A broken body isn't a broken person

Cross-country skier Janine Shepherd hoped for an Olympic medal -- until she was hit by a truck during a training bike ride. She shares a powerful story about the human potential for recovery. Her message: you are not your body, and giving up old dreams can allow new ones to soar.

Life is about opportunities --
creating them and embracing them.

And for me, that was the Olympic dream.

That's what defined me. That was my bliss.

As a cross-country skier
and member of the Australian ski team

headed towards the Winter Olympics,

I was on a training bike ride
with my fellow teammates.

As we made our way up
towards the spectacular Blue Mountains

west of Sydney,

it was the perfect autumn day:

sunshine, the smell
of eucalypt and a dream.

Life was good.

We'd been on our bikes
for around five-and-a-half hours

when we got to the part
of the ride that I loved,

and that was the hills,
because I loved the hills.

I got up off the seat of my bike
and I started pumping my legs,

and as I sucked in the cold mountain air,
I could feel it burning my lungs,

and I looked up to see
the sun shining in my face.

And then everything went black.

Where was I? What was happening?

My body was consumed by pain.

I'd been hit by a speeding utility truck

with only 10 minutes
to go on the bike ride.

I was airlifted from the scene
of the accident by a rescue helicopter

to a large spinal unit in Sydney.

I had extensive
and life-threatening injuries.

I'd broken my neck
and my back in six places.

I broke five ribs on my left side.

I broke my right arm.
I broke my collarbone.

I broke some bones in my feet.

My whole right side was ripped open,
filled with gravel.

My head was cut open
across the front, lifted back,

exposing the skull underneath.

I had head injures.
I had internal injuries.

I had massive blood loss.

In fact, I lost
about five liters of blood,

which is all someone my size
would actually hold.

By the time the helicopter arrived
at Prince Henry Hospital in Sydney,

my blood pressure was 40 over nothing.

I was having a really bad day.

(Laughter)

For over 10 days, I drifted
between two dimensions.

I had an awareness of being in my body,

but also being out of my body,
somewhere else,

watching from above,
as if it was happening to someone else.

Why would I want to go back
to a body that was so broken?

But this voice kept calling me:

"Come on, stay with me."

"No, it's too hard."

"Come on. This is our opportunity."

"No. That body is broken.
It can no longer serve me."

"Come on. Stay with me. We can do it.
We can do it together."

I was at a crossroads.

I knew if I didn't return to my body,
I'd have to leave this world forever.

It was the fight of my life.

After 10 days, I made the decision
to return to my body.

And the internal bleeding stopped.

The next concern
was whether I would walk again,

because I was paralyzed
from the waist down.

They said to my parents
that the neck break was a stable fracture,

but the back was completely crushed:

the vertebra at L1
was like you'd dropped a peanut,

stepped on it, smashed it
into thousands of pieces.

They'd have to operate.

They went in. They put me on a beanbag.

They cut me -- literally cut me in half.

I have a scar that wraps
around my entire body.

They picked as much
broken bone as they could

that had lodged in my spinal cord.

They took out two of my broken ribs
and they rebuilt my back --

L1, they rebuilt it,
they took out another broken rib,

they fused T12, L1 and L2 together.

Then they stitched me up;
they took an entire hour to stitch me up.

I woke up in intensive care,

and the doctors were really excited
that the operation had been a success,

because at that stage,
I had a little bit of movement

in one of my big toes,

and I thought, "Great,
because I'm going to the Olympics!"

(Laughter)

I had no idea.

That's the sort of thing that happens
to someone else, not me, surely.

But then the doctor
came over to me and she said,

"Janine, the operation was a success,

and we've picked as much bone
out of your spinal cord as we could.

But the damage is permanent.

The central nervous system
nerves -- there is no cure.

You're what we call a partial paraplegic,

and you'll have all of the injuries
that go along with that.

You'll have no feeling
from the waist down,

and at most, you might get
10 or 20 percent return.

You'll have internal injuries
for the rest of your life.

You'll have to use a catheter
for the rest of your life.

And if you walk again, it will be
with calipers and a walking frame."

And then she said,

"Janine, you'll have to rethink
everything you do in your life,

because you're never going to be able
to do the things you did before."

(Gasps)

I tried to grasp what she was saying.

I was an athlete. That's all I knew.
That's all I'd done.

If I couldn't do that,
then what could I do?

And the question I asked myself is:

If I couldn't do that,

then who was I?

They moved me from intensive care
to acute spinal.

I was lying on a thin, hard spinal bed.

I had no movement in my legs.

I had tight stockings on
to protect from blood clots.

I had one arm in plaster,
one arm tied down by drips.

I had a neck brace and sandbags
on either side of my head

and I saw my world through a mirror

that was suspended above my head.

