Michel Oher Autobiography

By Michael Oher with Don Yaeger

There are nearly 500,000 children in America whose lives have been so rough that the state has determined they’re better off being cared for by someone other than their parents. The odds are stacked against those children. Less than half will ever graduate from high school. Of the ones who drop out, almost half of the boys will be imprisoned for violent crimes. Girls in foster care are six times more likely to have children before the age of 21 than are girls in stable families. And of those kids, more than half will end up in foster care themselves. The outlook is pretty bleak for kids like me.

I beat the odds.

You probably know my name from The Blind Side, which was a popular book and then an even more popular movie. What you probably don’t know – what no one knows – is exactly what happened to me during my years in the foster care system, the years before The Blind Side picked up my story. The things in my life that lead up to it; the way I tried to fight back; the emotions that overwhelmed me and left me confused, scared, and alone; all of the memories that no one was able to bring out of me; everything in my life that came before the happy ending— those are the things I want to discuss in this book. All of that, and a voice for the other half- million children in the foster care system who are silently crying out for help.

This book is everything I’ve never spoken about to anyone before, and everything I’ve tried to forget. People used to say that my ability to forget was what allowed me to move on. They were right. But no kid ever really forgets when they’ve experienced neglect, abuse, and heartbreak. And now, I think I can only succeed in accomplishing something meaningful and important in my life if I share those memories so that other people can learn and understand what growing up is really like for kids like me.

I have to admit that I don’t remember all the details of my childhood. I have done a pretty good job of blocking them out. To finish this book, I intend to go home to Memphis and, with the help of this book’s writer, talk to some of the people who played a role in my childhood – foster parents, teachers, case workers. To get out of that world, I did have to forget. To get to the next place in my life, I have to learn more about what I left behind.

What started as a survival technique—my dream of getting out of the ghetto—has become a source of hope for countless children and families across America. Every week I receive boxes of letters that tell my story all over again. They come from kids in the foster system who dream of finding a family. They come from families who open their homes in the hopes of helping those kids reach their potential. They come from teachers and mentors and parents and social workers who want to make a real difference in someone’s life. They come from adults who were in the foster system themselves as kids—some now have a family and a career . . . and some are now in homeless shelters or prison and wish they could start over again.

It is my goal with this book not only to tell my story in my own words, but to encourage anyone who is a part of the system or who wants to be a part of helping children out of it. I am looking for a publishing house that will partner with me in donating a portion of the proceeds to organizations that help place foster children with loving and supportive families. Not only will the book give tips and suggestions for reaching out to kids who need help, but a percentage of each sale will go to local groups located in cities around America that are determined to provide a better chance for kids like me, who wanted so badly just to have a shot at a normal life.

And just what are our odds at a normal life, after a childhood shuffled between an awful family life and the foster care system? Not too great. Only about one-third of children eligible for adoption in the foster care system ever end up with parents or permanent legal guardians, and the majority of those are children under the age of eight. After that, the chances of being adopted are lower than remaining in the foster system, and continue to drop with each birthday. About 25,000 kids age out of the system each year. They turn 18 and suddenly, they are on their own, whether they have graduated high school or have a place to live or not.

Think about these statistics:

-70% of kids who age-out of the foster care system at 18 say they want to attend college, but less than 10% get a chance to enroll, and less than 1% of those who enroll ever graduate. -Within a year-and-a-half of aging out of the system, close to half of all former foster kids are homeless.

-Children who have been taken to live in the foster system are twice as likely to suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder than are American military members returning from war zones.

I’m not just using an old expression when I say I beat the odds. What happened to me with finding a loving and supportive family was really an unusual and unlikely situation. I got the chance to become something because I had a desire to break out of my neighborhood, and because there were people around me who took that dream seriously.

The ending of my story is unique, but the beginning of my story is, sadly, far too common. It is my desire to use the blessings in my life, as a way of speaking up for the other children like me—for all the other Michael Ohers out there who want so badly to succeed at life but simply don’t have the tools or the advocates to help them better themselves.

In many ways, this book is a guide to life, a look at how I made to it where I am today. I want to talk about the goals I had for myself that helped to break me out of the cycle of poverty, addiction, and hopelessness that had trapped my family for so long – and the people who helped me get there. I went from being a homeless child in Memphis to playing in the NFL, and that doesn’t happen just by wishing for it. I want to offer advice and encouragement to both the adults who want to be part of a solution, and to the kids who might pick up this book and believe there is no way out for them. Yes, the ending of my story is unique, but it doesn’t have to be.

I knew when I made it to the pros that I had done the impossible. I can’t say that I was never going to look back, though. That’s the point of this book – to look back to all the other kids in situations like mine, where no one has any hope for them or gives them a shot to make it out of high school and into mainstream society. We don’t have to end up on the streets or in prison just because the statistics say that’s where we’re headed.

