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Essentially “The Man Without Boundaries” chronicles the life of Spencer Miller from growing up in a dysfunctional family, dealing with a debilitating affliction, fighting against the odds to become a voice in his community, to becoming the Ambassador to people with disabilities for the Hugh MacMillan center where he met Princess Diana. He continued to become personal friends with Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley & Kiss, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Matt Morgan, John Cena, and other wrestlers in the WWF/WWE/TNA (read all about it in his book). Also dive into the captivating personal relationship he has with Roberto Alomar Isiah Thomas and many more..
Spencer has continued to push the envelope by taking his motivational speaking from the MacMillan center to corporate events, his own Radio show “Sounding Offf With Spencer Miller”, and now his own internet TV Show Spencer Miller Tonight. Spencer has had guests such as GSP, Dana White, Dane Cook, Russell Peters, Claude Lemieux, Tre Armstrong and many more. Read all about his struggle, his successes, his failures and the joy her gets from inspiring others to fight against adversity, to overcome your boundaries and to also become a man without boundaries!
BOOK TEASER
Chapter One – Birth, Diagnosis and The Early Years
Chapter Two – Bullying and More Boundaries
Chapter Three – Robbie and Me
Chapter Four- Dysfunctional Accessibility
Chapter Five – Contrary to Popular Belief, I am Not a Moron
Chapter SIX – Dating 101
Chapter Seven – Big Man on Campus
Chapter Eight – The Disabled Mafia
Chapter Nine – The Modern Day Deadbeat Dad
Chapter Ten – A Little Taste of the Old School
Chapter Eleven – Gridiron Motivation
Chapter Twelve – A Wrestling Influence
Chapter Thirteen – A Constant Battle
Chapter Fourteen – Friendship at a True Perspective
Chapter Fifteen – Acting It Out
Chapter Seventeen – The People’s Perception
Chapter Eighteen – Get Up Off That Couch
Chapter Nineteen – Laughter Really IS The Best Medicine
Chapter Twenty – The Kiss Army – Time With Gene Simmons
Chapter Twenty-one – Life As I See It Today
INTRODUCTION
My name is Spencer Miller and I have spent my life in a wheelchair due to Cerebral Palsy. I make my living as a motivational speaker. That may sound like a funny thing for someone only twenty seven years old and in my situation to say, but I’ve been at it for over seventeen years now. I spoke before my first audience at the age of six. My message isn’t just for those who find themselves in wheelchairs like I am—my message is for everyone. I’ve shared it across Canada—from boardrooms of successful corporations to schools to sports locker rooms to just about anyplace that invites me. The vast majority of my audiences are not disabled.
I am here to tell you how to take what you have and learn how to make the most of it. I’m different than other motivational speakers. You won’t find me on infomercials teaching people how to get rich quick or selling tapes you can listen to in your car telling you that you are poor because you want to be poor. There are no secrets or miracles involved here, because there really are none. I’d love to be able to tell you there were, but that just isn’t my style and it isn’t my message. This is plain, simple straight talk.
My message is aimed at your well-being, not your pocketbook. If what I have to say happens to improve your situation financially, that is even better, but I am here to teach you how to be a better person. In this book, you will learn by example–not only from my own life experiences, but from those of some very successful people as well as some everyday people I have met along the way. As you read this book, I hope that you will learn courage, self-esteem, and above all compassion. Those are my messages.
Of course, it is my hope that this book will also help to open your eyes to the problems and issues that disabled people face every day, but I also hope that you will be able to expand that view and apply it to everyone you meet. In this book, you will meet, among others, people like Knicks’ coach Isiah Thomas, Princess Diana, John Cena of World Wrestling Entertainment, entertainer Justin Timberlake and retired baseball superstar Roberto Alomar—quite a varied list of people. Each one of them, and many more, have touched my life in one way or another. Through my contact with them, I hope you will learn that there is more to a disabled person than just their wheelchair, their sight or hearing, a prosthetic device, or whatever else their disability entails, and that if you are willing to get close enough to them, you might just find a very good friend sitting in it that chair, behind those dark glasses or wearing that hearing aid or prosthetic.
