Hello, my friends, and welcome to the live-inspired podcast Monday morning moments with John O'Leary.

I record these so that you and I can begin our days and our weeks in awe and on fire with the bursts of inspiration.

So here we go with a quote from Maya Angelou to kick us off this week.

She wrote that we delight in the beauty of the butterfly,

but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.

Birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays are obvious dates to celebrate.

We bake a cake, light the candles, sing a song, gather together, and toast to life.

But what do we do with the dates that remind us not of what we have, but of all we've lost?

How should we treat those anniversaries?

That's what today's episode is about. For my family and me, one such date is January 17th.

On that date, 35 years ago today, I was burned on 100% of my body. In total, I'd spend the following five months in hospital and endure surgeries and therapy

for an additional year or so afterwards.

The fire forced me to walk through life with scars covering my entire body, with fingers

that have been amputated, and with physical pain that remains, along with

the emotional trauma of all we had endured. And I wasn't the only one negatively affected by this.

The fire profoundly challenged my family, too. My parents were forced to navigate in impossibly

difficult time.

Our family home was destroyed.

My siblings' lives deeply disrupted.

The life we'd formerly known as, being ours, was now permanently gone.

I was the one burned, but we all received the scars.

All because of a date. January 17th, January 17th. And yet, my friends,

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