Liz Murray

  b. 1980 | American author/motivational speaker

At The Bottom

— 1996

The walls were spattered with drops of blood from their clumsy efforts to find usable veins.

By the age of 15, the Bronx-born Elizabeth Murray had watched her mother die of AIDS.  Both her parents were cocaine addicts who neglected Murray and her sister, preferring instead to squander what little money they had on their shared drug of choice.  As a child, Liz frequently watched them shooting up in the kitchen; the walls were spattered with drops of blood from their clumsy efforts to find usable veins.  At the age of eight, she earned much of the family’s income by working off the books at a grocery store and pumping gas for tips.  When her mother died in 1996, Liz and her sister had nowhere to turn.  Their father had been living on the streets for some time and was incapable of providing for them.  Liz Murray soon joined the ranks of New York’s homeless population.  She had rarely attended school — she was too embarrassed by her personal appearance and miserable economic state — and seemed to be heading toward a life of struggle and desperation.