I know there are many people out there who have the love, energy, talents, and resources to make a difference in someone else’s life. It might seem intimidating at first to try to figure out how, where, and who to help. I want this book to help give some advice and direction for anyone who wants to be a part of the solution.

The numbers can seem overwhelming, and it can be hard to imagine that anything you have to offer could possibly make a difference with so many kids in the foster system and stuck in terrible neighborhoods and bad home situations. But you have to remember that every small act of love and concern makes a difference to that child.

And as I have learned, a lot of tiny gestures of kindness can add up to something great.

Chapter outline

1. Begging and Bumming: Life in Hurt Village One of the first things you learn in the ghetto is to look forward to the beginning of the month, because that’s when you have money. Paychecks from work come at the very end of the month and government checks come at the very start, so for the first week or two, life is good. It was the same in my house, except that when the welfare check arrived, my mom would disappear. She’d often spend a couple of days gone – no note, no good-byes – but we knew why she’d left and we knew what we had to do until she got back. She was buying crack, and we had to fend for ourselves. But we never worried, really, because the beginning of the month was good for everyone, so we would bum food from other families, and maybe even bum some old clothes. Hurt Village, our neighborhood, was a depressed housing project built for poor white people in the 1950s who didn’t want to live in black areas of town. But that changed as Memphis did, and by the 1970s, there wasn’t a white person to be seen there. I guess when you’re that poor, you hold on tightly to your identity because it’s all you’ve got, so the neighborhood went from one kind of segregated to another. It’s been bulldozed under now – that happened not long after I left. But for a large chunk of my childhood, one of the most dangerous parts of the city was where I felt the safest because it was better than the alternative. At least my family was there . . . most of the time. We didn’t always have a roof over our heads. Sometimes we’d get kicked out of one place and just wander over to another. If one of us kids had a friend who would let us stay, we’d sleep there until Mom got another place, and then we’d eventually make our way back to the new place to live with everyone else again. Once, seven of us kids lived in a car with Mom for about a month. It’s crazy now, as I look at my career and the opportunities I have to think about how I was living just a few years ago. I used to have to beg for anything I needed; now I have everything I could possibly want. But before my happy ending, there was a very sad story.

2. Foster Care in America Right now, almost half-a-million children are in foster care in the United States. They could be there for any number of reasons: neglect, abuse, money problems, family problems, family deaths, family incarceration – it’s a long list. But the reasons don’t matter because the result is still the same. There are 490,000 children who need a loving and stable home, and there aren’t enough people who have stepped up to provide one. But it’s more than just that kids in the foster system want a warm home and to know where their next meal is coming from. They also need the support of adults around them who can point them in the right direction and tell them that their lives and their dreams are worthwhile. They need to be given hope and encouragement. This chapter outlines the terrifying statistics that children in foster care face. It’s a national problem with an entire generation having their potential stolen from them before they even really get a shot at life. I know how hopeless it can feel because I was one of those children and now my goal is to speak up for them and explain how I was able to survive and fight against the odds that were stacked so high against me. In this chapter, I will talk about the foster care system in America and its challenges.

3. Life at Home I never knew my dad. I met him a few times, between prison terms. He was my uncle’s cellmate during one sentence, and that was how he met my mom. Once he gave me a few dollars when he stopped by to visit Mom, but that was just about all the contact I ever had with him. None of my brothers or sisters really knew their fathers, though, so far as I could tell I was maybe one of the luckier ones since I had at least gotten to meet him. It may not seem like much, but it was enough to shake me up years later in high school when I learned he’d been killed. He’d never really been a part of my life, but he’d still been mine. There were fourteen of us total, I think. I had eight brothers and five sisters that I can recall, though we never all seemed to be in the same house at the same time. I have one full- sister, named Denise, after our mom; but the rest of us had a variety of different dads, though we all shared the same last name. It didn’t matter what the father was named or what the birth certificate said because Mom decided that she wanted to go back to her family name, and from that day on, we all went by Oher. I didn’t really pay attention to the fact that we were all only half-siblings, because we all looked out for one another – especially the boys. The girls kind of kept to themselves and the boys stuck together in our own way. When we’d scrounge for food or places to sleep, if Mom had left and locked us out, we would usually work in pairs or small groups. It wasn’t that she didn’t love us, or that she was abusive. It was just that sometimes my mom seemed to forget that she had children and that we needed her care, so she’d go off for awhile and us kids would be left to take care of ourselves and each other.

