I love the smell of rain, and I love the sound of the ocean waves.
Amy Purdy
If your life were a book and you were the author, how would you want your story to go? That's the question that changed my life forever.
I feel that losing both my legs was a blessing. It was meant to happen to me: I wouldn't have had the opportunity to touch so many lives in such a positive way.
If we can see past preconceived limitations, then the possibilities are endless.
If you want something bad enough and you work hard enough, anything's possible.
Just because I've got two prosthetic legs, yeah, I had to adapt in ways, but I've also become a lot stronger. It doesn't mean I'm at any disadvantage, really.
We all have challenges. You can let them be obstacles or roadblocks, or you can use them.
My motivation is not to try to inspire, but rather to do things that inspire me and hopefully that will spread to others.
My legs haven't disabled me. If anything, they've enabled me.
I kind of had to figure stuff out on my own and get myself snowboarding competitively again. I went through all types of different legs to try to learn which were going to work for me. Luckily, I was able to figure it out.
I have two prosthetic legs. This is my life; what am I going to do with it? And it's put me on this amazing journey. I can look back and be completely grateful and say I would never want to change anything.
Yes, there are things that I can't change, but the things I can, I'm going to do everything in my power to work very hard through them and come out stronger on the other side.
I was 19 years old, and I felt like I had the flu one day. Within 24 hours, I was in the hospital on life support, and I was given less than a 2 percent chance of living. It took five days for the doctors to find out that I had contracted bacterial meningitis.
Dancers know how to move their arms and their hands. But I don't know the first thing about how to move my arms and hands gracefully.
You can't even imagine the feeling you get when someone tells you that you are about to lose your legs.
There are no rules in snowboarding.
In snowboarding, I've always looked at really strong competitors through a lens of gratitude rather than envy in the sense that the better my competition is, the more it forces me to work hard, focus, and be better myself if I want to succeed, which I do.
I grew up born and raised in Las Vegas and actually grew up skiing. You know, we've got some ski resorts close to Las Vegas, up in Mount Charleston or Brian Head, so I grew up skiing and snowboarding.
When you are truly you and share who you are with the world and be confident in who you are, it doesn't matter what size you are. It doesn't matter what your different body parts look like.
I can't really say I miss my toes.
There are plenty of people who have legs who are way more disabled than me.
In my dreams, whatever I am doing, I look down to see if I have prosthetics. It sets my time frame in my dream, I think. I'd have these dreams that I am running and launching myself, and I look down and see that I have prosthetics. I have a lot of those, where I do great, amazing things with my prosthetics.
If you believe that you can't do something, then you're not going to do it. If you believe you can, and you're willing to put in the effort and figure out a way to do it, then the majority of the time, you can.
Of course, I was 19 years old, and I suddenly lost my legs. It was extremely traumatic at the time, but I'm so beyond that. I've done so much with my life.
All through high school, I was incredibly healthy. I loved the outdoors, and I loved snowboarding because of the freedom.
Oprah has been a true inspiration to me, so I'm truly grateful both to her for taking the time to speak with me, and to the folks at 'DWTS' who set it all up.
I didn't think about money or cars or anything like that.
The human foot has bones and muscles and can balance back and forth. If you step and you maybe make a little mistake, your foot can compensate. But if I step in the wrong spot, my foot isn't going to compensate because it's just one piece of carbon fiber.
After I lost my legs, all I wanted to do was snowboard again. I remember spending an entire year on the computer, looking for 'adaptive snowboarders' or 'snowboard legs' or 'adaptive snowboard schools' or just something that I could connect to. I already knew how to snowboard - I just needed to find the right legs.
After I lost my legs, I got invited to my old high school, and I shared my stories with all the classes. I remember I was so nervous and didn't know where to start, but I knew I had information they could take away.
My spleen burst. I remember feeling my heart beating really fast. Beating right out of my chest.
We did everything we could to save my legs, and it just came to a point where if we didn't amputate my legs, I wouldn't survive. In that situation, you kind of go into survival mode, and you find strength.
Every day that I am healthy, I want to use that day to its fullest now.
Pfizer's actually teamed up with my nonprofit organization, which is called Adaptive Action Sports. I cofounded this organization in 2005 to help people with physical disabilities get involved in action sports, go snowboarding, skateboarding.
I lost the life that I knew, and I really had to rethink my future and think about my core values and the things that I love, and my passion, and that's really what helped me move forward. Also, for me just being grateful for what I had in my life versus on focusing on what I was losing, that really helped as well.
I've always been driven, and I like the creative aspect of figuring things out.
You don't always have to have the most amazing story. It's learning to share the story you have that counts.
I want to go to dinner with Oprah! Who doesn't?
It's when I compare myself to what other people are able to do that I run into trouble. It is a bummer. I just constantly try to put things into perspective.
When disease took my legs, I eventually realized I didn't need them to lead a full, empowering life.
For me, a bad day is when I have nothing going on.
My dad had given my sister and I our starter car, a red, old 1985 Chevy Blazer. It was so beat up, the taillights would fall off, and we would use red duct tape.
My dad gave me one of his kidneys.
Road trips to me are just such an escape. You listen to your music, and you roll the windows down. You're usually going to somewhere fun.
Taking off your clothes is one thing. Taking off your clothes and your legs is an entirely different matter.
I've learned that borders are where the actual ends, but also where the imagination and the story begins.
Dancing is about expressing yourself, and the more walls you let down, the better.
Since losing my legs, I've found out that I am able to help other people by sharing how I've overcome my obstacles.
What's cool is that Oprah is the same person on stage and in front of a camera as she is off stage and behind the scenes. She speaks the same way on camera as she does off camera.
I made a choice before I lost my legs that I was going to live the best life possible and that I wasn't going to let this slow me down - and that choice has kept me moving forward.