You should realize that everyone deals with disabilities of some kind every day. Whether it’s not being able to walk, being in a slump or not being able to find a job, it really doesn’t really matter. It still constitutes a problem that needs to be dealt with and practical solutions must be found to overcome it. I hope that you will get the message that no matter how bleak your situation seems, there are ways to lift yourself up out of that bed and get on with your life. Nothing will change unless you let it, and sitting home feeling sorry for yourself just isn’t productive. Very little of life happens within the confines of your house, and nobody is going to come knocking on your door looking for you with help. The world is that great big place outside your front door.
There are plenty of people in my situation who I suppose do just that. They sit back on the couch or in their wheelchairs and let boundaries turn into boulders and boulders turn into mountains until there is nothing they can do to get around them. That’s one way of living with adversity, but it isn’t the right way. A long time ago, a very special man named Roberto Alomar told me that things are only boundaries if you let them be. If you fight hard and figure out how to get around them, even if it’s a little harder and takes a little while longer, they merely become simple speed bumps on the road of life. Take them slowly and carefully and you can get over them and move on. Given the choice of fight or furniture, I’ll choose fight every time.
Someone once told me that if you believe in something, you can achieve it. I like to think that despite my problems, I am living proof of that. I have done more in my young life than most people do in an entire lifetime. And I will continue to do it. Life is a journey, and I make sure I keep a bag packed, ready for wherever my journey takes me. I think of life as a series of stepping stones. With each one of them comes a special lesson and I get everything I can out of each one I roll across along the way.
I hope my story serves as an inspiration. That is my intent. It is my hope for this book that everyone who picks it up and reads it—from teenagers to people seventy years old and well beyond—will get something out of it. I hope that everyone connects to it—even if it is on a different level. And lastly, I hope when you read about me, you will think to yourself, if Spencer Miller can get off his ass, I bloody well can, too. Because the truth, and the only truth that really matters, is that you can.
Spencer Miller 2008
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Chapter One – Birth, Diagnosis and The Early Years
Success isn’t what you do in life, it’s a mindset. For some people, that mindset has to be instilled in them. And as a motivational speaker, I am eternally grateful I have had the opportunity to do that for many people over the course of many years. For others, that mindset is already up and running at the time of their birth. I am equally as grateful that I was one of those people. It was a part of me, just like Cerebral Palsy was when I was put into an incubator at birth and remained there for the first six weeks of my life, struggling for survival. I wasn’t aware of it then, but already I was shouting out to the world around me that I refused to accept its boundaries and limitations. Somewhere in my tiny brain, I simply refused to let it beat me. Even then, I, Spencer Miller, had every intention of being a man without boundaries.
I arrived in this world a little over two months early. I guess even the boundaries of the womb didn’t exactly thrill me. My mother had a C section when it was obvious they couldn’t stop labor. I weighed in at three and a half pounds or exactly the weight of three and a half sticks of butter. Despite being in an incubator for preemies, the first three days of my life went perfectly normally. It looked as though once I was big enough, I would be able to go home and everything would be fine.
On the third day of my life, my lungs collapsed, creating a lack of oxygen to my brain. I suffered internal bleeding in the brain that affected the neuro-messages to my lower extremities. By the end of the day, I was diagnosed with a form of Cerebral Palsy called Spastic Diplegia—a term for a form of CP that is characterized by tight muscles that limit movement; in this case primarily to my legs and to some extent my hands and arms. It isn’t a progressive disease, in fact it isn’t even a disease at all. The way I am now is pretty much the way I always was and always will be.
Of course, for my parents, it must have been a tremendous shock. My mother’s pregnancy, up until the time she went into early labor had gone perfectly. CP isn’t any type of genetic disorder passed on through my mother or my father and there is no real way for doctors to know in advance who will get it. There are no tests for it, no indicators at all. It is strictly something that occurs either shortly before birth, at birth or soon after birth.
Being told they were suddenly the parents of a disabled child was obviously a struggle for them, an inner battle that they had to come to terms with, and there was no time to prepare for it. I was already there. They already had one son, my brother Andrew, who was born nine and a half months earlier without any complications. So they had every reason to believe I was going to be another healthy member of a family that eventually went on to include two half brothers (who I will always consider full brothers), two step sisters and one half sister. This was something they would have to learn how to adapt to—a whole new situation in their lives. But it was something that they took in stride, and never once did they feel sorry for themselves. My mother was determined I was going to be a welcome addition to her family and she was going to do everything for me that she could.
