Extraordinary journey of Liz Murray

Liz Murray has inspired many people as she overcame her hardship to achieve success. Liz Murray grew up to heroin-addicted and HIV-infected parents. She did not attend school until 8th grade. Her mother also suffered from blindness and mental illness, and died of AIDS when Liz was 15. When her father moved to a shelter, Liz found herself living on the streets, eating from dumpsters and finding shelter on all-night subway routes. She had dismal grades due to poor attendance, but was accepted by the Humanities Preparatory School in Greenwich Village, where she encountered teachers who cared about her welfare. Liz began to read literature and study physics, but still had no stable place to stay. She did her homework in subway stations and stairwells. Because she started high school late (age 17), she doubled her course load and finished high school in two years. She received a New York Times scholarship for needy students and was accepted to Harvard, where she began classes in 2000.


Liz Murray was born on the 23rd of September, 1980. She was born from cocaine-addicted and alcoholic parents who would both get HIV later,although it should be noted that her parents did love her parents as they were highly intelligent but rendered hopeless by their drug dependence and consequent poverty. At a young age her tough life started as she was forced to eating ice cubes and toothpaste after her parents would spend the first-of-the-month welfare cheques on Happy Meals for Liz and her older sister,Lisa,for the first week and spending the rest of the money to buy drugs, "We ate ice cubes because it felt like eating. We split a tube of toothpaste between us for dinner." This tough life even affected her hair as her hair was so lice-ridden, the bugs literally fell from her head.Liz would turn up to school lice-ridden and was bullied for being smelly and scruffy and eventually dropped out. At 15,she left her house to get away from all that madness,and she would end sleeping in friends' apartments, on the subway or street, or in a motel, paid for by her abusive boyfriend.


She kept on living her uncontrolled and wild life until the age of 16, when her mother died of HIV/AIDS, and this caused her to jolt out of that lifestyle, "My mother gave me the gift of clarity. Unfortunately, she died and that's what it took for me to wake up, but I realized my mortality at 16." She learnt a valuable lesson from her mothers' death, "That moment taught me that life was malleable. If I could have a family and a home one night and all of it's gone the next, that must mean that life has the capacity to change. And then I thought, Whoa! That means that just as change happens to me, I can cause change in my life."

This self-motivation cause Liz to make herself a goal to achieve, and this goal was to complete her high school education in just 2 years(as she was 17 at that time), she had to accomplish this goal without a place to live and not having any regular attendance at school for years. She was commited to her goal and she showed this by fitting four years of school into two, all without a home, supportive parents, or even a bedroom in which to study. "High school was a marathon," she says."
She did a year's work a term and went to night classes. A teacher saw her gumption and mentored her. When he took his top 10 students to Harvard, she stood outside the university and instead of feeling intimidated she admired its architecture – and decided it was within her reach. Then she heard that the New York Times gave scholarships.  At that point, the media caught wind of her story."It started with the Times, and then a segment on 20/20, then, 'Hey, we'd like you to go on Oprah!' "


Her father died in 2006, also of Aids. His saving grace was that he encouraged her to read – and stole books from libraries to give her a love of literature. She has written a best selling memoir called 'Breaking Night' which was released in September 2010.

This link will take you to a short interview of Liz Murray,and in this interview she talks about her hardship and amazing journey.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtybvFW0ncY