When John Battles was just 13, he met a friend who, like him, lived with a physical disability. One afternoon, he invited the boy to explore the woods behind his house. They never made it past the doorstep. Hovering with fear, the boy's mother panicked, terrified he might get hurt. "That was the last time I was ever invited over," Battles recalls. "His parents didn't want him to achieve anything because they were afraid he'd be hurt."
That moment crystallized something for Battles that would shape his personal and professional life: the belief that limitations, whether physical, emotional, or societal, should never define potential.