4. The Day They Took Me Away Because we shared that strange bond of being neglected, I think we were especially afraid of being split up. It was like we knew the system had already failed us, and would fail us again, so we didn’t want to lose the one thing we had together. We used to have little family meetings, where my oldest brother Marcus would go over the game plan with us for when the authorities came to take us away – because we knew it was going to happen sooner or later. Our job was to scatter and to run as fast as we could in every different direction. We’d meet up again a few hours or a few days later when the coast was clear. One day, when we were all sitting in a shed where we’d been sleeping, we recognized the big car and people in suits who pulled into the driveway. We knew what to do so we all started running, but the girls weren’t fast enough. I still remember seeing their faces through the back window of the car as they were taken away. I was the youngest of the boys at that time. (At least, the youngest who could actually kind of fend for himself. I think there was a baby or two with Mom.) But I remember how proud I was that I was still able to get away from the men chasing us, according to Marcus’ plan. In some ways, I guess that was the first playbook I learned. Not long after that, though, the authorities came to Coleman Elementary, where one of my older brothers, Carlos, and I went to school, and we were called down to the front office for dismissal. Part of me hoped it was Mom, coming to get us early for some reason, but I think Carlos and I both knew who was really waiting for us – and we knew that they would eventually find us, because grown-ups always seemed to get their way. We just had to make- do with whatever decisions were made for us.

5. A Vicious Cycle Parents who have spent time in foster care have almost twice as high a rate of having their own children taken away and placed in foster care, or see their children become homeless, than are parents who didn’t spend time in the system. The sad truth is that even though children are being removed from bad situations, they are sometimes placed into situations that aren’t much better. Or, if they are fostered with a loving and supportive family, their stay often isn’t long enough to help them learn how to make better choices with their own futures. What happens is that the kids learn to imitate the behavior they see as normal and as a result, they end up making the same mistakes their parents did. You would think that someone who was abused as a child would know how much it hurts and do everything they could to not do that to someone else. But instead, when they get angry as an adult they react the only way that they know how, in the way that has become natural to them. With neglect, sexual abuse, substance abuse, gang membership, with all of the ugly things that exist in the world, kids tend to go back to what they know. It’s certainly not something unique to the projects, of course, but it sure is common there. That’s why I ran away from St. Joseph’s – I wanted to get back to what was familiar, even if it was a bad situation. For the kids who are assigned to caring, helpful families for longer than just a few months, their lives can be completely turned around. They get a chance to see what responsible adults look like. They understand what it is like to live with rules and discipline. They learn that there is a different way of living that what gets you trapped in the ghetto. They find out that you can trust and love people who are trying to help you become whatever you want to be. Unfortunately, not everyone gets placed in that kind of home.

6. Life in the System Carlos and I both got placed in the care of a woman named Velma Jones, who lived just a few blocks away from our neighborhood. The first day we were with her, instead of going back to her house after school, I just went back to my mom’s. Mom turned around and took me right back to Velma’s. Velma had a twin sister who also took in foster children, and together we called them “Big Twin” and “Little Twin.” They were strict, giving us bed times (though our beds were just mats on a wooden bedframe) and making sure we went to school. Even a kid who understands that education is important struggles to get up every morning on time. I was uncomfortable with all of the structure I suddenly found in my life because I didn’t feel any love behind it. I complied out of fear because I worried she would get angry and scream or hit us. I’d seen enough of that back in the projects, even if my mom took the other extreme of no rules and no real emotional response to anything at all. And despite a little but of structure, life wasn’t great. We rarely had real meals. Mostly, we just scrounged around to eat whatever we could find in the house. It was not much of a step up from what life was like at home. Velma still contacts me every so often to see how I am doing. One of my goals in this chapter is to talk with her in greater detail about the time I stayed with her, the other children she kept, and what has become of them.

7. Running Back And so I became a runner. Runners are kids who leave foster care and head anywhere else – sometimes it’s back home, sometimes it’s to a friend’s house, and sometimes it’s just to the streets. I just wanted to get back to my mother, to try to pretend that the normal life I wanted so much was waiting for me there. She wasn’t always there when I got back to Hyde Park, the housing project we were living in at the time before we moved to Hurt Village. I don’t mean that she was simply out for a few hours, I mean that she might have moved to a new home somewhere else, which meant I had to find her. It was never too hard to track her down, though. There are no secrets in the projects. Everyone knows everyone’s else’s business, good, bad, pleasant or ugly. But every time I finally made it to her, she’d take me right back to where I’d just left. I think it was a relief to her for us to be on someone else’s hands. She thought if someone else had us, then we were getting looked after, fed well, and had a roof over our heads. It was more than she could guarantee when we were with her. In fact, I think she may have even been the one who turned us over to the system herself, rather than any concerned neighbor or teacher making the call, because the case workers always knew where to find us and she was always eager to get me back there.

