Page 24 - ABILITY Magazine - Avril Lavigne Issue

as a dark shadow, this smudge on my life that I could not get rid of. It drove me crazy. I felt like it held me back. An embarrassment that I couldn’t get rid of or fix.
Zimmerman: What got you through it?
Hendricks: My mom. I get a little emotional thinking about it. ‘Cause even though she protected me so vehemently. And at least once, twice, three times a day, she would say, “You’re the greatest thing, you’re the best thing, you’re the most amazing thing that ever happened to me!”
Jewell: Aw!
Hendricks: She would drill into my head that I was the best, in the most loving, non-arrogant way a mother could love a son. So “Malpractice” was about how I felt like I was overprotected. But then again, if it hadn’t been for my mom and dad telling me that I could be anything, I don’t know if I would have been able to get through middle school and high school and my own insecurities.
Zimmerman: What brings you joy?
Hendricks: Love. The fact that we are love as people. The fact that we can receive love and give love; it’s always our choice to be that essence, to be love. If we make that decision, it can’t be taken away from us. We can’t choose what happens to us, but we can always choose how we respond.
Zimmerman: That’s gorgeous.
Jewell: One question I have is about what happened with your pants.
Hendricks: Right. You know how people say—in refer- ence to a bad haircut—“I got into a fight with a pair of scissors and lost”? Well I actually got into a fight with a pair of pants and lost. Several months ago, an acci- dent with a pair of Lucky brand jeans put me back in
a wheelchair.
Jewell: Sounds like they weren’t very lucky!
(laughter)
Hendricks: That was the weekend of my grandmother’s funeral, so a lot of my cousins and extended family came from New Jersey to North Carolina for the ser- vices, and as sad as it was, I was excited to see all my family, and show them how well I was doing with walk- ing and all. So I got out the shower, and as I put on this pair of unlucky jeans, my knee popped out of place.
Several weeks later they took an MRI of my knee; it turned out that not only was it dislocated, but there were torn ligaments, bone damage and a couple other things that came out of nowhere. So unfortunately, my jeans won that round.
24 ABILITY