Burn Injury Resource Center
On this day before Thanksgiving, as everyone wraps up their work and other responsibilities and focuses on enjoying the long weekend with loved ones, it’s the right time for victims of severe burns to step back and consider the good in their lives. And there surely are several positive things, and positive possibilities, in each person’s life, no matter how difficult the circumstances of one’s burn injury might be.
This point is driven home by someone like J.R. Martinez, the U.S. military veteran who has overcome second degree burns and third degree burns across 30 percent of his body to be a motivational speaker (partly through the burn-survivor support group Phoenix Society), a TV actor, and now a winner on the TV show “Dancing With The Stars.”
When J.R. was first injured in Iraq in 2003, he was not only in significant physical pain but was also very distraught over how he looked because of the burns across his face and head. But he kept saying to himself that things will get better as time goes on, and this positive attitude (plus 22 surgeries) have helped him to feel so confident that he is fearless in front of TV cameras and large in-person audiences alike.