8. Escape from St. Joseph’s Eventually, we were taken to St. Joseph’s Hospital and kept in a ward for kids who didn’t have anywhere else to go. It’s funny, now that I know better what all is there in Memphis, that we were only a few blocks away from St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital, one of the best places in the country for sick children to receive top-notch care. But our hospital was just the opposite; at least on our floor, it was filled with kids who no one seemed to care about at all. I would later learn that St. Joseph’s was the hospital where Martin Luther King, Jr. was declared dead after he was shot in Memphis. But I didn’t know that at the time and I don’t think it would have mattered anyway. I wasn’t impressed with historical stuff; I just wanted out. It felt like an institution with nurses and quiet voices and fluorescent lighting. But worst of all were the rules. There was a strict order to everything and since I was coming from a life with no order at all, that made me very unhappy and very uncomfortable. I wanted to be home – even if that was just an old car or a tiny room. I wanted to see my mother again, even if she was going to go off on her own again for days on end. I just hated the feeling of being taken away, as if I had no feelings about the situation. Because I did have feelings – very serious and strong feelings. I wanted a normal life like I saw on TV. I wanted my family together instead of wandering around and having to bum a place to sleep or a sandwich at night. I wanted to go to school where we actually learned something (not a lot of eight-year-olds can say that). But I knew that I didn’t want to end up stuck in the same situation as my mom, and I knew that going to school was my only way out. So I watched the hallway and noticed that the double doors at each ended were locked with a heavy bolt. But just out of curiosity one day after I’d been there about a week, I folded a piece of paper, and pushed it up into one of the locks. It opened. I knew I was just a few steps from getting out, but I also knew they would catch me right away if I ran in the middle of the day. Instead, I waited until the middle of the night and paid attention to the routine of the staff, then I quietly snuck down to the end of the hall, opened the lock, and slipped out. I was free, and I was heading back to Mom. Carlos and I were eventually moved to another home that was far worse that living with the twins. Rules and discipline are one thing; crazy punishment is another. We wound up mopping raw sewage in the basement and being bullied for money from odd jobs we did. Given the choice between careless and cruel, I’d choose careless any day.

9. “Home” Again After two years, two different homes, and I don’t know how many attempts to run away, I finally got my wish, when Carlos and I were released from the system back to my mother’s care. I don’t know what changed in her status as to why we were returned to her; I just know that the goal of foster care is to return children to their birth families whenever possible. We weren’t in any immediate physical danger, so I guess someone just decided that it was worth another shot for us to try to live with our mother again. The sad thing is, we were never all together again, since that day when the girls got taken away. Some of my siblings I know and am still in contact; others have just disappeared from my life. Carlos and I moved back in with Mom, and some of our big brothers drifted in and out as their situations changed, too. Eventually, when I was about eleven years old, we moved from Hyde Park over to Hurt Village, but the change was really in nothing but our address. It was the same routine of living in one apartment for awhile, then getting kicked out of it for some reason or another. It was back to camping on people’s floors or sofas, or even sleeping in doorways and under bridges. Memphis winters usually aren’t too bad, but the summers are brutal. I was starting to get older, and I could look around me and recognize that there seemed to be no escape. The teenage girls I knew all started having babies, and then they’d either move in with someone else or just stay put, and then their kids would become part of the neighborhood crowd. All the teenage boys were part of the gang scene, selling drugs, or both. It was as if everyone around me had given up on ever leaving the ghetto.

10. MJ and Me Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream, and so does every kid in foster care. Our dreams might not be as big as his was, but they are just as important. Having some kind of a goal is absolutely essential for kids trapped in poverty and bad family situations, because if we can’t hope that things might be better someday, then we basically lose a reason to live. It’s a lot easier to fall down, or to stay where you are, than it is to fight gravity by trying to pull yourself up. For me, that dream happened when I was seven years old, watching the Phoenix Suns and the Chicago Bulls play in the NBA finals. I decided then and there that I was going to be the next Michael Jordan, and going pro was going to be my ticket out of the projects. Of course, every other little boy around me seemed to have the same dream – they were all going to be professional athletes or rappers. But as I got older, I started to see a difference. There were the kids who wanted to become something, and there were the kids who were working to become something. The ones who wanted it ended up getting involved in drugs and gangs – the easy way to some quick cash and the most common route to take. The kids who were working towards it were the ones who were showing up to school, trying to be responsible, and studying players instead of just watching sports. I was in the second group. I didn’t just watch games to enjoy them. I paid attention to the way the athletes moved and what the different plays were. I learned everything I could about how they got to the pros and by the time I was in eighth grade, I knew that I would have to go to college if I ever wanted a shot at playing basketball or football. By the time I got to the ninth grade, I knew that college was not going to be an option for me. That was when I decided to learn about junior colleges, where a lot of these players went before going to a big-name school. If I could figure out how to make that happen, maybe I would have a chance. First, though, I had to figure out how to get through high school.