I shared the ward with five other people,

and the amazing thing is,

because we were all lying paralyzed
in a spinal ward,

we didn't know
what each other looked like.

How amazing is that?

How often in life do you get to make
friendships, judgment-free,

purely based on spirit?

And there were
no superficial conversations

as we shared our innermost
thoughts, our fears,

and our hopes for life
after the spinal ward.

I remember one night,
one of the nurses came in, Jonathan,

with a whole lot of plastic straws.

He put a pile on top
of each of us, and he said,

"Start threading them together."

Well, there wasn't much else to do
in the spinal ward, so we did.

(Laughter)

And when we'd finished,
he went around silently

and he joined all of the straws up
till it looped around the whole ward.

And then he said,

"OK everybody, hold on to your straws."

And we did. And he said, "Right ...

Now we're all connected."

And as we held on and we breathed as one,

we knew we weren't on this journey alone.

And even lying paralyzed
in the spinal ward ...

there were moments of incredible
depth and richness,

of authenticity and connection

that I had never experienced before.

And each of us knew
that when we left the spinal ward,

we would never be the same.

After six months, it was time to go home.

I remember Dad pushing me
outside in my wheelchair,

wrapped in a plaster body cast,

and feeling the sun on my face
for the first time.

I soaked it up and I thought,

"How could I ever
have taken this for granted?"

I felt so incredibly grateful for my life.

But before I left hospital,

the head nurse had said to me,
"Janine, I want you to be ready,

because when you get home,
something's going to happen."

And I said, "What?"

And she said, "You're going
to get depressed."

And I said, "Not me,
not Janine the Machine,"

which was my nickname.

She said, "You are, because,
see, it happens to everyone.

In the spinal ward, that's normal.
You're in a wheelchair. That's normal.

But you're going to get home
and realize how different life is."

And I got home.

And something happened.

I realized Sister Sam was right.

I did get depressed.

I was in my wheelchair.

I had no feeling from the waist down,

attached to a catheter bottle.

I couldn't walk.

I'd lost so much weight in hospital,

I now weighed about 80 pounds.

And I wanted to give up.

All I wanted to do was put my running
shoes on and run out the door.

I wanted my old life back.
I wanted my body back.

And I can remember
Mom sitting on the end of my bed

and saying, "I wonder if life
will ever be good again."

And I thought, "How could it?

Because I've lost
everything that I valued,

everything that I'd worked towards.

Gone."

And the question I asked was,
"Why me? Why me?"

And then I remembered

my friends that were still
in the spinal ward,

particularly Maria.

Maria was in a car accident,

and she woke up on her 16th birthday

to the news that she was
a complete quadriplegic,

had no movement from the neck down,

had damage to her vocal chords,
and she couldn't talk.

They told me, "We're going
to move you next to her

because we think it will be good for her."

I was worried. I didn't know
how I'd react to being next to her.

I knew it would be challenging,
but it was actually a blessing,

because Maria always smiled.

She was always happy,
and even when she began to talk again,

albeit difficult to understand,
she never complained, not once.

And I wondered how had she ever
found that level of acceptance.

And I realized
that this wasn't just my life;

it was life itself.

I realized that this wasn't just my pain;
it was everybody's pain.

And then I knew, just like before,

that I had a choice:
I could keep fighting this,

or I could let go
and accept not only my body,

but the circumstances of my life.

And then I stopped asking, "Why me?"

And I started to ask, "Why not me?"

And then I thought to myself,

maybe being at rock bottom
is actually the perfect place to start.

I had never before thought of myself
as a creative person.

I was an athlete; my body was a machine.

But now I was about to embark
on the most creative project

that any of us could ever do:

that of rebuilding a life.

And even though I had absolutely
no idea what I was going to do,

in that uncertainty came
a sense of freedom.

I was no longer tied to a set path.

I was free to explore
life's infinite possibilities.

And that realization
was about to change my life.

Sitting at home in my wheelchair
and my plaster body cast,

an airplane flew overhead.

I looked up, and I thought
to myself, "That's it!

If I can't walk,
then I might as well fly."

(Laughter)

I said, "Mom, I'm going
to learn how to fly."

She said, "That's nice, dear."

(Laughter)

I said, "Pass me the yellow pages."

She passed me the phone book,
I rang up the flying school,

I said I'd like to make a booking
to come out for a flight.

They said, "When do you want to come out?"

I said, "Well, I have to get a friend
to drive me because I can't drive.

Sort of can't walk, either.
Is that a problem?"

I made a booking, and weeks later,

my friend Chris and my mom
drove me out to the airport,

all 80 pounds of me covered
in a plaster body cast

in a baggy pair of overalls.

