WEBVTT

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

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And for me, that was the Olympic dream.

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

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

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headed towards the Winter Olympics,

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

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As we made our way up
towards the spectacular Blue Mountains

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west of Sydney,

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it was the perfect autumn day:

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sunshine, the smell
of eucalypt and a dream.

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Life was good.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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And then everything went black.

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Where was I? What was happening?

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My body was consumed by pain.

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I'd been hit by a speeding utility truck

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with only 10 minutes
to go on the bike ride.

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

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to a large spinal unit in Sydney.

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I had extensive
and life-threatening injuries.

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

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I broke five ribs on my left side.

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I broke my right arm.
I broke my collarbone.

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I broke some bones in my feet.

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

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

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exposing the skull underneath.

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I had head injures.
I had internal injuries.

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I had massive blood loss.

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In fact, I lost
about five liters of blood,

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which is all someone my size
would actually hold.

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

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my blood pressure was 40 over nothing.

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I was having a really bad day.

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(Laughter)

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For over 10 days, I drifted
between two dimensions.

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I had an awareness of being in my body,

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but also being out of my body,
somewhere else,

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

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

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But this voice kept calling me:

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"Come on, stay with me."

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"No, it's too hard."

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"Come on. This is our opportunity."

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

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

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I was at a crossroads.

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

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It was the fight of my life.

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

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And the internal bleeding stopped.

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The next concern
was whether I would walk again,

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because I was paralyzed
from the waist down.

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

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but the back was completely crushed:

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

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stepped on it, smashed it
into thousands of pieces.

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They'd have to operate.

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They went in. They put me on a beanbag.

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They cut me -- literally cut me in half.

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I have a scar that wraps
around my entire body.

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They picked as much
broken bone as they could

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that had lodged in my spinal cord.

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

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

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they fused T12, L1 and L2 together.

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

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I woke up in intensive care,

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

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

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in one of my big toes,

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

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(Laughter)

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I had no idea.

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

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

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"Janine, the operation was a success,

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

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But the damage is permanent.

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

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You're what we call a partial paraplegic,

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

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You'll have no feeling
from the waist down,

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

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

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

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

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And then she said,

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

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

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(Gasps)

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I tried to grasp what she was saying.

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

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

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And the question I asked myself is:

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If I couldn't do that,

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then who was I?

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They moved me from intensive care
to acute spinal.

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I was lying on a thin, hard spinal bed.

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I had no movement in my legs.

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I had tight stockings on
to protect from blood clots.

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

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

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and I saw my world through a mirror

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that was suspended above my head.

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I shared the ward with five other people,

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and the amazing thing is,

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because we were all lying paralyzed
in a spinal ward,

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we didn't know
what each other looked like.

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How amazing is that?

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

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purely based on spirit?

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And there were
no superficial conversations

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as we shared our innermost
thoughts, our fears,

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and our hopes for life
after the spinal ward.

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

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with a whole lot of plastic straws.

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

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"Start threading them together."

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

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(Laughter)

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And when we'd finished,
he went around silently

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

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And then he said,

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"OK everybody, hold on to your straws."

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

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Now we're all connected."

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And as we held on and we breathed as one,

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we knew we weren't on this journey alone.

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And even lying paralyzed
in the spinal ward ...

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there were moments of incredible
depth and richness,

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of authenticity and connection

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that I had never experienced before.

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

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we would never be the same.

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After six months, it was time to go home.

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I remember Dad pushing me
outside in my wheelchair,

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wrapped in a plaster body cast,

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

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I soaked it up and I thought,

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

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I felt so incredibly grateful for my life.

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But before I left hospital,

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

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

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And I said, "What?"

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

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

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which was my nickname.

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

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

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

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And I got home.

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And something happened.

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I realized Sister Sam was right.

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I did get depressed.

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I was in my wheelchair.

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I had no feeling from the waist down,

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attached to a catheter bottle.

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I couldn't walk.

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I'd lost so much weight in hospital,

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I now weighed about 80 pounds.

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And I wanted to give up.

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

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

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

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

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And I thought, "How could it?

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Because I've lost
everything that I valued,

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everything that I'd worked towards.

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Gone."

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

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And then I remembered

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my friends that were still
in the spinal ward,

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particularly Maria.

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Maria was in a car accident,

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and she woke up on her 16th birthday

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to the news that she was
a complete quadriplegic,

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had no movement from the neck down,

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

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

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because we think it will be good for her."

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

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

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because Maria always smiled.

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

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

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

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

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it was life itself.

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

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And then I knew, just like before,

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

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

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but the circumstances of my life.

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And then I stopped asking, "Why me?"

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

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And then I thought to myself,

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

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

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I was an athlete; my body was a machine.

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

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that any of us could ever do:

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that of rebuilding a life.

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

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in that uncertainty came
a sense of freedom.