11. The Road to Braircrest By the time I was a teenager, I couldn’t even pretend that there was a possibility of a normal life for me at home – especially since “home” didn’t really seem to exist anywhere. I was moving from house to house, sleeping at any place that would let me stay and eating whatever food they’d let me have. That was where I was when Big Tony took me along to Briarcrest. Steve was one of those kids who was working his way out of the projects – good grades, good athlete, no trouble. I think that’s why I liked staying at their house. Big Tony was a good guy and so was his son. I knew that if I stayed close to them, I’d have a better chance of making my dream come true than if I stayed with the thugs who were our neighbors. Big Tony and his mother, Miss Betty, had stayed after Steve, so his academic record was solid and his grades were good. As for me, though, I can’t even remember how many different schools I went to. A lot of times when we moved we’d end up at a different school. I had different schools when I was in the foster care system. Sometimes I’d just be in a class for a few weeks and then it would be off to another house and another school. No one had ever made me do homework or helped me read a book. No one had made me get up and go on the mornings I was feeling lazy. No one had ever bothered to take the time to find out what I did and didn’t know. I did my work in school and they passed me along because I was a good athlete, but I knew that what I was learning wasn’t enough for where I wanted to go with my life. Steve got into Briarcrest right away, but the principal decided I had to go to a transitional school first for a trial semester, to see if I could get my grades up. I tried for a few months, but I was overwhelmed because everyone just assumed that I’d had at least some kind of normal schooling up to that point so they jumped right into the material. It was clear very soon that I wasn’t improving. But it was also clear that I was trying, that I was getting up every morning and instead of hanging out with the neighborhood guys and instead of going to the school close to home in my district, I rode a couple busses and walked a dozen blocks to get to the transitional school that would give me a shot at Briarcrest. You don’t go through that if you’re stupid and you don’t work that hard if you’re just a lump. I think the people around me could tell that I was driven by something and they decided that I must want that education badly enough to do everything I could to try to get it, even if it looked hopeless.

12. High School When I finally got into Briarcrest it was a huge win for me, because I knew that it was the first of a lot of steps to come to get me to college, on to the pros, and most importantly, out of the ghetto. I was still stuck with the lack of a normal family, or even a place to live, though. Big Tony let me stay at his house, but I knew his wife wasn’t happy about it. She was Steven’s step-mom and she complained about me a lot so that I could hear her. No one wants to stay where they aren’t welcome, so I decided to leave. Sometimes I slept outside. It wasn’t a big deal to me at that point because I’d done it so much as a kid. Sometimes I was able to stay over with one of my teammates from school. There were several families who would take me in for a short time, including the Tuohys, but no one seemed to understand that I had no where else to go back to. I didn’t talk hardly at all, and that helped me out, I think. If anyone had known I was homeless, they would have called Child Services and I would have found myself right back in foster care. That was the last thing I wanted, so I just kept quiet. But Leanne Tuohy – Mama – isn’t a lady who just lets things go. I wasn’t ready to open up, but I liked how she was concerned about me. I liked that she wanted to know where I was going when I left their house, even if I didn’t want to tell her. I liked that she and Sean – Pops – noticed me. I didn’t feel invisible when I was with them. I liked that Collins was down-to-earth, not snobby like so many other girls. I liked that S.J. treated me like a big brother, just like I had treated my own big brothers, way back when we were all still together. And I liked that they seemed to understand what I was trying to do, but that I just didn’t have the tools – or even know what the tools were – that I needed to get there. I wasn’t dumb and I wasn’t lazy. I was lost and hurt and I wanted to work hard but hardly knew where to start because ambition just wasn’t anything I’d really ever really seen modeled in my life. The movie showed the work I put into graduating and the help Mama and Pops gave me to make that happen, but I want to talk about what was going through my head during that time, and what it was that kept me going even when it all seemed too much to ever all work out.

