I was going to start my first book with a long, detailed autobiography. I have decided to keep it short, since that is not the primary reason I wanted to write a book. I ran across this quote a while back: "To be inspired is great. To inspire is incredible!" THAT is why I want to write a book. I want to inspire others to greatness, to strive to carry on and be better than our circumstances may seemingly dictate us to be. I have read books by, and watched videos of, great motivators/inspirational speakers such as Brendon Burchard, Dr. Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, and Tony Robbins. There are probably more I could list, but my point is that I have been inspired by these people to keep moving forward, and now it is my turn to do the inspiring.

Life has tried to put me down (and keep me there) so many times but I just keep getting back up and moving forward. Sometimes, it was a downfall brought about by my own bad decision-making about how to play the hand I was dealt. Other times, I was simply dealt a bad hand. After all I have been through, it is obvious to me that God has a plan for me. At forty years old, I still have no clue exactly what the precise plan is. I may never know the full details of it, but I am just going to keep moving forward in a positive direction and maybe I will discover the full itinerary of what I was born to do.

When I have shared bits and pieces of my story with people through the years, I have been told I am inspiring. I have thought a few times about putting my story in print, but haven't done so yet. A couple of years ago, a young woman began working as a server at the restaurant where I was washing dishes. Regardless of the positive facade I was showing the world at the time, I was in one of my "Eeyore" states of mind and had been for a while ("Woe is me. I am never going to amount to amount to anything. Life sucks and then you die."). The new server had this positive vibe/aura about her that I latched onto. I awoke one morning and thought, "Why am I in such a dark state of negativity? Screw that noise! I have so very much to be grateful for! Negativity, exit stage left. Let the good times roll!" I made a gratitude list and once again came to the realization that while my life may not be what I'd like it to be at any particular point in time, I am still alive and not "six feet under" as of yet. So why not be grateful and positive? Some days, my mind seems to be all about negative thinking but I simply need to think about the things I am grateful for and the negative thinking melts away.

I still wash dishes at the same restaurant and I'm sitting at home on my day off, not wanting to give in to negative thinking and limited beliefs. Instead, I am going to focus on POSITIVE thinking and UNLIMITED beliefs! I may have limitations, between having multiple sclerosis and the residual effects of a traumatic brain injury I suffered at the age of 11, but I can choose to sit here and focus on what I CAN'T do or I can focus on that which I CAN do! FOCUS is where it's at for me. Today, I choose to focus on being positive and productive!

I have never written a book before. I only know that I have been inspired to inspire and since I have been told that I am inspirational, I have decided to put in print what people say is inspiring so that I can inspire more people. If you followed that and you're still with me, kudos to you! I thank you for opening this book, and my hope is that when you finish reading, you thank YOURSELF!

I do want to give you an overview of what my life has been like up to this point so you have a general idea of who I am, quite possibly why I am the way that I am. So here's a glimpse, a little bit of an overview, of my life:

I was born at 6:52 AM on the Eighth of July, 1975, in Enumclaw, Washington. Enumclaw is a small suburb which sits on a plateau, right at the base of the Cascade Mountains, with Mount Rainier about an hour's drive away. The name of the city is a Pacific Northwest Native American word which was a mythological spirit of thunder. Some say that the name of the town means, "home of evil spirits," referring to either thunder and storms in the mountains to the east, or high winds blowing through the foothills of the Cascades. (I have always been interested in the history of places.) At any rate, now that I've started giving a history lesson instead of telling a bit about my own life, you get a glimpse of how my brain seems to be wired differently at times. Oh well. Consider the history lesson a bonus.

My parents dropped out of high school when I was conceived, as Mom could not be pregnant and go to school (they were really picky about that back then) and Dad had a son to support so he began working full-time. A few months later, my parents having been married for a few months and finding it not working out too well, I was dropped off at my grandparents' house to live, as that was the best place for me at the time. I lived with them, my grandparents on my dad's side, until I was three. At that time, I was moved back in at my dad's house as he and my mom were divorced a short time after I began living with my grandparents, and dad now had a girlfriend living with him and she could care for me while he was away at work. They got married when I was four, at which wedding I was the ring bearer, and we moved to the neighboring town of Black Diamond shortly after. I went to kindergarten there in Black Diamond. When the school tested me before the school year started, they said they thought I should have started in first grade but my parents thought I should stick with kids my own age. (On a side-note, I was fluently reading the Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer at the age of three.). My dad was, and still is, in the powerline-construction trade so his job moves around a lot. The union he belongs to is the I.B.E.W., which abbreviation its members explain as "I've Been Every Where," when it actually stands for International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. He was transferred to a job up north, so we moved to Everett after the school year and I attended first grade at Madison Elementary. I don't recall why, but we moved to a duplex a few blocks away the next summer. There was a huge weeping willow tree in the back yard and I began my interest in tree-forts. My dad even built me a "log-tent" fort on the side of the duplex, which I named Fort Comanche. We lived there for about three-and-a-half years, during which time I was in the gifted program at View Ridge Elementary for second through the middle of fifth grade. I do believe I was in the fourth grade when my little brother, Travis, was born on January Seventh, 1985. I was so happy to have a baby brother. At any rate, we moved back to Enumclaw and stayed with some family members for the remainder of fifth grade. I finished out fifth grade at Southwood Elementary there in "The 'Claw." As soon as the school year ended, we moved again, for what would hopefully be the last time, since my parents decided to buy a house over by Lake Tapps. Everything was going great in the new house, figuring I had made three new friends as soon as we moved into the neighborhood. We even had a little party on my birthday. My new friends and I were together all of the time, riding our bikes in the streets, playing video games or climbing trees in the greenbelt between our houses.

Six days later, the good times came to an end. On July 14, 1986, my step-mom was trying to clean the house and was still...