At the age of seven weeks, I was able to go home. My parents had to keep an extremely close watch on me, which must have been difficult while taking care of another infant at the same time, but fortunately nothing else went wrong with me. My condition was stabilized. What damage I suffered when I was three days old was what I would have for the rest of my life.
My mother is a tall woman, who was born in Wichita, and grew up in Texas. She was a flight attendant and met my father on an American Airlines flight. I suppose it could be said that I get some of my strength from a woman who had the courage to move all the way from Texas to Canada and change her religion from Catholicism to Judaism for someone she loved. My father ran his own fashion business and we moved around a lot from one rented house to another. But by the time I was eight, their marriage was a thing of the past and she was raising me and my brother alone.
Even though I view her as a tough woman, I am told that when she first brought me home, she frequently carried me around, crying. I don’t think she was crying because she felt sorry for herself or for me. My condition was just so foreign to her and she was so frightened. Maybe she felt responsible somewhere deep inside because she went into labor early, but what happened to me was nobody’s fault. It just happened. My mother tried to remain tough and put on a strong façade, but it clearly wasn’t easy for her. She had another baby to care for as well, and I imagine she felt overprotective of him, too.
It was explained to my parents from the onset that I would have a difficult time walking and eating, among other things. It took a while for them to adjust, but to their credit, when they finally did, they pushed forward with their lives and never looked back. There would be no wallowing in self pity. There was a lot of pressure balancing two babies under one year old; one of them with special needs, but I must give my mother a lot of credit for not caving in. I suspect that being the daughter of a military man had something to do with that. She just went into ‘military mode’, hanging tough and staying organized. She has told me that she gave herself pep talks when she found herself losing it. Maybe listening to those pep talks as a baby is where I got my start doing motivational speeches. And all this time, she was still managing to work at Air Canada at the check-in area at the Toronto Airport. A housekeeper and my father were the only help she had at home.
My mother immediately set out to learn everything she could about my illness to determine how she could best help me. Her search led her to The Hugh MacMillan Rehabilitation Center in Toronto. There, she was able to get the help and answers she needed. They taught her how to get the equipment and services I would need. There were also meetings and support groups for her to attend as she ventured into this new and challenging world. I don’t think anything can totally prepare you for life with a disabled child, but Hugh MacMillan certainly did their best for her.
On the other hand, I am sure she got her share of kind warnings from well meaning people there, telling her that my life would always be one of limitations, and that people would always have to do things for me. But she didn’t listen to the limitations speeches, and thereby didn’t push any of those limitations on me. I wouldn’t be writing this book if she had.
My development as a baby was pretty much on schedule. I learned to roll over, talk and crawl and all those other milestones doctors measure at just about the right age. I even learned to stand and walk, although by that time, it was obvious that the doctors were right when they told my parents I would always have trouble walking. At first, it didn’t matter that much. I was able to get around the house pretty much like any other toddler and when we went out anyplace, I was in a stroller anyway.
By the time I was two, I was attending physical therapy at Hugh MacMillan while they continued to assess my situation and decide on the best treatment for me. By three, it was determined that a steel rod in my back would help me, and I underwent my first of many surgeries. My father was supportive, as he was for all of my surgeries. He spent time with me in the hospital, brought me food from outside and did everything he could to help. My brothers adapted early to my condition, and it wasn’t really an issue with them. I was just Spence, their brother who just happened to be in a wheelchair.
The steel rod didn’t last long. It didn’t help me and I underwent my second surgery to remove it. Many surgeries followed including two for dislocated hips and two to release my hamstrings. None of them did much to help me.
By three, I was a regular student at Hugh MacMillan in a program that combined pre-school with physical and occupational therapy. At that point, I had been through walkers and found it difficult and tiring for me to use a walker for long periods of time. I made the decision that I wanted a wheelchair, and I got my first manual chair at three.