(Laughter)

I can tell you, I did not
look like the ideal candidate

to get a pilot's license.

(Laughter)

I'm holding on to the counter
because I can't stand.

I said, "Hi, I'm here
for a flying lesson."

They took one look and ran
out the back to draw short straws.

"You get her." "No, no, you take her."

Finally a guy goes, "Hi, I'm Andrew.
I'm going to take you flying."

I go, "Great!"

They get me out on the tarmac,

and there was this red, white and blue
airplane -- it was beautiful.

They had to slide me up on the wing
to put me in the cockpit.

They sat me down. There are buttons
and dials everywhere.

I'm going, "Wow, how do you ever know
what all these buttons and dials do?"

Andrew got in the front,
started the plane, and said,

"Would you like to have a go at taxiing?"

That's when you use your feet
to control the rudder pedals

to control the airplane on the ground.

I said, "No, I can't use my legs."

He went, "Oh."

I said, "But I can use
my hands," and he said, "OK."

So he got over to the runway,
and he applied the power.

And as we took off down the runway,

and the wheels lifted up off the tarmac,
and we became airborne,

I had the most incredible
sense of freedom.

And Andrew said to me,

as we got over the training area,

"You see that mountain over there?"

And I said, "Yeah."

And he said, "Well, you take the controls,
and you fly towards that mountain."

And as I looked up, I realized

that he was pointing
towards the Blue Mountains,

where the journey had begun.

And I took the controls,

and I was flying.

And I was a long, long way
from that spinal ward.

I knew right then
that I was going to be a pilot.

Didn't know how on Earth
I'd ever pass a medical.

(Laughter)

But I'd worry about that later,
because right now, I had a dream.

So I went home, I got a training
diary out, and I had a plan.

And I practiced my walking
as much as I could,

and I went from the point
of two people holding me up ...

to one person holding me up ...

to the point where I could
walk around the furniture

as long as it wasn't too far apart.

And then I made great progression,

to the point where I could walk
around the house,

holding onto the walls, like this.

And Mom said she was forever following me,

wiping off my fingerprints.

(Laughter)

But at least she always knew where I was.

(Laughter)

So while the doctors continued to operate

and put my body back together again,

I went on with my theory study.

And then eventually, amazingly,
I passed my pilot's medical,

and that was my green light to fly.

And I spent every moment I could
out at that flying school,

way out of my comfort zone,

all these young guys that wanted
to be Qantas pilots, you know,

and little old hop-along me
in first my plaster cast,

and then my steel brace,
my baggy overalls,

my bag of medication
and catheters and my limp.

They use to look at me and think,

"Oh, who is she kidding?
She's never going to be able to do this."

And sometimes I thought that, too.

But that didn't matter,

because now there was something
inside that burned

that far outweighed my injuries.

And little goals
kept me going along the way,

and eventually I got
my private pilot's license.

Then I learned to navigate,
and I flew my friends around Australia.

And then I learned to fly
an airplane with two engines

and I got my twin-engine rating.

And then I learned to fly in bad weather
as well as fine weather,

and got my instrument rating.

And then I got
my commercial pilot's license.

And then I got my instructor rating.

And then I found myself
back at that same school

where I'd gone for that very first flight,

teaching other people how to fly ...

just under 18 months
after I'd left the spinal ward.

(Applause)

(Applause ends)

And then I thought, "Why stop there?

Why not learn to fly upside down?"

(Laughter)

And I did, and I learned
to fly upside down

and became an aerobatics
flying instructor.

(Laughter)

And Mom and Dad? Never been up.

(Laughter)

But then I knew for certain
that although my body might be limited,

it was my spirit that was unstoppable.

The philosopher Lao Tzu once said,

"When you let go of what you are,

you become what you might be."

I now know that it wasn't until I let go
of who I thought I was

that I was able to create
a completely new life.

It wasn't until I let go
of the life I thought I should have ...

that I was able to embrace
the life that was waiting for me.

I now know that my real strength

never came from my body.

And although my physical capabilities
have changed dramatically,

who I am is unchanged.

The pilot light inside of me
was still alight,

just as it is in each and every one of us.

I know that I'm not my body.

And I also know that you're not yours.

And then it no longer matters
what you look like,

where you come from,
or what you do for a living.

All that matters is that we continue
to fan the flame of humanity

by living our lives
as the ultimate creative expression

of who we really are,

because we are all connected

by millions and millions of straws.

And it's time to join those up

and to hang on.

And if we are to move
towards our collective bliss ...

it's time we shed our focus
on the physical

and instead embrace
the virtues of the heart.

So raise your straws if you'll join me.

(Applause)

Thank you.

(Applause)

Thank you.

(Applause)