Brad Pitzele · Founder, One Thousand Roads
My Story
There were a couple of promises I made that changed my life. The first one was to my oldest daughter.
When my daughter was born, it was a very spiritual moment for me. She locked eyes with me in the delivery room and I felt seen in a way I have never experienced before or since.
She also came with some other surprises. She had a hole in her tiny heart the size of a quarter, and she had Down syndrome.
While still in the hospital, a nurse told me about the laws that limited what people with disabilities could earn and save for the rest of her life. It didn't seem fair to me that this newborn girl was having doors slammed in her face. I looked at her beautiful eyes and made her a promise we were going to change the law. It was a highly emotional time in my life, and I made an audacious promise I had no right making.
The first several years of her life were filled with surgeries, hospitalizations, and health scares. But she always pulled through with a zest for life that was infectious. She taught me so much.
When she was six years old, I fulfilled my promise. She pushed the button on the floor of the House of Representatives that passed the ABLE Act — the most significant disability legislation since the Americans with Disabilities Act. I watched from the gallery with tears running down my face, thinking about every step it took to get there.
White House ADA anniversary with President Biden
With House Leader Kevin McCarthy at the Capitol
With Senator Bob Dole
What I didn't tell anyone in that gallery was that I could barely walk I was so sick.
For years, while I was fighting for my daughter, my own body was failing. Autoimmunity. Arthritis. Melanoma. And then a Lyme disease and co-infection diagnosis that explained everything — and came far too late.
At my lowest point, a doctor told me the best he could offer was hope. I sat in my truck after that appointment and realized no doctor could save me. If something was going to change, it had to start with me.
40th birthday — at my lowest point.
As I researched, I discovered that dysfunctional cellular energy production was at the root of almost everything I was experiencing. The protocol I built around that discovery eventually gave me my life back.
When I was at my darkest, I made myself a second promise. If I ever made it out of the hole I was in, I would pay it forward — one thousand times.
That became the seed of One Thousand Roads. The name pays homage to the many roads people take back to their own health and vibrancy. The goal was to create the company I needed in those dark times, and to make those tools accessible to the people who need them.
Life has taught me that the journey is often more important than the destination, and that the meaning we draw from our experiences matters more than the experiences themselves. Healing has taught me that what is in our heart is as important as any protocol or anything we put in our bodies.
Sometimes life's lessons are hard. But I hope I never stop learning.