Even at that age, I began to notice that the standard treatment for dealing with disabled people involved being condescending to them. Instead of encouraging students and focusing on what they could do, I recall being patronized and repeatedly told what I couldn’t do. If I had told the teachers at the school that I wanted to be a fireman when I grew up, they would have laughed gently and explained that being a fireman might be a little difficult for me to accomplish and suggested I consider a more realistic goal. They felt it was kinder to be honest with children than to encourage false hopes. Even at three, I felt exactly the opposite. I couldn’t understand sending a kid home discouraged like that. In my eyes, false hopes were just another name for big dreams, and I hated it when people stole the dreams of others. It seemed so heartless to me. How dare they?
At home with the family, I managed to be pretty self sufficient except for minor issues like getting in and out of the bathroom. I never really paid any attention to those things—they were just routine procedures to me. The rest of the family saw them in exactly the same way. The never made me feel like I was an inconvenience for them—at least not when I was little. After all, most little kids need help using the bathroom for a while anyway. It was no big deal to me.
The first time in my life that I ever recall being truly aware of needing other people’s assistance was one Sunday afternoon during a family brunch. As usual, when I needed to use the bathroom, my father carried me there, ready to come back and get me when I called for him.
Clowning around, my brother accidentally slammed the door shut, trapping me inside. Dad and the others there immediately went into rescue mode. He took the hinges off the door, but they couldn’t get it off. He took the doorknob out, but they still couldn’t get it open. Finally, he had no choice and they had to call the Fire Department, who showed up with about fifteen people and proceed to axe the door down.
I remember that incident deeply affecting me emotionally while I waited inside all that time. I was trapped. It was a situation even Dad couldn’t control without help. If Dad couldn’t control things like that, how would I? What would I do if Dad wasn’t there to help me? I came out of the bathroom a little embarrassed, but a stronger person because it made me more determined than ever that I refused to accept life’s boundaries. If it happened again, I would have to use my brains to find myself a way out of that bathroom. It was an obstacle—and obstacles can be overcome. I would find a way out if I had to.
By five, I was a full-time student at Hugh MacMillan, putting up with all the condescending garbage the teachers and therapists dished out. I felt as though I had no voice in what was happening to me. It was muted by others who seemed to think they knew what was best for me, and who tried their best to protect me from the harsh realities of life outside of the school. I heard it all. They were doing everything they could. Nothing more could be done for me. My life would be limited at best. I just had to learn to realize and accept it. It was a great line for somebody else maybe, but I wasn’t ready to give in to them.
So, while I was at school, I internalized it a lot. I kept quiet and did what they wanted me to do, but inside I refused to believe that my life was going to be any different from anyone else’s. I believed even then that there were two choices in life. One was to curl up into a fetal position and just let go and give up, and one was to stop feeling sorry for myself and push as hard as I could toward my own dreams and goals. Despite what they told me and tried to convince me to believe, I chose the latter. I was determined to be my own person and do whatever I wanted to do with my life.
I remember coming home from school once and telling my mother I wanted to marry a stripper with big boobs. What chance would the people at Hugh MacMillan have given a kid like me to end up with a wife like that? Absolutely none. My mother just laughed. She had her own dreams, too, and she wasn’t about to take mine away from me. She didn’t even ask me how I knew about strippers with big boobs. And I never volunteered the information.
As a result, I grew up about as normally as a boy could grow up, despite my condition. I got into much of the usual trouble and situations that the average curious young boy does. I remember once we were visiting my aunt and uncle in San Antonio, Texas. My mother and my aunt were at the beauty salon and my uncle who was supposed to be watching us was asleep with earplugs in his ears. That left us with only the illegal alien named Esperanza who was their housekeeper. Esperanza spoke about a dozen words of English, if that. We were bored and I got the brilliant idea that it might be funny if we called 911 and told them we were being held hostage. My brother was opposed to the idea, but I managed to convince him that if he did the dialing, I would do the talking. I was always a good talker and a good actor. So my brother dialed and handed me the phone.
Moments later, seven cars filled with police emptied onto my uncle’s lawn with lights flashing, sirens blaring and guns drawn. We thought it was great as we watched from the living room windows. Poor Esperanza freaked out. She must have thought it was the border patrol. Mom and my aunt arrived home amid a scene right out of the movies. Never in my life was I ever grounded so fast. But I guess I was just pushing another boundary and developing my entertainment value. I was just being me. At least I learned something useful. Never fool around with 911.