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I was no longer tied to a set path.

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I was free to explore
life's infinite possibilities.

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And that realization
was about to change my life.

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

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an airplane flew overhead.

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

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

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(Laughter)

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

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

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(Laughter)

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I said, "Pass me the yellow pages."

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

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

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

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

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

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I made a booking, and weeks later,

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

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all 80 pounds of me covered
in a plaster body cast

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in a baggy pair of overalls.

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(Laughter)

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

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to get a pilot's license.

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(Laughter)

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

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

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

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

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

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I go, "Great!"

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They get me out on the tarmac,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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to control the airplane on the ground.

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

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He went, "Oh."

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

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

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And as we took off down the runway,

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

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I had the most incredible
sense of freedom.

00:13:15.665 --> 00:13:17.212
And Andrew said to me,

00:13:18.237 --> 00:13:20.093
as we got over the training area,

00:13:20.974 --> 00:13:22.888
"You see that mountain over there?"

00:13:23.250 --> 00:13:24.793
And I said, "Yeah."

00:13:24.817 --> 00:13:29.294
And he said, "Well, you take the controls,
and you fly towards that mountain."

00:13:29.318 --> 00:13:31.777
And as I looked up, I realized

00:13:31.801 --> 00:13:35.242
that he was pointing
towards the Blue Mountains,

00:13:35.266 --> 00:13:36.969
where the journey had begun.

00:13:38.496 --> 00:13:40.075
And I took the controls,

00:13:40.899 --> 00:13:42.342
and I was flying.

00:13:42.978 --> 00:13:45.916
And I was a long, long way
from that spinal ward.

00:13:45.940 --> 00:13:48.531
I knew right then
that I was going to be a pilot.

00:13:49.713 --> 00:13:52.345
Didn't know how on Earth
I'd ever pass a medical.

NOTE Paragraph

00:13:52.369 --> 00:13:53.479
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:13:53.503 --> 00:13:56.758
But I'd worry about that later,
because right now, I had a dream.

00:13:56.782 --> 00:14:00.156
So I went home, I got a training
diary out, and I had a plan.

00:14:01.084 --> 00:14:03.803
And I practiced my walking
as much as I could,

00:14:03.827 --> 00:14:06.523
and I went from the point
of two people holding me up ...

00:14:07.573 --> 00:14:09.134
to one person holding me up ...

00:14:09.970 --> 00:14:12.438
to the point where I could
walk around the furniture

00:14:12.462 --> 00:14:14.197
as long as it wasn't too far apart.

00:14:14.221 --> 00:14:15.958
And then I made great progression,

00:14:15.982 --> 00:14:18.268
to the point where I could walk
around the house,

00:14:18.292 --> 00:14:19.982
holding onto the walls, like this.

00:14:20.425 --> 00:14:22.656
And Mom said she was forever following me,

00:14:22.680 --> 00:14:24.179
wiping off my fingerprints.

NOTE Paragraph

00:14:24.203 --> 00:14:26.552
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:14:26.576 --> 00:14:28.716
But at least she always knew where I was.

NOTE Paragraph

00:14:28.740 --> 00:14:30.818
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:14:30.842 --> 00:14:33.315
So while the doctors continued to operate

00:14:33.339 --> 00:14:35.391
and put my body back together again,

00:14:35.415 --> 00:14:37.236
I went on with my theory study.

00:14:38.069 --> 00:14:42.395
And then eventually, amazingly,
I passed my pilot's medical,

00:14:42.419 --> 00:14:44.627
and that was my green light to fly.

00:14:44.651 --> 00:14:47.469
And I spent every moment I could
out at that flying school,

00:14:47.493 --> 00:14:49.047
way out of my comfort zone,

00:14:49.071 --> 00:14:52.142
all these young guys that wanted
to be Qantas pilots, you know,

00:14:52.166 --> 00:14:55.095
and little old hop-along me
in first my plaster cast,

00:14:55.119 --> 00:14:57.594
and then my steel brace,
my baggy overalls,

00:14:57.618 --> 00:15:01.194
my bag of medication
and catheters and my limp.

00:15:01.218 --> 00:15:02.832
They use to look at me and think,

00:15:02.856 --> 00:15:06.134
"Oh, who is she kidding?
She's never going to be able to do this."

00:15:06.158 --> 00:15:07.942
And sometimes I thought that, too.

00:15:07.966 --> 00:15:09.569
But that didn't matter,

00:15:09.593 --> 00:15:12.375
because now there was something
inside that burned

00:15:12.399 --> 00:15:15.415
that far outweighed my injuries.

NOTE Paragraph

00:15:16.431 --> 00:15:18.721
And little goals
kept me going along the way,

00:15:18.745 --> 00:15:21.619
and eventually I got
my private pilot's license.