13. Finding Football Most people don’t realize that basketball was really my first love. From the time I watched that Phoenix-Bulls game when I was seven, I was obsessed with it. Football would be my favorite sport during football season, but when that was over, I’d go back to basketball. That was really where I saw myself when I pictured my future – on the basketball court, the scariest thing to ever block a shot but also totally graceful as I flew through the air taking the ball to the basket. And it wasn’t a crazy dream, either. I was really good at basketball, and a whole lot quicker and more skilled than anyone expected out of someone my size. When I started at Briarcrest, though, the coaches sized me up and started to steer me towards football. I still played basketball, but everyone seemed to think that the football field was the place for me. I loved the game, but I didn’t really love to play it at first. We had to try a bunch of different positions until we finally found the right place for me. Once I was put in at Left Tackle, though, everything changed. I loved the game in a way I never knew I could before because I wasn’t just playing a game. I had a responsibility, a job. I was protecting the quarterback, but I also had to watch everyone else in the line-up and guess as to how the charge to the line would play out. I really think that after Quarterback, of course, Left Tackle is the biggest intellectual challenge in the entire game. Some people think I’m a dumb kid who just blocks well, but I’d like to see any of them try to stand in as Left Tackle for even one play, and see how effective they are at reading the defensive line. This isn’t a position for dummies. I could tell that right away and after each game, my brain felt almost as sweaty from my body. It was a workout for my mind and I hit the showers feeling like I’d just finished reading some huge book – and it was a great feeling.

14. Rebel with a Cause When college coaches started showing up to recruit me, I couldn’t believe that it was all starting to happen for me. So many things in my life had been such a disappointment that to suddenly find myself in a loving family that cared about my dreams were committed to helping me reach them – it was almost too much. College began to become a reality for me, if I could just prove that I had the ability to do the school work. I had already proved I had the drive, will, and discipline. No one could stick it out with such long hours of studying, homework, and extra coursework if they didn’t truly want to reach their goal. I wanted to prove not only to myself but to everyone who had stepped up to help me that I had what it took to succeed. One of the big fears coaches seemed to have was if I would have the ability to read and understand the playbook. That kind of made me laugh because while I might have struggled with school learning, I knew sports. I may not have ever spend much time pouring over the various plays by name, but I understood strategy because I had studied football every time I watched a game as a child and dreamed of making my escape by way of the gridiron. I had a great support system around me while I played for the Ole Miss Rebels – not just tutors like Miss Sue and the ones the university provided, but Collins was there as a freshman, too, and the rest of the family would come and visit for games and weekends. It was hard work but exciting, because I couldn’t believe I was really here. It wasn’t just that I was able to get into college, but that I could actually accomplish the work put in front of me and was working on a degree even while I was working towards my childhood dream. Around my junior year, I started getting a little impatient because I felt like I’d been waiting for my dream of going pro for so long and it felt like that would never get there, but I pushed on because I knew that I hadn’t come that far just to quit. I also knew that there were so many people who were cheering me on – and that I’d come so much farther than anyone in my family ever had before. In 2005, I was named to the First Team Freshman All-America, First Team All-Quad Freshman Chrome Tackle Letius, and First Team SEC All-Freshman. In 2007, I was First Team All-SEC. And then in 2008, my senior year, I got First Team All-American, First Team All-SEC, Shug Jordan Award for the Southeast Offensive Lineman of the Year, Colonel Earl “Red” Blaik Leadership-Scholarship Award, 2008 Outland Trophy finalist, Conerly Trophy finalist, Lombardi Award semifinalist, and the SEC Jacobs Blocking Trophy. Not bad for a kid no one had any hopes for. I had accomplished more than anyone else in the world (other than me) ever expected I could – and even I was surprised sometimes!

15. On Raven’s Wings People like to talk about “Cinderella stories,” but Cinderella didn’t get her happy ending without lifting a finger. She had to show up at the ball, be charming and smooth, and win over the prince. Of course she had help along the way, but ultimately, it was up to her to make the fairytale ending happen. When I was drafted in the first round by the Baltimore Ravens, I knew I had done the impossible. I hadn’t just beat the odds; I had blown them out of the water. My first season in the pros, I was the runner up for the AP’s NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year award. I finally knew I was never going to have to go back to the ghetto. I was really and truly making it.