Once, at home in one of our rented houses, my brother decided to try a wrestling move on me. We were both into wrestling big time from watching it on TV and we knew all the wrestlers’ names and practiced all the moves. My brother decided it would be cool if he did a ‘Superfly Jimmy Snooka’ jump from the short flight of kitchen steps onto innocent Spence, who stretched out on the basement floor watching TV. His knee caught me across the bridge of the nose and the blood started flowing profusely. Mom came running in, freaking out at the sight of what she figured was a major torn artery or something. We had a good laugh about it when she cleaned me up and discovered it was only a badly bruised nose.
The point is, my family tried their best not to treat me like I was made of porcelain. I wasn’t fragile because my legs didn’t work right. They tried very hard to treat me like I was a regular kid. It would have been easy for them to simply sit me in a wheelchair in front of the TV and feed me three times a day or hide me away from people, but that wasn’t what they wanted for me.
I remember one day when my brother had to go to the bathroom really badly. Someone was using the bathroom and he was dancing around the floor, yelling that he was not going to make it. The next thing I knew, he just walked over and peed on me. I mention that because that wasn’t something one would expect a kid would do to his ‘disabled brother’. It was just something between two kids, very close in age, and it showed to me that he didn’t see me like someone who would break. Today, it makes me laugh—even though it wasn’t all that funny at the time.
Goofing around with him grounded me a lot. It was character building. It helped me think of myself as a normal kid. And it was very much a part of the reason that I refused to listen to the limitations lectures at school. There, they only saw the kid in the wheelchair. They didn’t see the kid who wrestled with his brother and got bloody noses or made crank phone calls. Their world was all about being safe, with padded corners, smooth surfaces to wheel over and people who talked very slowly to you—as though being in a wheelchair made you stupid, too. But I knew padded corners and smooth surfaces didn’t exist outside of the school and the sooner I got used to that idea, the better off I was going to be.
By the time I was six, I finally discovered someone at Hugh MacMillan who actually believed in me. A wonderful woman named Susan Brower, who was the Public Relations guru for the school, saw something in me that nobody else had. She saw that despite the fact that my legs didn’t work, my brain and mouth worked quite well and that there was something about me that cried out to be put in front of audiences. I had a natural charisma and charm and she was ready to put it to good use.
In 1990, I was chosen to be the Canadian National Ambassador for the school. Before I knew it, I was in my first electric wheelchair, giving motivational speeches in front of audiences from schools to corporate boardrooms to giant sports arenas. I knew immediately what I wanted to do with my life. I found a dream that I could actually live, something that was actually reachable for me, and most importantly something that I loved. It was a big dream nobody could take away from me by telling me it was unattainable. I never looked back.
That part of me I suppose comes from my father. He has always been a man who marched to the beat of his own drum, and he gave me his entertainment value. Once I started giving talks, he was the one who worked with me and drilled me, making sure my speeches were perfect, teaching me where to pause for emphasis, what to highlight and how to use my voice to get my message across. He made me a good and convincing public speaker, even at the tender age of six.
Once I got my act polished up, I gave my very first public address at a curling club function honoring the hundredth anniversary of a program called Curling for Kids in Canada. I remember I sat at the dais and my parents sat in the third row watching me with an audience filled with both children and adults. I think my mom and dad were more nervous than I was. The room was smoky, for some reason I can still remember that. I sat and waited to be introduced, and hearing the sound of my name just clicked something inside me and I was ready to go.
I don’t remember a single word of what I said that night. I guess it was pretty much like all the rest of the speeches I gave. Susan and I wrote it together and I studied it until I had it down pat. I only know that I was a hit. The audience loved it. Aside from the sense of satisfaction and relief that it was over, I remember that feeling of exhilaration I had when it was all over and I heard that applause. The first one was under my belt and Spencer Miller was on the prowl for more.
Speaking in front of people gave me a power and determination that I just never got from the people at the school. Here I was representing a school that was intent on teaching me that I had limitations, and yet I was giving speeches to people saying just the opposite. My message was a universal one. People should identify their abilities, not their disabilities. Play to your strengths not your weaknesses. Find out what you are good at and do it. You should never let someone convince you to stop trying and give up on a dream. Sitting on the dais, I felt like I was living proof of that. It felt great to finally be able to say all the things I wanted to say to my teachers but couldn’t. Everything I was internalizing just came out. I felt vindicated, and I loved it.
