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People are surprised by the poverty and think that I wasn't cared for. But that wasn't the case - I was deeply loved.
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I realized eventually that when I ran out of places to stay and found myself on the D train and in Central Park, I was actually homeless.
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I realized that I had the ability to carve out a life for myself, that it was in no way limited by what had already occurred in my past. And that inspired me to go to school.
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I was 17 and living on the streets. I had the education of technically an eighth-grader, but in reality, I had never had a formal education.
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I had a calling inside of me. I had a sense that when I was going through experiences like living on the streets, losing my parents to AIDS, just having my whole world turned upside-down, there was this feeling inside of me like I was meant for something greater.
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My mother used to sit at the foot of my bed, and she would share her dreams with me.
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I have just one black and white photograph left of my mother when she was younger. She was 17 when it was taken and beautiful with wispy curls and eyes that shone like dark marbles.
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As well as being blind, Ma turned out to have the same mental illness that her mother had had. Between 1986 and 1990, she suffered six schizophrenic bouts, each requiring her to be institutionalised for up to three months.
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I guess if there is a big spiritual experience in my life, it is me becoming a mother.
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