Jen Bricker: no legs, no limits
She was put her up for adoption because her parents were worried they wouldn’t be able to care for her. Jennifer Bricker explains how she overcame her disability to become an inspirational acrobat
WHEN I was five I attended a cousin’s wedding and an adult guest asked me, “Why don’t you have legs?” I paused for a moment to consider and then I put it into the simplest terms I could think of: “Well, you know when sometimes someone takes a Polaroid picture and it just doesn’t develop? That’s what happened to me.”
My parents said they were blown away by my answer and had no idea how I came up with it. It was the perfect explanation and the perfect way to silence someone so nosey.
I came into this world with no name – literally a “nobody”. My Romanian birth parents essentially abandoned me, leaving me behind at the hospital. And yet I don’t hate them. As hard as that is for people to understand, I have no anger toward them. Instead I’m thankful. Thankful that because of what they did I wound up in a loving home with my parents, the Brickers, who supported me and taught me that my life – every life – has a purpose.
Sure, it was a strange way to start a life. In a tiny hospital room in Salem, Illinois, my biological mother, Camelia, delivered me by caesarean section. She never actually laid eyes on me. That’s because my birth father, Dmitry, didn’t allow it. A relative says the doctor who delivered me told him I would die. Maybe he thought it would be too painful. Maybe he felt illequipped emotionally and financially to care for a child who had special needs.
All I know is that he took one look at this tiny infant with two appendages where her legs were supposed to be and decided she’d be better off with someone else.
At the time of my birth, Sharon and Gerald Bricker – my soon-to-be parents
– were living in Hardinville, Illinois, a small town in the middle of nowhere on the eastern side of the state. They already had three boys: Greg (then 14), Brian ( 12) and Brad ( 10). Nonetheless, they desperately wanted a baby girl.
My mother had to have a hysterectomy because she had cysts on her ovaries, and she knew she would never be able to give birth to any more children. One day a friend who was adopting called her to say she’d heard about me. My mom knew at that moment her prayers had been answered. After adopting me my parents took me for a comprehensive medical evaluation. The outlook was bleak. The doctors wanted to make me a “bucket” to sit in. In their opinions I would never be able to sit up, crawl around or move from place to place at all without being carried. My mom sat in the doctors’ office and cried her heart out. But my dad didn’t agree with their prognosis. “No,” he insisted. “That’s not what she’s about. We don’t accept that.” So they took me to a new set of doctors. “I want to know,” my dad asked them, “will she be able to sit up? What does her future look like?” This time the news was encouraging. The doctor smiled and said, “Mr and Mrs Bricker, this little girl is going to do things you never even imagined would be possible.” From then on we all had the attitude of “let’s go for it”. My brothers had me practically jumping off the couch from the moment I could crawl around. They put pillows down to break my fall but they’d egg me on. I never c oul d turn down a dare. I was fearless. I got my first set of prosthetic legs when I was a toddler – sometime around two years old. At first I screamed and hated how they pinched and poked and weighed me down. They were so foreign, so heavy and bulky and I was too little to understand why my parents were pinning them on. As I got older and became used to them, I loved them.
As I grew up I kept asking my parents, “What do you want me to do or be?” The only answer I ever got was, “We want you to be happy.” Come on, guys, give me a clue!
One day I was completely absorbed watching an Olympic gymnastics competition on television when I turned to my parents and announced, “I’m going to be an Olympic gymnast when I grow up.”
There was a brief pause, then they nodded. “Wow, okay,” they said.
FROM the time I was in second grade, the gym at Beth Allen Power Tumbling was my second home. I’m not sure what it was about tumbling that appealed to me but I do know I was always attracted to activities that required strength, technique and focus. I also loved the speed and sensation of flying across a room. I felt like I’d been shot out of a cannon.
My biggest challenge was getting the height other gymnasts with legs could achieve. As my skills grew, this became exceedingly important for mastering the more complicated moves. I couldn’t get the height to do a full rotation of a full twist, and it was holding me back from going up in levels. But I never allowed anyone to give me special treatment – ever. I just stayed at the level I was at because I didn’t want to advance by having people make exceptions for me.
