Life Ignited: A Hopeful Journey, Sparked by Fire

By Connor McKemey

In a split second, Connor McKemey went from being an active, athletic thirteen-year-old whose life revolved around school, sports, and family, to being engulfed in flames from a propane tank explosion in his backyard. Passing out in the ambulance, he woke up three months later to discover that 90 percent of his body had been bur

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing
• Release date: May 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9781544539775

Connor McKemey

Connor McKemey is a motivational speaker, mentor, and coach who openly shares his true-life story of being a burn survivor to inspire others to live their best life. His burn scars remind him that he's a survivor, not a victim, and he takes this message on the road to show others they, too, can overcome their mental, physical, and emotional scars to discover what's possible. Unabashedly real and unflinchingly optimistic, McKemey launched his own business, MAC Mentality, dedicated to helping people create resilience so they can thrive against adversity.

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Copyright © 2023 Connor McKemey

All rights reserved.

Life Ignited

A Hopeful Journey, Sparked by Fire

First Edition

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Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1

All In

Chapter 2

Pause Play

Chapter 3

Reset

Chapter 4

Time Out

Chapter 5

Rebound

Chapter 6

Starting Over

Chapter 7

Comeback Kid

Chapter 8

Game Changers

Chapter 9

Team Building

Chapter 10

Next Level

Chapter 11

Going Pro

Chapter 12

The Playbook

Chapter 13

Away Games

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

It takes three things to keep a fire burning; oxygen, heat, and fuel. This book is for all of those who keep my fire burning, each and every day. To those who give me the oxygen to breathe, allowing me to expand and grow. Then those who provide the heat, to keep me warm when times are cold. And finally, to those of you who are the fuel that keeps this fire alive. Without you there would be nothing left to burn. A fire can not survive without each of these elements and this flame will continue to burn bright, because of the people in my life.

Stay Lit,

C MAC

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Introduction

I’d like to ask you to imagine a normal day in your life. This morning, for instance. You probably got dressed, brushed your teeth, and combed your hair. Maybe you slipped on your shoes and walked to your car, then drove to a friend’s house. Or school. Or the office. Just like you do every day.

Now, close your eyes for thirty seconds.

When you open them, I want you to imagine all of that is gone. The life you were accustomed to, your daily routine, is gone. You can’t go to a friend’s house. You can’t drive. Or put on your shoes. Or even hold a toothbrush. Life as you knew it is simply over.

That’s what it felt like to me fourteen years ago, when I shut my eyes in my backyard. I acted on instinct, trying to protect myself from an explosion that seemed to come from nowhere. It didn’t work; when I opened them, nothing was the same. I wasn’t in the backyard; I was in a strange place with strange smells and sounds, and I was completely immobile, unable to do any of the things I could do before.

Now, imagine if that happened to you. What would you do next? How would you face the challenges ahead of you? You may never end up in a burn ward in a strange city several hours from your home, as I did, but at some point in your life, you will face a crisis, physical or otherwise. Your world may feel like it’s ending.

My story isn’t an easy one. I was healthy, and then I was not. I was active, and then I was not. I was normal, and then I was not. The world as I knew it, which had been full of life and light, was extinguished. It had, in every sense of the meaning, blown up, leaving me in darkness with very little hope.

But then I was able to see beyond that black hole of desperation and find a way to slowly, bit by bit, piece my life back together. It wasn’t easy. In the following pages, I’ll share some of my experiences, providing an unflinching look at the ups and downs that brought me to this point. My intention is to show that there is an inextinguishable light inside of every one of us.

Sometimes all it takes to blaze a trail is to stop fearing the spark that starts it all.

Chapter 1

All In

You could never keep me on the bench. I always wanted to play.

Even as a young kid—three, four years old—I always had to be in on the action, a ball in my hands. If my older brother, Tripp, was outside playing football with his friends, you can bet I was right there with them. It didn’t matter that they were two years older than me, had been playing together for years, and had no intention of going easy on the younger guy. There was just no way I could sit by and watch. I had to be out there.

Out there could have been in our driveway, where my older brother, my younger brother Quinn, and I played basketball, or on the lawn, where neighborhood kids would have snowball fights, games of tag, or anything else we could make up. Most of the time, it was the big park right up the street from our house in Tega Cay, South Carolina. After school, that was the place to be, and we all knew it. We’d show up on our bikes and pick a game, choose teams, and play.

