Living With Out Excuses
Jen Bricker and Noah Galloway are both motivational people because of their life experiences and the circumstances of their life. Jen Bricker and Noah Galloway both have a lot of similarities and yet vast differences between them as well. One of the significant differences between Jen Bricker and Noah Galloway is that Jen Bricker was born without her legs; whereas Noah was born with all four limbs functioning correctly until his accident in the Army. Jen Bricker’s book, Everything is Possible, is insightful to read when she claims that it would be too easy to easy to go down that negative road. Instead, she prefers to focus on all of the positives that having no legs has brought to her life: the opportunities, the people, and the chance for her voice to be heard (Bricker 40). Jen Bricker and Noah Galloway both have chosen to have a positive outlook and motivational even though some may say they were dealt a lousy hand.
Jen Bricker was born on October 1st, 1987 without her legs and her heart was on the opposite side of her chest to Romanian parents. Her biological parents abandoned her and put her up for adoption the moment they saw her. The doctor who was also Romanian lied to her biological father, Dimitri, and said that she would most likely not survive so Jen’s biological mother, Camelia, never even looked at her (25). As a parent myself, I am not sure how a physical abnormality could change the way I would love my children even if I was told they may not survive they would still be loved by me. Jen lived with foster parents for a few months before she was actually placed with her adoptive family, the Brickers. The Brickers were not allowed to see any pictures of Jen before they met her as the adoption agency wanted to make sure they saw their real and first reaction to her not having any legs. “You’d have thought that placing me in a permanent home would have been tough. But it wasn’t – more than three hundred couples wanted me” (26).
The doctors initially told Jen’s adoptive parents, the Bicker’s, that she would more than likely have to be carried all of the time and she would never get around on her won. Her parents did not want to listen to those doctors because they knew their daughter was more than that. “The Bricker’s did not see or want that life for their little girl. They never let anyone or anything hold me back” (19). Jen had a very caring family and they all, even her three brothers, were very supportive of Jen and her disability. In their eyes, she was not the adopted daughter/sister she was the miracle child they had anticipated for. Can’t was a word they did not allow Jen to use, they always made her try everything, and Jen never wanted to be held back either. “Recess was one of my favorite times of the school day because I craved being outside, playing in the rocks, swinging really high (too high) on the swings, and dangling from the monkey bars. I was always the last one standing on the merry-go-round, while all the other kids stumbled off, dizzy” (44). When Jen went on to elementary school it was in an eighty-six-year-old three-story building, the school officials offered to install an elevator and even a chairlift, however, Jen declined both. Jen was faster than most kids her age on the steps (Illinois girl born, 1998).
Jen competed in the 1998 Junior Olympics on tumbling and went on to be a high school champion in gymnastics. There were times in her gymnastics career that the other girls gave her dirty looks because they thought that she was getting special treatment. Jen never let looks and comments bother her; Jen just kept on going. When Jen was sixteen years old, she found out through asking her mother who her biological family was that Dominique Moceanu, her idol, was actually her sister. Jen sent her a letter with her adoption papers, and once Dominique realized it was true, Jen and Dominique became the best of friends. Later, Jen’s aerial and acrobatic act was the featured presentation in Britney Spears’ World Tour in 2009; “The Circus.” When Jen was 28, in 2015, she was recognized and given an award from the World Acrobatic Society. She could not believe that they were considering her a Legend at such a young age. When Jen looked around, she saw men and women who were at least fifteen to thirty years older than she, she was astonished (194).
Noah Galloway has had struggles that Jen also has experienced, but he has also had a lot of battles that Jen has never had to understand and go through herself. In Noah’s book, Living With No Excuses, Noah describes how perfect his life was prior to him going to war and then all of the trials and tribulations he had to endure after his accident to get into the positive and motivating mindset he is now in. In his book, he describes how it not only affected