What mindset did you use to free yourself and why did you decide to go in this new direction?
With my natural born stubborn streak, I used my determination and persistence as the driving force that helped me to keep things in motion and moving forward toward my own personal goals.  I was determined to prove those people wrong.  I achieved my goals more than they could ever imagine and that gave me satisfaction.  My motivation was based on my knowledge of the fact that classical music saved my life.  Because it gave me purpose, it gave me meaning, it gave me depth, and it gave me passion; passion for life.

What was going through your mind when you decided that this was the turning point?
After being discharged from the spinal cord injury rehabilitation hospital, I was excited about getting on with my life in a new way.  When I was in public, among other people, many of them looked at me in the most bizarre ways.  Children were ushered away from me as if I had an infectious disease.  I was not accustomed to this kind of public mistreatment of me.  It made me feel sad and I withdrew into a protective shell, the shell that protected me when I was a child.  My former music professor hired me to work in the music school and I was able to be around the music that saved my life when I was a child.  I even performed a violin solo on the university performance stage while sitting in my wheelchair.  I felt elated because my professor had that much confidence in me when others didn't.  I started building personal power and I found personal freedom from the emotional shackles that I lived with.  My liberation from the emotions from the past was my turning point.


How do you deal with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder after your traumatic airplane crash accident?
The way that I am able to deal with PTSD is that I draw from the strength I built as an abused child.  When I studied violin as a young teenager, I learned about the importance of focus, challenge, integrity, responsibility, confidence dedication, and determination.  I used these qualities to survive in my unstable home.  Although I was not able to change what was going on in my childhood home, I worked very hard with my music studies because I was determined to be in control of something in my life.  I used those same virtues after I survived an airplane crash as a young adult.  When ever I'd have a PTSD episode, I would draw from that strength from my childhood.  This gave me personal strength where I was able to take the power back.  My passion for my violin and classical music was key for my heeling.  My music saved my life and it helped me to heel.

I feel that we all have tools to get us through situations and tragedies that we have in life.  And we can use these tools.  We may have dealt with traumas in life.  But the important thing is that we have to find the inner strength to get ourselves through any situation.  We all have frightening experiences in our lives.  We all have things that we have to deal with.  But at that point, we need to make a choice.  We could choose to let it over power us or we can choose to move forward and beyond our personal struggles.