00:15:22.222 --> 00:15:26.407
Then I learned to navigate,
and I flew my friends around Australia.

00:15:27.352 --> 00:15:30.303
And then I learned to fly
an airplane with two engines

00:15:30.327 --> 00:15:32.129
and I got my twin-engine rating.

00:15:32.746 --> 00:15:36.056
And then I learned to fly in bad weather
as well as fine weather,

00:15:36.080 --> 00:15:37.879
and got my instrument rating.

00:15:38.569 --> 00:15:41.236
And then I got
my commercial pilot's license.

00:15:41.260 --> 00:15:43.488
And then I got my instructor rating.

00:15:44.298 --> 00:15:47.158
And then I found myself
back at that same school

00:15:47.182 --> 00:15:49.650
where I'd gone for that very first flight,

00:15:49.674 --> 00:15:51.554
teaching other people how to fly ...

00:15:52.678 --> 00:15:56.792
just under 18 months
after I'd left the spinal ward.

NOTE Paragraph

00:15:56.816 --> 00:16:03.816
(Applause)

NOTE Paragraph

00:16:06.579 --> 00:16:08.634
(Applause ends)

NOTE Paragraph

00:16:08.658 --> 00:16:10.661
And then I thought, "Why stop there?

00:16:10.685 --> 00:16:12.707
Why not learn to fly upside down?"

NOTE Paragraph

00:16:12.731 --> 00:16:13.833
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:16:13.857 --> 00:16:16.643
And I did, and I learned
to fly upside down

00:16:16.667 --> 00:16:18.992
and became an aerobatics
flying instructor.

NOTE Paragraph

00:16:19.016 --> 00:16:20.864
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:16:20.888 --> 00:16:23.871
And Mom and Dad? Never been up.

NOTE Paragraph

00:16:23.895 --> 00:16:27.363
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:16:27.387 --> 00:16:32.616
But then I knew for certain
that although my body might be limited,

00:16:32.640 --> 00:16:35.402
it was my spirit that was unstoppable.

NOTE Paragraph

00:16:38.420 --> 00:16:40.759
The philosopher Lao Tzu once said,

00:16:41.743 --> 00:16:43.742
"When you let go of what you are,

00:16:43.766 --> 00:16:46.251
you become what you might be."

00:16:47.197 --> 00:16:52.473
I now know that it wasn't until I let go
of who I thought I was

00:16:52.497 --> 00:16:55.581
that I was able to create
a completely new life.

00:16:56.480 --> 00:17:00.718
It wasn't until I let go
of the life I thought I should have ...

00:17:01.861 --> 00:17:04.866
that I was able to embrace
the life that was waiting for me.

00:17:06.272 --> 00:17:08.921
I now know that my real strength

00:17:08.945 --> 00:17:11.007
never came from my body.

00:17:12.341 --> 00:17:17.240
And although my physical capabilities
have changed dramatically,

00:17:17.264 --> 00:17:20.303
who I am is unchanged.

00:17:21.415 --> 00:17:25.267
The pilot light inside of me
was still alight,

00:17:25.291 --> 00:17:28.171
just as it is in each and every one of us.

NOTE Paragraph

00:17:30.262 --> 00:17:32.062
I know that I'm not my body.

00:17:33.244 --> 00:17:35.637
And I also know that you're not yours.

00:17:36.812 --> 00:17:40.966
And then it no longer matters
what you look like,

00:17:40.990 --> 00:17:44.461
where you come from,
or what you do for a living.

00:17:45.397 --> 00:17:51.081
All that matters is that we continue
to fan the flame of humanity

00:17:51.105 --> 00:17:55.035
by living our lives
as the ultimate creative expression

00:17:55.059 --> 00:17:57.132
of who we really are,

00:17:58.607 --> 00:18:00.677
because we are all connected

00:18:01.324 --> 00:18:04.226
by millions and millions of straws.

00:18:06.059 --> 00:18:08.832
And it's time to join those up

00:18:08.856 --> 00:18:10.175
and to hang on.

00:18:10.901 --> 00:18:14.139
And if we are to move
towards our collective bliss ...

00:18:15.155 --> 00:18:17.711
it's time we shed our focus
on the physical

00:18:17.735 --> 00:18:21.097
and instead embrace
the virtues of the heart.

NOTE Paragraph

00:18:21.121 --> 00:18:23.849
So raise your straws if you'll join me.

NOTE Paragraph

00:18:24.704 --> 00:18:25.854
(Applause)

NOTE Paragraph

00:18:25.878 --> 00:18:27.039
Thank you.

NOTE Paragraph

00:18:27.063 --> 00:18:32.110
(Applause)

NOTE Paragraph

00:18:32.134 --> 00:18:33.460
Thank you.

NOTE Paragraph

00:18:33.484 --> 00:18:37.230
(Applause)