We played soccer, football, anything we wanted, any way we wanted. There were no coaches, no referees, and no parents—just kids being kids, making up the rules as we went. Of course, it always seemed that the rules benefited my older brother, and there would be the occasional shoving match, but we figured it out on our own. We had to because if we didn’t, who would we play with the next day?

People hear me talking about how great it was in the old days, and they laugh—I’m still in my twenties, so it wasn’t that long ago. But things were different. We were never inside, on a computer, or on our phones. We didn’t have phones at all!

And I’m glad. I can honestly say that my fondest memories are the pickup games that nobody ever saw. As much as I appreciate the discipline and focus I learned from playing in leagues later on, and the cheer of the crowd when our team scored, what I remember most is how much fun it was when it was just us. Coming home covered in grass stains, with scraped knees and bloody noses. We had an absolute blast out there.

We also grew up out there—I know I did. Growing up competitive, always trying to keep up with Tripp and his friends, who were either bigger, stronger, or faster than me, made me work harder. So what if I was getting beat up on a daily basis? I did not enjoy losing, so my only choice was to get better. The competition fueled me to work harder and perform better.

By the time I got to middle school, I’d gained some confidence. I never felt like I was the absolute best player in any sport, but I’d held my own with the big boys, so I knew I’d be fine playing with kids my own age.

When I started doing organized sports, I was all in. I went to some kind of practice every single day: the day football ended, basketball started. When basketball wrapped up, I was on to lacrosse. It was routine, and it was all I knew.

There was a time I couldn’t imagine having a favorite sport—if there was a ball involved, I was chasing it—but the first time I played lacrosse, I was addicted. It felt like the perfect combination of all the sports I’d been playing my whole life: soccer, basketball, football. It’s hard to see the similarities if you’re just watching, but on the field, you realize lacrosse has it all. Offensive and defensive plays are set up just like in basketball, physical contact is a big part of the game like football, and players use the space—the field—very much like soccer players do.

Lacrosse was a game that you didn’t see being played much in the south, if at all, but with the installation of a bounce back at the end of our driveway and my brothers as ever-ready opponents, it became our passion. I’m not sure running around with sticks whacking at each other was what my parents had in mind when they initially introduced us to the game—and I’m pretty positive the side of our neighbor’s house took the brunt of our early attempts at scoring—but everything I had learned in sports up to that point came together in this perfect blend. Soon, lacrosse took over my life.

My middle school didn’t have a lacrosse team, but I was determined to play, so I played locally on a select travel team called the Cyclones. We were good, and we knew it. So did kids from the other teams—so much so that they would see our uniforms and think either, Oh no, not these guys or Let’s see how good they really are. Either way, we never gave them the satisfaction of getting to us.

Most of us had been playing on the same team or teams since elementary school, so we had a natural chemistry. In fact, over my bed at my parents’ home, I still have a picture from the North Carolina All-Star game we played after my senior year of high school. Many of my teammates were those same ones from that middle school team.

But the biggest competition I faced during middle school came not from playing against other teams, but from battling for playtime on our own team. The best athletes will tell you that the biggest fear you should ever have is being comfortable, and I learned that with the Cyclones. We had fun, but we each knew that everyone else on the team was at least as good as we were. And we understood what that meant: if you had two bad days of practice, you would lose your position and have to fight twice as hard to get it back.

In my memory, that first season of lacrosse is bathed in the warm glow of nostalgia, but in reality, it was a tough game to play, physically. I got hit really hard a few times. Of course, that wasn’t anything new—I’d been knocked down by my older brother and his friends hundreds of times. Each time, I got back up, and that persistence was rewarded when I scored against kids who were three or four years older than me. I got my ass beat many times but just as often held my own.

Then again, I was never the best player out there. I loved playing—no matter the sport, no matter the position—but in lacrosse, I was usually the guy surveying the field with the ball in my stick, taking my time to make the right passes. I realized that I was naturally a strategist. I might not ever be a star, but I could make a difference for the whole team.

I started looking at my role in sports a little differently from then on. When football season came around, I set my sights on being the quarterback, not for the glory of it but because I recognized it was a leadership position. I wanted to support other players as much as they supported me.

I’m not certain where this service mentality came from, but I probably soaked up a lot of it just from growing up with hard-working parents. My dad was in the Navy, and my mom was a teacher at our local high school. They worked hard, served others, and still always came home with a smile. As kids, we saw that every day—their dedication instilled a strong work ethic in all of us.

And our parents kept us humble. They let us fail and learn from our failures; they didn’t let us wallow in self-pity. Even if we had a bad game day, they wouldn’t let us feel sorry for ourselves. Instead of commiserating,