Tom Brennan Speech Trial Assessment

There is more to life than just physically growing up; it’s about the experiences we gain from them and how we mature from these experiences. It makes us mature and has definitely taught me a thing or two and what I’ve learnt is, our lives are defined by our choices and the pathways we choose to take. They might be good or they might be bad. My name is Tom Brennan and I’ve just been through so much this past year and I’m here to talk to you guys about it because I’ve been told talking about it helps. Last year my brother, Daniel, was in a drink driving accident in which he played a big part of and resulted in the loss of 2 lives. It led to a major up haul of changes in our life. It caused our whole family to be driven out of town, forcing us to move in with my Grandmother, Daniel was sent to prison, some 3000 kms away and the family was a complete wreck, especially the folks. And what about me? I was completely stuck in the past, relieving the memories in my head, thinking I could have done something to change the events of that night. It wasn’t until recently that I started running with my Uncle Brendan; it was a real turning point. As we ran up this massive hill, in which we called the ‘ascent’, I started to tackle my problems and the mountain as well, but at the same time, I got over the accident and everything that tied me to it. Guilt had been my most destructive emotion, it disabled me from having any hope of moving forward in my life but having my dad and Uncle Brendan there to help me really made a difference and I’m starting to really accept people’s assistance in life nowadays. Brendan had a talk with me about moving on with my life and it really helped. Not only that, but he offered to take me to Nepal, well more like force fed it through Chrissy, anyways it was a real push in the right direction. Gave me something to look forward to and boy, was it hard. The training had somewhat doubled; it was like I was training to enter a whole