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Homeless to Harvard

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Homeless to Harvard
Homeless to Harvard is an inspiring story that tells the life about Liz Murray who dealt with the stress of her childhood and then went from living on the streets to graduating from Harvard University. I was emotional yet inspired by this story which is based on a young girl who becomes homeless due to her parent’s addiction to drugs and the lack of parental involvement in her life. Although she lacked the stability of a family, the challenges she faced throughout her life shows the biggest accomplishment she’s made in becoming a success. She was a homeless teen forced to take care of herself after her parents were not able to stop their own drug addiction. She had to grow up, believe that she deserved better and made a decision which ultimately changed her life.
Liz Murray faced many obstacles growing up in an unprivileged home with addicted parents who cared for nothing but for their addiction. Her parents were so strung out on drugs that both their daughters were neglected.
Liz grows up caring for her mother that is suffering from HIV and who takes drugs to cope with the pain. She spends every cent on drugs while her children are starving and eating out of dumpsters. She doesn’t care as long as she has her drugs because she can’t live without them, and still, even though she acts that way all the time, her daughters, especially Liz, love her. Living in abandoned apartments and eating out of dumpsters, Liz does her best to stay alive and on occasion, go to school. Her apartment is a messy and dirty place. Drugs were everywhere. It would be common for her to go into the kitchen and see her parents shooting drugs into their veins. Her parents were so desperate for a fix they would sell anything they could for a few extra dollars. Just in the beginning of the movie her sister and her mother are arguing over the welfare money they have left. The girls say they’re hungry but the mother wrestles the money out Liz’s hand and her mother convinced her how she “needs” the drugs and proceeds to smile. The smile warmed Liz’s heart and it just shows you how much she really does love her mother.
Her father, although a genius, couldn’t carry a conversation very long and was also heavily addicted to drugs. It’s sad how an addiction can just take over your life. I didn’t understand why Liz didn’t clean up or at least attempt to organize the apartment when Child Protective Services was visiting. I am then reminded that she’s just a child in need of her parent’s guidance and love.
Her mother decide to move to her father’s house and away from her husband as she needed to be away from the drugs. Liz begs her not to make her move and leave her father. She even reminds her how her grandfather raped and beat her to convince her otherwise. Her mother moved and Liz came with her at first. Her father ended up losing the apartment as he simply just ignored the rent. He later ended up in a shelter and the family was no longer intact.
I never quite understood why school made Liz sad or why she didn’t want to attend. She attempted to stay with her grandfather but he was abusive. At this point Liz was on her own, she was entered into a group home. That didn’t last for long and she decided to leave and was later found on the streets homeless. But through this all, both her parents diagnosed with HIV. Her father not around and her mother who was schizophrenic, legally blind and dying from AIDS was all Liz had. She held off from school and didn’t attend school at all to take care of her mother. This was the biggest challenge for Liz Murray, she was more of a parent to her mother most of her life than her mother was ever to her.
After her mother was diagnosed with AIDS, she was faced with a choice – living either with her father or in an assisted living home. After spending a few months in a terrible shelter home, she dropped out of school and ran away – sleeping on subway station benches, shoplifting for food/books and even begging on the streets. She was homeless at 15.
When her mother died, the jolt was unbearable. The funeral, with no priest, where her mother’s body was placed in a wooden box to be covered with mud by a crane is heart-wrenching. She lies on the wooden box coffin and simply cries.
Calling the incident a slap-on-her-face and faced with the reality that her mother would never be coming back, she got into a public school and finished a high school curriculum load worth four years in two years. The school trip to Harvard was the defining moment when she decides to give a shot at gaining admission there. Washing dishes (the job she takes to pay her way) while studying with notes stuck on the wall, last-one-out-first-one-in in school, doing her homework in the subway trains and graduating with the highest scores which she accomplishes by the power of her spirit. A spirit daunted by her mother’s death, her father’s recent diagnosis of AIDS and a clouded future. And yet possess the perseverance to work as hard as she could and give life a chance. The death of her mother was the most devastating turning point in her life. The only thing she had and cared for was gone. With nothing else to look forward to Liz Murray made a huge turning point in her life where she wanted better for herself and the only thing she could look forward to is education.
Only after the death of her mother does Liz develop the determination to better her life. She basically begs her way back into high school, she becomes a superb student, and at 19, with funding from a scholarship and a part-time job with the New York Public Interest Group, "born loser" Liz enters Harvard University and she was granted a scholarship with the story of her life...
This inspiring story about Liz’s life and her journey to a new beginning when all around her including hope was lost; is not a fictional character. Liz Murray does exist and did overcome these horrific conditions and achieved a better life.
What I took away from the movie is that no matter how down and out you think you may be, there is always someone who is going through an even tougher time. I was encouraged by Liz’s determination and work ethic in school and in her job.
It still amazes me that people really do live like Liz’s family. It also shows how our choices – good and bad – affect not only our lives but the lives of those around us.
While the movie starts out very sad and depressing, by the end of the movie I felt myself cheering for the main character, Liz Murray, who achieved her dreams and even honored her parents when most of the world would have written them off as undeserving of anything Liz had to offer them. Liz is an inspiration to all people who feel trapped in a world they fear they can never escape.

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