Alyssa Berggren | The Gift is in the Struggles

The moment I fell on the ground, I knew right away something went very, very wrong with my spine.  However, a gift of life came along with all the pain.

In 2003 when I was 15, my classmate pulled away my chair in a prank.  My spine landed on the floor and my head hit on a desk.  Within seconds, I felt numbness in my legs.  I had chills on my back.  I lay on the floor looking at the ceiling in a silent room.  My body felt so cold as if my blood stopped circulating.  My world paused and the only thought in my mind was… “Is my life over?”

The next seven days in the hospital, I urinated blood due to a fracture in my spine.  I also had head-injury caused epilepsies.  Week by week, my condition worsened.  I ultimately lost complete mobility and sensation below my waist.

“Physiotherapies”, “morphine”, “steroids”, “injections”, “diapers”, and “urinal bags”, gradually replaced “homework” and “school”.  I worked eight hours daily with physiotherapists, doctors, neurologists, instead of teachers and schoolmates.

After three years of hospitalization, my doctors said, “We believe you will never walk, nor even sit again.  We’ll transfer you to a nursing home” ……

As those words entered my ears, no great wave of panic swept over me, it just sunk into my heart quietly.  My doctors gave up on me.  I laid in my bed with tears slowly streaming down.  I felt terrible that I had become a burden to my mother.

As an 18-year-old, I couldn’t accept spending the rest of my life in a nursing home with dying people.  I knew I had nothing lose but everything to gain from that point on. I was bored; I took online courses and SAT test. I even managed to get into a decent high school in California.  With my mom’s support, I moved to the States myself to continue studying however long I could, while my mother worked hard in Hong Kong to pay off the medical bills.

Schooling as a “dying person” was extremely difficult for me and for everyone around me.  In addition to my immobility, I had constant headaches, dizziness, fatigue and frequent epilepsy.  I fainted in school everyday unpredictably and my schoolmates would always carry me back to dorm, cry next to my bed and pray till they had to go home.

When I was back in conscious, I would go back to class to enjoy every bit of my time as a teenager.  I kept myself very active in school involving in the editorial of yearbook, the national speech & writing contests, and wrote columns for a Chinese newspaper – things that I could do without my legs.

My disability did not limit my world!  I scooted around on my electric wheelchair like a sports car with a urinal bag.  I took courses in a local university so I could skip a few grades and catch up with the time I “wasted” in the hospital.  My daily routine was: faint, rest, and keep on rolling!

Some say I live a dramatic life like a movie.  Well, I love watching movies, particularly those with a happy ending.  And a happy ending seemed to had taken the stage.  A schoolmate’s parents referred me to a famous Chinese doctor, who helped me with a miraculous recovery after another three years of intensive treatments and acupunctures.

Painful as it is, I deeply believe the wounds are where the light shines in. Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need to put things into perspective.  Up until the moment of my accident, I never really gave any serious thought to what my definition of a “quality life” was.  At the time of my accident, I came to a point in life, where I learnt to appreciate things that in the past I took for granted – like a pair of healthy legs.

Day by day in all those years, I learned again and again to rebuild my life and to dare to dream again.  We all have some sort of disability/struggle in life, but don’t let it be a strain.  I constantly relied on my faith in my futu

re and just believed that there was a purpose for all of this.  I couldn’t move but I used multiple strategies to improve the quality of my life – wearing a bright smile is definitely one of them.

I had a tough life but I’m proud that I fought my battles.  It brings me satisfaction, pride, and new values of things.  This is not how I was expecting my life to be when I was young but I overcame it with the help of many.  The gratitude I feel cannot fully be described in words but I am so very thankful and I want to pass on my blessings.

I am fortunate enough to reclaim my life and I want to do more than just earning and living; I want to share my experiences with those whom are suffering.  Thus, I have made the decision to devote my life to charity.  After college, I volunteered in Malawi in Africa, possibly the poorest place on earth, in an orphanage until a war broke out after two years.

I moved back to HK and was recruited to this private company, The Associates, which shares the same principals as I do – to Earn, to Live and to Share.  The founder promotes sustainable quality of live for people above and below the poverty line.  He embraces the importance of doing philanthropy on an impactful investment approach, though promoting charity work in Hong Kong is not an easy job, I took the challenge; we built our first Responsible Investment – ChickenSoup.

You don’t have to be in a wheelchair to know what it feels like for life to get too hard to stand; and you certainly don’t know your strength until you start pushing.  Everyone has their own challenges, hardships and ‘disabilities,’ but we all have the power to tap into the beauty of our souls to rise up against adversity, to overcome obstacles.  And this is what I want to do with ChickenSoup.

I got children under ChickenSoup telling me they are trash and not worth to be helped.  They don’t see a future in life, and I understand their pain.  However, I overcame my obstacles because I had hope and faith; I believed; I did not surrender; and I want our beneficiaries to do the same.  For ChickenSoup, I do not merely want to feed them with food, prepare them for higher education, but I also want to put the word “hope” back into their vocabulary to heal their mind and soul.

My stories shaped who I am today and brought me passion towards life and what I do.  What seemed to be a tragic story brought perspectives to my life.  Till today my spinal problem and head injury have not been cured, I might be paralyzed again any day.  However, the fear has became my motivation and I want to live everyday to its fullest.  With the gift from my “struggles”, I am now living my life with love, compassion, and appreciation.  More importantly, with a SMILE!

Frowners never win, smilers never lose! Before giving up or complaining about problems, look deeper; for every struggle comes with a gift of life.