Pete – How has your relationship with your son or daughter changed?

The relationship with my son was probably the scariest aspect of learning that I’d become disabled, that I had a spinal cord injury. Because as you grow up, you think about your future, you paint a picture in your mind of what your future is going to look like. And as you obtain aspects of that, you effectively are checking off your list of pursuit of happiness and obtaining joy in your life. Right, “I summitted this mountain.” “I beat my best lap time at this track.” “I fathered a son,” and in the fathering of the son, I taught him how to do the corner kick in soccer. I taught him how to bend it like Beckham, I taught him how to play ping pong and how to do jujitsu. And In your mind, you’ve got this vision of doing all these things and all very physical things. And in that instant, I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to play that role that I had envisioned for myself. So, it ultimately challenged me because I knew that role wasn’t obtainable as I had foreseen it, so I needed to paint it in a new way. I needed to come up with a new way to play all of these roles and still be the best possible father. And, what I learned along the way was that it’s not so much about the corner kicks, and the wrestling or those things. It’s more about understanding who he’s destined to be anyway because he’s his own person. And he’s not necessarily trying to bend like Beckham. He is not necessarily trying to be the best wrestler. So, while it was difficult for me in the beginning to understand how our relationship was going to play out and the role that I was going to play as his father, I think that we’ve landed in a much more positive place where he gets to be loved for who he is. I help him pursue his personal goals rather than all the things that I had foreseen for my life with my son and I let him shape the painting of our future together.