16. Mentors, Friends, Support The people you choose to hang around with make all the difference in the world as to if you’re going to make it or not. It’s so important for both kids and adults to understand this. If all of your friends cut school, don’t do any work, and hang out with thugs, chances are good that you’ll end up doing the same thing. It’s crazy to think you can be surrounded by all that and not be tempted to join in. If you want to get out of the ghetto, you can’t keep living like the ghetto. Adults also need to understand how important their involvement is. Just complaining about kids making bad choices doesn’t help teach them how to make better ones. If a child doesn’t know anything different, how will they know what they need to do to break out of the cycle? Foster parents who get involved and make the kids feel a part of the family can show that homework, math skills, reading and writing, and sports are all important ways to improve yourself and to have a chance not only to graduate from school but also to know how to get along with different kinds of people. Even if the kid is only with a family a short time, they can start to understand a different way of living, and will remember that in the future. Not everyone can be a foster family, but everyone can do something, like tutoring or coaching or just befriending a troubled kid they know. Even if you can’t give them a place to stay or provide clothes for them, if you ask how school is going they will start to understand that how they do on their homework matters. For a lot of kids, no one has ever taken an interest in them, so they’ve learned not to take an interest in themselves. If you reach out to show that they are worthy of your time and respect, they can start to believe that they are worthwhile people, too. I’ve been very blessed to have some great mentors and friends in my life and I know that they all made a difference – some big and some small, but every positive thing had an impact and helped get me to a place where I was able to achieve my potential. My brothers showed me solidarity. Craig gave me a positive friendship. Big Tony and Steve gave me a place to stay and a chance for schooling. The Tuohys gave me love and a family. Miss Sue gave me the confidence I needed to become a success. Just give whatever you have to give. Even the smallest act will mean something to a kid who has nothing.

17. Craig, Steve, and Big Tony When I was in foster care with Velma Jones, there was another boy about my age who became one of my best friends. His name was Craig and he wanted to get out of the system, too. He didn’t want to end up back in the old neighborhood, selling drugs or collecting government checks like everyone else. He wanted a normal life that he could be proud of, where he could give his family a good home and he could know this his kids would never end up feeling unloved and invisible, moved in and out of houses and schools where no one took an interest in them or had any expectations for what they might achieve. Basically, he wanted the same life I wanted. I love Craig. He is such an amazing guy who is the co-owner of a car wash now. How many kids in the ghetto ever end up owning their own legitimate business? He got there because, like me, he was determined not to let himself just become another sad statistic. He had a dream of getting out of there, and he did. He is clean living – doesn’t drink, doesn’t do drugs, has no interest in any of that kind of thing. I think that’s why we always stuck together, because we were different from the people around us and we were able to have each other’s backs when the going got tough. Big Tony and his son Steve were hugely important, too, and not just because Big Tony fought to get me into Briarcrest. They were both good guys for me to be around because Steve was put together and a hard-working kid, even though the west Memphis schools weren’t meeting his needs; and Big Tony showed me what it was like to be a man who stepped up and took responsibility instead of running out on his family. They opened up their home to me and even though it was only a temporary solution, what came out of it changed my life forever.

18. My Families Most of my brothers are still a part of my life now, too. One has died, but there are seven of them left and they are all good guys. I think just knowing that I was a part a group that loved each other because I knew I was never totally alone. Of course, as kids we had to fend for ourselves a lot, but their love always important to me and even now I am proud of how we tried to stick together. When I left Big Tony’s house and the old neighborhood, I really had nowhere to go, but I soon learned that there was something special about the people at Briarcrest. Some were rich and some were barely better off than I was, but they all seemed to care about me. They let me stay at their houses and for the first few months I was at the school, I stayed with a number of different families. For me just to see how those families lived, what their neighborhoods were like, what the rules and expectations were in their homes – that had a huge impact because I was able to really understand what I’d suspected, that a life like mine wasn’t normal and it wasn’t okay. I started to get a much clearer picture of what I was aiming for. Because, really, my dream wasn’t about making the big bucks, it was about making a better life that what my brothers and sisters and foster siblings and I had all known. Those Briarcrest families showed me that it was possible to feel safe from violence at night and that there really are adults who work hard during the day and take care of their kids and encourage them to succeed in school and whatever their dreams are. When I was still new at Briarcrest and was totally unsure of everything around me, there were many times when I wanted to leave and go back to what I knew. But just the fact that there were people who took a real interest in my life kept me coming back to school. If I was an inconvenience, no one showed it. They just showed me kindness and it was enough to keep me around. Moving in with the Tuohys was the thing that made it all come true. They treated me like a member of the family – a real family – and not just as another mouth to feed or the reason for a monthly support check or a temporary house guest. I wasn’t just a special project to them. I was a kid who wanted to feel loved and supported and to know that my dreams and my future were just as important as anyone else’s. To be a part of a community at Briarcrest made all the difference in the world for me, because I’d never been around people who were cheering for me before. Kids who don’t have anything need to have that mixture of attention and encouragement to help them rise above the bad stuff that’s been in their lives for so long. It might take a long time for them to learn to trust or how to act around such a different kind of life, but every little bit of kindness reminds them they are worthy of love. And when you start to show them that you have expectations for their lives, they can start to believe it, too.