Susan couldn’t have been more pleased with the results. Invitations for me to speak started pouring in like wildfire. She knew immediately she had made the right decision. I was the right kid for the job. I don’t know if it was my aura or what it was that she saw about me, but I was the only one she even considered for the job. She could feel it, she knew it, and it just felt right. She found the right voice for the message, and he was all of six years old.
Traveling around Canada with Susan and my mother and father from function to function made me grow up extremely quickly. I developed a maturity way beyond my years. I found myself in front of huge corporate audiences, expected to give strong, motivating speeches to groups of executives and I was still only six years old, doing my homework assignments in between speaking engagements while sitting in a wheelchair. Sometimes, the audiences could barely see me up on the platform. But I worked hard memorizing my speeches and in no time at all, I was a fireball on stage. Susan saw to it that she put me in front of every audience she could find, and I just wanted more and more of it. I couldn’t get enough. It was great for the school, too. Donations came flooding in so they could make more padded corners and smooth surfaces and hire more people to tell me I couldn’t do stuff that I was doing anyway.
There were a couple of rough spots along the way. I don’t know if it was that I was overtired, over-rehearsed or just plain scared, but I do remember once at the Toronto Maple Leaf Garden during the intermission of a Billy Ray Cyrus concert when they introduced me and brought me out in front of nineteen thousand people to speak. I took one look at the crowd and froze. As hard as I tried, I just couldn’t break out of whatever spell I was under and the words just wouldn’t come out. My dad swooped in, grabbed the microphone and saved me. He rehearsed with me and knew my speeches by heart. It happened once again in front of a group of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and again my dad was there to fill in.
After that, I never had any problems getting my words out. The more I did it, the easier and more natural it got. And what was the most surprising thing of all was that people actually listened to what I had to say. These were no condescending teachers who patted my head and patronized me. These were real people—there to hear what I had to say about refusing to accept the boundaries life tries to throw around you. And they came up to me afterwards to meet me and congratulate me, just like I was a one of them.
My brothers weren’t the least bit jealous of me. In fact, they thrived on the fact that I was their brother and they got to go to great places with me and meet great people. Without a doubt, the most memorable moment for me and for my family was meeting Princess Diana.
It was one of the first things I was asked to do as Ambassador. We were informed that during the Princess’s 1991 tour of Canada, she would be visiting our school. It was very exciting for everyone. As Ambassador, I was one of two students chosen to present her with a customary bouquet of flowers.
As October 6th drew near, I worked very hard on my own developing a speech to deliver as I presented the bouquet. Since I gave speeches everywhere I went, I just naturally assumed I would be giving one to her, too, and I was thrilled. I was going to be addressing genuine royalty. And not just any member of the royal family, this was the pretty one.
That morning, I was at the school early—all dressed up and ready to go, when her advance people came in with instructions for everyone. My heart fell when I heard the first rule. ‘Don’t address her. Just hand her the bouquet, stay there and nod politely,’ they explained to everyone there. I was devastated. Another boundary had just been placed in front of me. I had important words to say to the Princess, and I was being denied that right. The wheels inside my head were spinning in overdrive.
When Princess Diana arrived, the girl beside me went first. She presented her flowers politely and took a step back. The Princess stepped in front of me, staring at the bouquet and waiting. Figuring I was frozen with fear, she gently reached down to take them off my lap saying, ‘Are these for me?’
I reached out and grabbed them back, informing her that I would not present her with the flowers until she listened to the speech I had prepared. Without hesitation, she smiled warmly and told me I could speak. I think everyone at the school including my parents went into shock.
I went through my speech perfectly, just as I planned it, watching her as she bent forward, listening raptly to every word. Behind her, people glanced at me nervously. This little kid in a wheelchair was messing up the entire schedule of The Princess of Wales. But she had no intention of stopping me. When I was done, I decided to attempt a bow, which ended up being hilarious. Everyone laughed, but nobody laughed harder than the Princess.
