Legless acrobat and aerialist will speak at Lindenwood-Belleville

If you want to see Jen Bricker flip out, tell her she can’t do something.

Born without legs, she has spent the last 28 years proving to the world and herself, that yes, Jen can do anything.

“I never felt handicapped,” Jen said in a telephone interview from her childhood home in Hardinville. “My family and friends set the tone. They tell you you can do anything and you believe it. That’s a huge advantage.”

“Can’t” is not in her vocabulary. “It’s a mindset. If I wanted to do something, we’d figure out how to make it work for me and just did it.”

An Illinois state champion tumbler at age 11, Jen now lives independently in a Los Angeles apartment when she’s not traveling the world doing acrobatic and aerialist performances. She has traveled internationally with the Britney Spears World Tour and appeared as the headliner at the Palazzo hotel in Las Vegas and the Shangri La hotel in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. She will tell her amazing story Thursday evening as part of Lindenwood University’s Belleville Speaker Series.

“The past two years have been completely insane,” said Jen, whose work has taken her to 100 countries. “I’ve only been in Los Angeles for maybe three months.”

She has had a long line of prostheses since she was 6 months old, but she prefers to get around by using her hands and swinging her body. Sometimes she uses a wheelchair for convenience — “and it keeps you from getting dirty.”

She still has the specially equipped Pontiac Grand Am she started driving when she was 15. “But I’m thinking of getting a Prius or a BMW — complete opposites,” she said.

Jen has come a long way since a rare birth defect, a uterine band, prevented blood from reaching her lower limbs. She was abandoned by her biological mother at the hospital after she was born on Oct. 1, 1987.

At just 3 months, she was adopted by Gerald and Sharon Bricker. Gerald, then 42, and Sharon, 39, were already raising three sons in Hardinville, a small Illinois town (population 80) 120 miles east-northeast of Belleville.

Jen was born with “flippers” at her hips. They were removed when she was 2. A bone was removed from her hip when she was 4.

But she didn’t let anything slow her childhood development. She pulled herself up in her crib and crawled before she was a year old. She soon learned to move around on her hands, scooting and swinging her body. Her family made the 300-mile round trip to Shriners Hospital in St. Louis many times over the years for a series of prosthetics, but she wore her “legs” only for special occasions. They slowed her down.

Jen taught herself to swim and dive in the family’s 3-foot-deep backyard pool. At 6, she learned to roller skate on her hands. She played on a softball team when she was 7, and took up tumbling at 10, learning to do flips with her dad on the backyard trampoline.

She was inspired to become a gymnast while watching her childhood idol, Romanian American gymnast Dominique Moceanu perform on TV with the Olympic Gold medal-winning 1996 U.S. Women’s Gymnastics Team.

Jen won the Illinois state tumbling title at age 11, and took fourth place in the Amateur Athletic Union’s Junior Olympics.

“I always got good grades, too,” she said. But at 19, “I realized I wanted to go into performance arts instead of college.”

Jen became curious about her biological parents when she was 16.

That’s when Sharon gave her the most amazing surprise of all. Jen’s sister is none other than her childhood idol, gymnast Dominique Moceanu.

“It was something that only happens in the movies. This can’t be real.”

But it is. Now Jen, Dominique, who lives in Cleveland, and her other biological sister, Christina, who lives in Houston, are good friends. “It’s so great having sisters.”

Jen said her speaking and performing engagements are always different, depending on the time allowed and the location. In Belleville, she said, she will probably have a 15-minute video introduction and then speak about her life.

She has also written a book, “Everything Is Possible,” with her team. It will be released in September. To order the book, go to http://jenbricker.com/jens-new-book-everything-is-possible/

This story was originally published April 6, 2016 at 10:50 AM with the headline "Legless acrobat and aerialist will speak at Lindenwood-Belleville."