Liz Murray grew up with two drug-addicted parents who she began supporting at age 10. Homeless at age 15, after the death of her mother, Liz overcame incredible odds to finish high school in just two years while living on the streets. She was subsequently awarded a full scholarship to Harvard. Liz, a Process graduate, recently shared her story with Light News editor Ellie Weiser. To learn more about Liz, please go to www.washingtonspeakers.com. To write to her directly, send email to Liz.murray@yahoo.com.
ELLIE: Liz, having seen the movie "From Homeless to Harvard" based on your life and having met you, I consider you a leader and a true visionary. Nothing in your childhood was in support of your success. Where did you find your strength?
LIZ: Thank you. The answer, in one word, is love. I was deeply loved grow ing up. While my parents were addicted to drugs, and they often chose drugs over their children, I was constantly embraced, endeared, kissed all over the face, told I was precious and that really stuck with me. I was loved not only by my parents but by my Uncle Arthur, who was a surrogate father.
ELLIE: Did you feel their love during your toughest times?
LIZ: When I was homeless, when my parents died, there were moments where I'd be out there and I'd remember the love I grew up with and the love of my friends, who'd become family to me. It felt like nothing was more important I could go without food, I could have nowhere to sleep but I knew somewhere my friends were waiting for me, and their love was very much like the love I had with my parents.
ELLIE: You lacked even the bare necessities, but you had love, and it pulled you through.
LIZ: Sometimes people grow up with a lot of 'stuff' but they don't have the knowledge that their parents are there for them no matter what. What I've found is that neglect is neglect. My parents weren't around because they were getting high. Other people's parents aren't around because they're in a career and their children come second. Neglect is neglect and if you turn that inside out, love is love, and we would be smart not to get too fixated on the circumstances.
ELLIE: As a child a neighbor gave you a set of encyclopedias that she retrieved from the trash. Did that start your love of learning?
LIZ: My neighbor Mary would go through the garbage and bring me hideous sweat ers and things that were so endearing to me. She brought me the encyclopedias, but I was already a reader because of my father, who earlier in his life had been a Ph.D. candidate in psychology at NYU. He had this great life on the outside, then crashed and burned and went to drugs. But his love of knowledge was always strong. He would take me to the library and check out stacks of books that I read, which he never returned. Because my father read them, books helped me feel connected to him, so I became a lover of books, including the encyclopedias from Mary.
ELLIE: When did your parents become addicts?
LIZ: They were addicted before my birth; my mother used drugs when she was pregnant with me. They were into the "scene" in New York City the disco, party loving, cocaine scene. My father sold my mother drugs at a party and they became a couple from there.
ELLIE: How was your transition from a street smart, home less kid in NYC, to a scholarship student at Harvard?
LIZ: It was a question of "what do you do when you get every thing you ever wished for?" I wanted so badly to be success ful, to go to Harvard, to have a scholarship from the New York Times. I got everything I wished for and then suddenly I was sitting in my dorm at Harvard and the loneliness hit me very hard. It was not an easy transition.
ELLIE: You had left NYC, the only 'home" you'd ever known.
LIZ: It wasn't until I was removed from where I'd grown up, and I sat in my dorm, having finished with the accomplishments that lead to this success that I realized success without fulfillment is failure. I had a feature with Barbara Walters on 20/20, I had billboards across America, I had royalty and Presidents calling me giving me awards. In theory this should've been my time to be happy, but I got to Harvard and realized that you can attain a lot but if you're try ing to fill a hole inside yourself, it won't happen until you look at your stuff.
ELLIE: Did you ever fear that you were going to repeat the mistakes of your parents?
LIZ: I didn't fear that I'd have their life because I'd never been high and never wanted to be, but I feared that I would fall back to the Bronx that perhaps I was destined to return to my roots. There were a lot of people expecting things of me – I got letters from across the U.S. asking, "How are your grades? What will you major in? In that environment it was difficult for me to feel that as my authentic self I was enough. I felt like I must have gotten this far because of the good luck around me. It couldn't really be because of who I am as a person.
ELLIE: It's the old question, "Are you a human being or a human doing?" When you love yourself based not on your accomplishments but on who you are, you're halfway home.
LIZ: Exactly. I left Harvard and went back a couple of times, and the success finally stuck when I said, "I'm going to graduate from Harvard. I deserve this." I was able to internalize the success and have it be a part of me once I realized that I was enough with or without it.
ELLIE: That's a huge life lesson.
LIZ: I've lived the poorest life and I've lived a life with a great income. Success is about choosing to be enough and knowing that you're enough without any of the awards or money or accolades.
ELLIE: How did you learn about the Hoffman Process?
LIZ: Through my dear friend Dick Simon, who's a graduate. Also, as a speaker with the Washington Speaker's Bureau, I travel all year meeting people who tell me about workshops, some good and some not so good. I found that whenever someone shared about the Process, they would say it was the single most moving experience of their lives. The day Dick got back from his Process he called and I could hear and feel the changes in him. When we hung up my next call was to Hoffman. I did the Process in January 2008 and I'm signed up to do a Q2 in February.
ELLIE: What initially drew you to do inner work?
LIZ: I kind of grew up on personal development. When I was homeless and I didn't have the guidance I needed, I would shoplift selfhelp books. I look back now with an endearing feeling and I've forgiven myself for taking the books. The irony is that when I was featured on 20/20 and then the movie came out, I was asked to speak at conferences that were hosted by some of the people whose books I had stolen. I said to many of them, 'I think I owe you $25,' and we kind of laughed about it.
ELLIE: Talk about a welltimed confession.
LIZ: Yes! (laughs)
ELLIE: A premise of the Process is that everyone's guilty but no one's to blame. Have you been able to forgive your parents?
LIZ: I did a lot of forgiveness work with my parents before the Process. Both of them passed away before I went to Hoffman, as did my beloved Uncle Arthur. Due to circumstances, there was never a ceremony around any of their deaths. At the Process I had a chance to say goodbye to them in a proper way and to let them go, which gave me access to forgiving them further.
ELLIE: What else did you get from the Process?
LIZ: The amount of release I got from finally internalizing that I am not my patterns was probably the highest level of healing I have experienced in my life. Also it was at the Process that I connected with my spirituality.
ELLIE: What part does gratitude play in your life?
LIZ: If my life were a play, gratitude would be the lead character. I don't know how, but gratitude came easily from as far back as I can remember. Maybe lis tening to my parents' stories of how tough they had it made me realize that every single thing I had, if it was a hot meal, my parents together for the time they were, a bedroom to sleep in, I was blessed to have it.
ELLIE: Perhaps knowing that things might get worse at home made you grateful for what you had in the moment.
LIZ: I must have had an instinctual sense that my family wasn't always going to be together; I would constantly tell my parents how much I loved them. Then when my mother passed away and I had no place to sleep or eat and every moment was a task in survival, even in that state, especially in that state, I remember be ing grateful realizing that there are people all over the world who have so much less. Plus I had my mother to think of – whether it was her schizophrenia or HIV, then AIDS and all her suffering, I looked at myself and said 'if I have my health, if I have this life, if I have air coming in and out of my lungs, I am exceedingly blessed.' Gratitude, more than anything, is the foundation for my joy.
ELLIE: Liz, we love having you as part of the Hoffman family. Thank you for shar ing your amazing story with us. You are a true inspiration to so many.
LIZ: Thank you! I often think, "God bless Bob Hoffman and every teacher and staff person who makes the Process possible. Thank you all for providing the safe, amazing place to know that we're not alone and we're not our patterns."