When I showed up at a meet, people would notice that I didn’t have legs – and I don’t think they understood I’d be competing. How could I? But after a few meets, I became known not just for my lack of legs but for my skills.
When I participated in the Illinois power tumbling championship I competed against competitors with legs. No
‘Mr and Mrs Bricker, this little girl is going to do things you never even imagined would be possible’
(From previous page) one without legs had ever made it so far. One of the news media outlets said I was forging new ground as the first “handicapped” person to compete. I never thought of it that way though. I was simply doing what I loved to do, following my passion as far as it would take me.
I’D ALWAYS known I was adopted and that fact didn’t trouble me much. My parents knew eventually one day I’d get curious and start digging, but they hoped it would come later rather than sooner. That day came when I was 16. “So,” I said to my mom, “do you know what my last name was when I was born? Do you know anything about my birth parents?”
She went to call my dad and ask him what to tell me. He told her not to keep me waiting any longer – so she didn’t. She pulled out a manila envelope filled with papers.
“Now, Jennifer,” she began. “You’re never going to believe this.” She laid out on the table all the documents she’d kept. “Your biological last name is Moceanu.” I knew. I just knew. On some level, I’d always known.
I was six years old the first time I saw Dominique Moceanu on TV. It felt like a lightbulb went off in my head: Aha! I want to be like her. She was tiny; I was tiny. She was fiery; I was fiery. She was born to Romanian parents; I knew I was born to Romanian parents. We even looked alike, with the same tan skin, huge dark eyes, and thick jet black hair.
I was drawn to her but couldn’t say why.
My parents, of course, had put two and two together several years back. While watching the Olympics with me, they saw the 14-year-old gymnast I was fixated on – and the names of her parents who were watching in the audience. My mom had seen their signatures on my adoption papers. She knew at that moment my idol was also my sister.
But they made the very difficult decision not to say anything – not just yet. They didn’t think it would be fair to either of us.
Armed with my new knowledge I went into detective mode and did some research online. I wanted to understand how I was born in Illinois when Dominique was born in Los Angeles. The answer was that my birth family had moved around the United States so that Dominique could train with different coaches. Our younger sister, Christina, was actually born in Tampa. I started to make sense of it all. When I went on Dominique’s website and saw a picture of Christina for the first time it was like I was looking at a photo of myself. So that’s what I’d look like if I had legs!
I knew I had to get in touch with Dominique but it wasn’t as easy as picking up a phone. It took four years and several failed attempts.
Towards the end of 2007 after tracking down her address I crafted a carefully written letter that took forever to get just right. I made the decision to leave out the detail about me having no legs – maybe that would be a bit much to find out at the same time she was learning she had a long-lost sister. Finally I packaged up my heart and soul in a big manila envelope and sent it out on a hope and a prayer.
Two weeks later I received a Christmas card. When I opened the envelope, a letter signed with Dominique’s signature fell out of the card. In that moment my heart stopped. What if she and Christina reject me? What if they don’t want to have anything to do with me?
I’ll never forget when I got to the middle of the letter and read Dominique’s words, “You’re about to be an auntie!” I knew right then and there that she’d accepted me into her family.
A couple of weeks later I got a call from a number I didn’t recognise. I answered it and heard a soft voice say, “Hello, Jennifer? This is Dominique.” I was so surprised that I didn’t know what to say at first. But really, what do you say when your childhood idol turns out to be your biological, long-lost sister?
A lot has been made of the story of how I reached out to my sister. She wrote about it in her memoir. We talked about it in newspapers and magazines and TV interviews. But it’s really just half the story. To me, the most important half is what came after that initial meeting: how my relationship with both my sisters and my biological mother has evolved ( Jen’s biological father died of cancer in 2008).
The story isn’t over because we’re just finding our way in one another’s lives.
When we finished the entire stadium erupted into thunderous applause
AFTER high school while many of my friends went to college I decided I would go into the college programme at Disney World in Orlando, Florida. It seemed like a great way to get some work experience, make some money and get out of my
tiny little town and assert some independence.
