No one gets where they are going alone, Murray tells UB audience

Liz Murray, who overcame tremendous odds as the child of drug-addicted parents in the Bronx to become a Harvard University graduate, shared her life story — one that is both exhilarating and inspirational — with an enthusiastic audience last night at UB.

Murray, author of the 2015 UB Reads book “Breaking Night: A Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, and My Journey from Homeless to Harvard,” spoke in Alumni Arena as the second event in the 2015-16 Distinguished Speakers Series.

Born in the Bronx, some of Murray’s earliest memories are of her parents spending their welfare payments on cocaine and heroin when she and her sister were starving. “We ate ice cubes because it felt like eating. We split a tube of toothpaste between us for dinner,” she recalled

The memoir relates how as a young child, she learned how dependent her parents were on drugs and recalls how, at age 3 or 4, she watched her parents administer the substances daily.

“Like everyone else in our apartment building, we lived on welfare,” she told the audience. “The check would arrive at the first of each month, and after cashing it we would go out and buy food — which was the only part of the month when we would actually have food in the apartment.

“Once they bought some groceries, my parents, with my sister and I, would go straight to the drug spots where they would buy their drugs and we would head home. Then they would line up the syringes on the kitchen table and immediately start getting high.

“For $5 or $10, my parents would sell our television to the neighbors. Or the toaster. Or my sister’s coat.”

Murray said that even in that situation, she always felt loved by her parents.

“My parents were addicted to drugs — hardcore drugs — and they were not without their faults.

“But at the same time they were incredibly loving people, and I grew up getting that message one way or another. My mother would sit at the foot of my bed and share her dreams with me, dreams that she never attained.”

Murray was 15 years old when her mother told her that she was HIV-positive and had AIDS. Since there were no effective medications to treat AIDS at the time, Murray said, her mother’s illness rapidly advanced.

“She died not long after that, in 1996. She was buried in a public grave in a donated wooden box. I remember looking at the top of it and seeing they had misspelled her name.”

Murray’s father eventually was evicted for nonpayment of rent and moved to a homeless shelter. She and her younger sister, Lisa, were left trying to survive, moving from place to place and relying on friends.

“I slept on the city's 24-hour underground trains or on park benches — I was one of those people on the streets that you walk away from,” she said.  

“Our family had been pulled apart. At first, I saw myself as a rebel and a victim, but then I had an epiphany: Like my mother, I was always saying, ‘I'll fix my life one day.’ It became clear when I saw her die without fulfilling her dreams that my time was now or maybe never.”

At 17 Murray made the decision to turn her life around. She had nowhere to live and had not attended school regularly for years, but after learning about alternative high schools from a friend, she saw an opportunity. She researched as many alternative high schools as she could find and began going to interviews. She was rejected from every school that she visited.

“With that constant stream of rejection, I almost gave up,” she told the audience.

“But the next school turned out to be the one — they accepted me, and in that interview I met my mentor, Perry, the school’s founder. The relationship that I went on to build with him would be the one that would change my life.”

Declaring that she would get straight A’s, Murray did a year's work a term and, going to night classes, completed four years of high school in two years — all while living on the street.

“I did get A’s, and I gained Perry’s support in the process,” she said, “although he never knew I was homeless. I didn’t reveal that to anyone at the school.”  

As a reward for their efforts, her mentor took his top 10 students to visit Harvard University. Inspired, Murray decided it was within her capabilities to attend, and she scrounged around for scholarships to try and cover the cost. Then she learned about a scholarship offered by The New York Times.

“The application form asked for an essay in which I was to describe any obstacles that I may have had to overcome in my life in order to thrive academically,” she said.

“My eyes widened. It was so ridiculously perfect that I laughed. Taking a blank sheet of paper, I poured everything I had onto the page. My frustrations, my sadness, my grief — the essay wrote itself.”

Murray was one of five students — out of 3,000 — who were awarded a scholarship.

She entered Harvard in the fall of 2000, but left in late 2002 when her father became ill and filming began on a Lifetime Television movie about her life.

In late 2006, Murray’s father died, also of AIDS.

Returning to Harvard, she graduated in 2009 with a BS in psychology.

Murray's story sounds like a Hollywood movie — and it practically is. “Homeless to Harvard,” the Lifetime movie about her life, was nominated for three Emmy Awards. Murray is the recipient of the White House “Project’s Role Model Award” and Oprah Winfrey’s first “Chutzpah Award.” Her memoir landed on The New York Times’ best-seller list within a week of its release in 2010 and quickly became an international best-seller, published in eight languages in 12 countries.

Murray told the UB audience: “No one gets where they are going alone.”

She said that after she was awarded the scholarship from The New York Times, the paper ran a story on her based on her essay and her life began to change dramatically.

“There was an outpouring of support and concern, which came from everyone who knew me and from many people who didn’t. There were offers of support, money and encouragement, many from families and friends from the Bronx.

“Meeting Perry made a huge difference in my life,” she said. “His school was the one that, finally, accepted me after all of the rejections I had experienced. When we were visiting Harvard, he was the one who told me: ‘difficult, but not impossible.’”

Murray currently is pursuing a doctorate in education. She is founder and director of Manifest Trainings, a New York-based company that empowers adults to create the results they want in their own lives. She travels the world delivering motivational speeches and workshops, presenting dynamic talks to businesses and audiences ranging from several hundred to several thousand. Murray also speaks before audiences at colleges and universities across the U.S.

“Just because I was in that terrible situation, when our family had been pulled apart, doesn’t mean that I lost something that we all have: that little voice in the back of my head — the ‘what if?’ voice,” she said in concluding her UB talk.

“I said to myself: What if I woke up and every single day I did everything within my ability during that day to change my life. What could happen in just a month? A year?

“You never know when you’re an inch from changing your life.”