There was an instant connection between us. She was one of the first people in my life who actually looked at me as a person and didn’t see the wheelchair. She hugged me tightly and sought out my parents in the crowd. ‘Can I take him to the palace?’ she asked them. ‘Could you come with him?’ My mother politely told her no, that school was in session and a trip to England was completely out of the question. I was crushed. If it was up to me, I would have been on the next plane.
My brother Andrew said hello and asked her, ‘How’s your Mum, the Queen doing?’ Once again, she laughed. I will never forget the sound of her laughter as long as I live. It was as though she was so happy just to be there among us, and enjoying her visit so much. There was nothing forced or phony about her. She was just like a regular person. Part of me expected her to say something equally as silly in return.
When it was time to move on, I remember her turning to walk away and seeing a bleached out spot in the middle of her pink blazer. Somehow, that little imperfection just made her seem so human and real to me. When the teachers took us back to the classrooms so she could continue her tour, I couldn’t stop smiling. I talked to The Princess of Wales and she really liked me!
Later on, one of her bodyguards came to my classroom. He said he had been ordered by Princess Diana to locate me so she could say good-bye. I was to go with him. I couldn’t believe it. I said good-bye to her all alone. She hugged me again. I will never forget a single thing about that moment—how she smelled, how she felt, what she said. She respected me as a human being, and we shared a unique connection. Princess Diana was always known for being an approachable person—The People’s Princess—and there was no doubt that she truly loved people, but I don’t think anybody will ever be able to understand how I felt being there alone with her. I honestly felt like I was a part of her or a member of her family.
It was never ‘Princess Diana and the handicapped dude’, it was ‘Diana and Spence.’ That’s what she called me and I called her Diana. She treated me just like I was one of her own kids. I remember she put her hand on my cheek and whispered, ‘You are somebody I could take home with me in a heartbeat.’ I will never forget those words or the touch of her hand on my cheek. And no photograph will ever do justice to exactly how naturally beautiful she was. She just glowed from within.
I have met a lot of people in my lifetime through my motivational speaking, and many of them have been genuine celebrities. When asked if I have a favorite person I met, I usually say I don’t have one. But without question, Princess Diana will always be the one nearest and dearest to my heart. When she died, I was interviewed on National News in Canada and it was the one and only time I ever really cried. I couldn’t believe she was gone. Nobody ever touched my heart quite the way Princess Diana did that day when I was only six years old.
I tell this story here for two reasons. First of all, it was one of the most incredible moments in my life. Being so close to such an amazing woman is something I will never forget. But, Princess Diana also is the epitome of a message you will hear echoed throughout this book. No matter how you feel when you wake up in the morning, if you have something to do get out and do it. No excuses. For many years, Princess Diana lived this crazy schedule as a member of the Royal Family. A lot of it was self imposed. She was devoted to getting as close to the people as she could and gave herself an almost impossible set of tasks to complete.
She visited hospitals, schools . . . virtually everywhere she could that brought her near to everyday people. Nothing phased her, whether it was sitting beside someone dying of AIDS and holding their hand or listening to the words of a six year boy in a wheelchair. To Princess Diana, everyone was the same and they deserved both her respect and her attention and that is what made her The People’s Princess. She did as much as she could to instill that same kind of devotion in her sons. She wanted them to grow up as normally as possible and to share her compassion for people. I hope they do.
But like anybody, there had to be days when she just didn’t feel like doing it. Yet, she never let that stop her from doing what she had to do. Time and time again, you will hear stories and messages in this book that echo that sentiment. Don’t make excuses for yourself. Get up, put on that game face and get yourself out in the world doing what you have to do. That’s how Diana lived her life, and I guess something in me saw it that day. Think about it the next time you wake up with a little headache, a touch of a cold or an aching back.
Diana knew people were waiting for her at Hugh MacMillan School —depending on her, and she never let things stand in her way when it came to delivering. Let her boundless energy and joy in giving serve as an inspiration to you . When you get up in the morning and find yourself deciding between pulling the covers back over your head and getting your ass out there and doing what has to be done, remember a very special Princess who never disappointed and asked for very little in return. Then get up and get on with life. And if there just happens to be a spot on your jacket, go anyway. Nobody will care if you don’t look like a mannequin. You may be surprised at how much the simplest gesture on your part helps someone else to get through their day.
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