I worked at Disney’s Hollywood Studios in operations, but the job included a lot of hospitality. I worked parades and made sure people didn’t cross the lines or run out in front of a float.
Through a friend I met Nate Crawford, a seasoned acrobat, gymnast and coach who performed at Disney. We hung out at a gym and started bouncing around together on a trampoline. He was enamoured with all the possibilities of what we could do together.
Most of his friends warned him against partnering with me. They said it was “career suicide”. He didn’t tell me any of this right away. Frankly he didn’t care what people said. He went with his gut.
My gut, however, turned out to be one of our biggest problems: I was so out of shape! I hadn’t competed in gymnastics in about five years and had virtually no strength, stamina or definition. I had abs of flab instead of abs of steel. I needed to tone up, lose about 10 kg and mentally prepare to perform. I did it mostly through circuit training, kayaking and jumping on a trampoline with Nate.
Nate was open-minded from the very beginning and confident he could teach me. He’d travelled around the country performing with a professional troupe for 10 years, so he knew what he was doing. He was full-on ready to take the “challenge” of teaching me to do what he did.
Our first performance together – and my first in the entertainment industry – was in the Mascot Games at the Amway Arena in Orlando. We performed our high-energy and highly technical trampoline act.
Right before I was physically shaking. In all the times I’d competed as an athlete I was calm, cool and confident. Sports? Gymnastics? I knew I had that in the bag. But this was the stage. I was going out there as an artist. Then the lights dimmed and out we went on the trampoline. I got in “the zone”, trusted Nate and tried not to look out at the thousands of faces staring at us.
When we finished the entire stadium erupted into thunderous applause. I don’t think I stopped smiling for hours afterwards. Yet even with all of these noteworthy experiences, booking gigs remained difficult. I wasn’t your average aerialist or acrobat. In everyone’s eyes I was a risk; a liability.
It wasn’t until we booked Britney Spears’ Circus Tour that things changed dramatically. It was the highest-grossing tour in the world in 2009.
Britney always had an opening act. For a while it was Jordin Sparks. Later it was the Pussycat Dolls, who never failed to tear down the house. A 20-minute break preceded the main concert, which started with a booming countdown: “10, 9, 8, 7,6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 . . .” At this point the audience went insane. When it was time for us to do our act the “ceiling” would lower down and we would step onto a platform.
The platform would slowly raise us up into the audience until we were at the top of the stage. I remember seeing this vast sea of people screaming and the camera lights flashing. The air felt electric.
The trampoline was already wheeled onto the stage at this point. This wasn’t a run-of-the-mill backyard trampoline – it was a 12 x 14-foot (3x 4 m) competitive trampoline with major bounce.
Then, bam! The spotlight would hit us and we’d enter from opposite sides of the middle ring meeting in front of the trampoline. I was in my wheelchair and Nate would go behind me, put his hands on my hips and on the downbeat of the music hurl me backward, out of my chair and onto the trampoline. It was epic! No one expected it and I’d always hear a huge gasp roll through the audience followed by a roar of cheers.
My final pose was equally stunning: I’d bounce high in the air, do a half twist and land on my back in Nate’s arms. The adrenaline rush was unreal.
I got to perform in Madison Square Garden three times – MTV News said our act was one of the top five reasons to see the concert. Britney once actually stopped everything during a sound check to watch us rehearse. That night I remember being on stage and thinking, “This is crazy! This is my life!”
Playing in concert arenas in front of 20 000 people was thrilling, terrifying and affirming all at once. Performing on tour gave me confidence and credibility. I wasn’t just a visitor to the entertainment world, I was here to stay.
In performing I found something that had been missing in my life: a sense of calmness and wholeness. I’ve been all over the world – Dublin, Liverpool, Sydney, Dubai, Tokyo, Qatar, Dusseldorf, Amsterdam, Hong, Kong, Malaysia to name a few – and with each show I know with greater certainty that this is what I was born to do.