Celebrating 51 years of life -- with joy

It's my 51st anniversary! No, it's not my 51st birthday; I'm 69 years old. I haven't been married 51 years (39 years last month). And it wasn't 51 years ago that I water skied from Key West to Cuba, although I wanted to until I saw just how big barracuda were and understood that they might think that I was bait being trolled by a fishing boat.

I celebrate June 2, 1958, because it is the anniversary of me breaking my neck and living through it. I dove off of a seawall in Atlantic Beach, Florida, breaking my fourth, fifth, and sixth cervical vertebrae.

Breaking one's neck in the 1950s was almost certainly a death sentence -- if not immediately then within about five years. I am a living, laughing, loving, goofy quadriplegic who has had a wild and wonderful life in the 51 years since I broke my neck. Since then I have:

• obtained a high school diploma
• completed a bachelor's degree and attended graduate school
• been a hippie
• partied a lot
• drank too much
  
• worked as a clinical psychologist
• taught psychology at a university and community college
• become a rehabilitation psychologist
• gotten married and become a mom
• raised a wonderful son who is now 24 years old who works for our business
• gone to parties and danced in my wheelchair
• ridden horseback
• run a state program for the governor of Florida
• started Greens+ 20 years ago with my husband and turned it into a successful nutritional supplement company
• retired and gotten bored with being retired

I have led the most incredible life that I could have dreamed! I wouldn't change places with anyone! And that, my friends, is why I celebrate my 51st anniversary with joy!