19. Miss Sue I can’t talk enough about the time and work Miss Sue put into helping me. She is retired now, but she deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. Instead of just expecting me to learn things the way she taught them, she changed up her way of teaching so that I could understand whatever the assignment was. I don’t know how many hours she spent going over things until I really got them, not just learning them for a test and then moving on. That was really important for me because she showed me that I really could learn whatever I needed to know to succeed. Sometimes it took awhile, but she never lost her patience. Well, she probably did lose her patience, but she never showed it. What I think it most important, though, is that she didn’t just help me, but she also tutored a lot of my teammates in college, and everyone else loved her as much as I did. She really cared about us. We weren’t just a job for her. She was excited for us and cared about how we did in the classroom and on the field, but she also cared about how our lives were going. She knew if someone broke up with his girlfriend or if someone was struggling with a bad family situation. I know that guys worked harder for her because they didn’t want to let her down. No one likes to disappoint the people they love and just the few hours we spent with her each week made it clear that she loved us all. (She loved me best, though!) Miss Sue is a huge part of me reaching my dream because she helped me believe that I really could do what so many people around me seemed to think I couldn’t. She also goes to show that you don’t have to just put a roof over a kid’s head to make a difference in their life. There are other needs that have to be met, too, and she dedicated her own life to helping kids improve theirs.

20. Breaking the Cycle The mentors in my life made a huge difference and I love being a member of the Tuohy more than I can put into words. But something I really want people to understand is that I was going to make it one way or another. There was just no way I was going to let myself get stuck in the ghetto. I didn’t care what it took – I was not going to end up selling drugs or having kids I couldn’t support or any of those other stereotypical situations. It just wasn’t going to happen. I was going to break the cycle or die trying. If I hadn’t ended up at Briarcrest or taken in by the Tuohys, I would have had to take a different route, of course. Maybe I’d have gone the junior college route to a football career. Maybe I wouldn’t have had a football career at all. I might have tried to do it and failed, and then (as I like to joke with Pops) I might be working at a Taco Bell instead – and I don’t mean like how he works at Taco Bell by owning a bunch of them. I mean, I’d be inside as the guy taking your order. But you know what? That would have been all right, too. Because it is a respectable job that doesn’t depend on a welfare check, and doesn’t involve breaking the law or hurting people. That’s a really important lesson I want people to take from this book. You don’t have to get adopted by a rich family to make it. You don’t have to get adopted by anyone at all. You just have to have it set in your brain that you are going to make a better life for yourself and you have to be committed to making that happen. You can’t sit around and wait for a loving family to show up and help you out because, unfortunately, that might never come. You have to be committed to chasing your dream yourself, and if someone steps up and helps you along the way, that’s awesome. But if not, it’s still up to you what you do with your life. You can blame circumstances or whatever you want to, but it’s your life. You’ve got to be the one who is determined to make it succeed. No one else can do that for you.

21. My Guide to Life Now that I have a year in the pros under my belt and the story of my life has suddenly become wildly interesting to everyone, I want share the things that helped me to survive. In this final chapter, I plan to boil down everything I have discussed through the course of the book to offer hope and encouragement to any other child who might be where I was just a few years ago, and to adults who want to understand better what that child might be thinking or going through. It is my hope that this chapter will get photocopied and laid on many kids’ pillows at night by loving foster parents, or slipped into backpacks by caring teachers who recognize a kid who is trying to fight against the odds. I want to see this chapter in the hands of every foster child in America so that they can know how to work to make their dreams become a reality. Just because the statistics say we’re likely to fail doesn’t mean that we can’t change them, because we can, one person and one dream at a time. Writer’s note

Michael Oher is a very private, shy individual. Over my twenty-five years as a journalist, I have encountered many similar people who require a little coaxing to share their story openly. What I have found with Michael is no exception. He is eager to talk, but only after he has had an opportunity to “feel out” the conversation and the person with whom he is speaking. He has many, many stories he has never shared, and for any number of reasons. Some, he feels, no one would care about so he has never bothered to volunteer the information. Others caused deep scars that are just now healing. Still others are simply things he has put out of his mind in order to survive. And now, as he has found himself finally in a place of success, he is finally allowing himself to recall the names, faces, events, and details of his remarkable life and heartbreaking experiences. In the short I have spent with him, he has shared with me that he is still in contact with many of his friends from the old neighborhood. None have graduated from high school. More than one has been killed as a result of gang violence. But their lives are a part of Michael’s life and a part of Michael’s story. As part of this book, he wants to spend time with those who are still living, remembering and recalling those “lost years” from his childhood that have generally been glossed over or only referenced in nuanced terms in others accounts. Michael is eager to talk and to share the untold parts of his story alongside the more familiar ones, because he knows that the lessons he has gathered have given him perspective and wisdom far beyond his years. He’d never say that of himself, but it becomes more and more apparent as he opens up and shares more details of himself. I believe that every reader will be captivated by what Michael has to say about the life he left behind.