Mental Health Matters: Al Foxx says focus on abilities, not disabilities

Mental Health Matters: Al Foxx says focus on abilities, not disabilities

By Jim Bloch, Voice Columnist

April 21, 2010

Via: Voice News

"Brain damage has its advantages," said Al Foxx to a big audience of Port Huron Northern High School students and St. Clair County Community Mental Health employees on March 30. "If I can remember what they are, I'll tell you about them."

Foxx is a stand-up comic and motivational speaker from Seattle, Wash.. St. Clair County CMH sponsored Foxx's visit in recognition of March as Intellectual and Developmental Disability Awareness Month.

More than 190,000 Michigan children and adults have an intellectual or developmental disability - nearly 2 percent of the state's population.

Foxx was born in 1961 and raised in Clawson.

"We moved to Seattle just as I started 7th grade," Foxx said. "I quit high school after my junior year, became a hot tar roofer and earned my GED."

Roofing gave him the money to snow ski, backpack, customize his Camaro and buy a motorcycle.

"Riding my Yamaha 650 Special way over the speed limit to a spring concert in 1980, (I) crashed into a pickup truck that ran a stop sign right in front of me.

"In a flash, my life changed forever."

The accident left him with brain damage and paralysis. He had to re-learn how to talk. Doctors told him he would never walk or drive again.

Today, he does both.

His lingering memory problems made his return to Michigan somewhat strange: "I'm having déjà vu and amnesia at the same time."

Foxx's recovery has not been easy. Getting his mind right was the first step.

"Fear, anger and resentment kept me from living," he said. "I was alive, but I wasn't living. Learning to talk was the most embarrassing part of my recovery. My vocal chords were stuck together and I sounded like a seal barking. For years, I worried more about how I sounded than what I said.

"I should have run for president."

Walking was not much easier: "In learning to walk, I fell and I fell and I fell."

His therapist urged him to get up. "Winner's don't quit," he said - words Foxx borrowed for the name of his foundation.

He quit drinking five years ago.

He urged individuals with disabilities to make peace with themselves.

"I couldn't become happy until I didn't care what people thought of me," Foxx said. "Accept the book you were given. Write your own happy ending. All my problems aren't gone, but life is easier."