Translator: Leonardo Silva Reviewer: Denise RQ
(Video and music)
This, it was me.
I was no extraordinary girl,
but I did some extraordinary things.
Not a lot of people can identify themselves with BASE jumpers,
but the drive within us
that makes us follow our dream and maintain the kid in us,
I believe it exists in us all.
I've lived a bit of an unusual life,
but my story is universal.
It's about finding your passion in life,
choosing the life you want to live,
and then never give up.
When I was in elementary school,
my teacher asked me if I could tell her about my dreams.
I explained how I dreamt about flying like the birds.
I thought that birds must be the happiest creatures in the world.
I admired their capability of playing in the air and to be so free.
My teacher told me it was a nice dream,
but I had to learn how to be more realistic in life,
because people can't fly.
But I never gave up on that childhood dream,
and against better knowledge, I did learn how to fly.
BASE jumping has an alarmingly high mortality rate,
and in order to defend our sport,
we used gallows humor frequently.
Whenever we were stressed or nervous about the possible outcome,
we would ask ourselves, "What can possibly go wrong?"
It was our defense mechanism and survival mechanism
whenever we were stressed, and it kind of worked.
I lived in a dreamworld, as a BASE jumper and a free skier.
My life was filled with film shoots and photo shoots,
helicopters and private planes.
I was sponsored by some of the biggest names in the industry.
I was on fire.
And this was my every day.
(Music)
(Video)
(Applause)
Thank you.
(Applause)
I was at World Cup in paragliding.
It was a huge show,
and I was invited there to jump and entertain in the breaks.
The atmosphere inside the plane was light,
and the last day came easily.
We were neither worried nor nervous. We had done this hundreds of times.
We jumped out of the plane.
I was jumping with a camera on my helmet, filming the others.
We flew side by side, making S-turns over and under each other,
and the smoke that we had attached to our leg
followed our every move and created a beautiful pattern in the sky.
It was time to release the parachute,
and land safely on the grassy field in front of the spectators.
And as pulled my chute, I could hear the clapping
and the shouting from the thousands of people underneath me,
and I let out a scream of pure happiness, "Ooo!"
And then, I realized that something had gone wrong.
(Video)
At the top of my career, my dream shattered.
In ten seconds, I went from heaven to hell.
My chute was spinning uncontrollably towards the ground.
I had a tension knot that tangled my lines.
My first thought was, "I'll fix it."
But soon, the rotation speed was over 100 kilometers per hour,
and the knot was huge.
I have lost friends in exactly this way,
and I understood that I would die the same way.
It felt stupid.
I had done so many dangerous things in my life,
and now I was going to die like this?
In a routine skydive from a plane?
I didn't see my life flickering before my eyes.
Dying didn't scare me. I just didn't want to die.
I loved my life.
The only thoughts that went through my mind
in those last couple of seconds were, "Fix the problem.
You have to fix the problem.
You can do this!"
And then, I braced for impact.
I hit the ground, and it all turned black.
With more than 100 kilometers per hour,
I hit a huge rock when I impacted the ground.
It crushed everything that I had from my hips and down.
I had four fractures in my left femur,
I had two broken knees,
and I had 21 open fractures in my right side.
But that rock saved my back,
and it saved my head,
and most importantly, I was still alive.
I woke up two days later at the hospital,
and the doctor that stood by my bed didn't exactly fill my room with sunshine,
although he emphasized how lucky I had been.
He rambled on about infections in my body,
and how they managed to keep my right leg until further notice.
"Until further notice? What do you mean?"
And then, he finished off with their conclusion:
I was so injured that I would never walk again.
I was so shocked I couldn't speak.
My throat thickened.
I could feel tears were watering my eyes, but I couldn't cry.
I couldn't say a single word.
I didn't even ask him one single question.
Then, he turned around, and I saw only the back of his white coat,
as he was already on his way to the next patient.
The sound of the door slamming echoed in my room.
I cried every day for a week.
I had no power, I was afraid of the future,
and I could see no light at the end of the tunnel.
Thoughts and unanswered questions were flickering through my mind.
What would I do for a living?
This was my job!
But more importantly, it was my identity.
Was I never going to be able to have my own family?
I was frustrated, and I was sad,
and I was linked to a wheelchair on indefinite time.
What do you do then?
I spent four months in that hospital.
I went through 20 surgeries,
and the doctors removed 12 cm of my femur,
because it had rotted due to bacteria.
An amputation was now the only solution.
I woke up at the PO after the last surgery,
and I was met by a smiling doctor.
I had now spent four months in the hospital.
I had never seen a smiling doctor.
They told me that they had found a piece of grass and dirt
inside my leg, hiding in between the steel.
Now that they had removed the grass,
it was finally over.
From that point on,
I decided to eliminate all negative energy.
Even living a dream life,
I had spent so many hours not feeling good enough,
always striving for what was next,
instead of appreciating right now.
After all, I had been given a second chance.
Normally, we don't walk around being appreciative of being alive,
and neither do I,
but those final seconds spiraling towards the ground
gave me perspective.
They made me realize that my time here on Earth is limited.
They made me realize that, one day, it might be too late.
So, if I wanted to do something,
it would need to be right now.
At this point, I weighed 42 kg.
It's a little bit less than I weigh today.
But my goal was not to relearn how to walk.
I needed something bigger.
I needed something that would trigger my emotions,
that would make me want to get up in the morning.
I needed a dream.
My dream was to make it back
to my mountains, and my powder skiing again.
I had pushed limits ever since I was a little girl.
I left my job as a computer programmer in order to pursue my dream.
I was the first girl in the world to perform ski base.
Now I had to take this,
and transform it to my hospital bed, and use it from there.
It wasn't easy.
It was never easy before,
and it was even more difficult now,
but like we always used to say,
"What can possibly go wrong?"
But for the first time in my life, I was now dependent on other people.
I had never felt more vulnerable,
more helpless.
What I needed was to learn the most basic skill,
the skill of a two-year-old:
the skill of learning how to walk.
It's ironic.
I had spent all my life trying to be special,
trying to be different,
and now, all I wanted was to be normal.
At this point, I had no power to make the big changes.
So, I needed to put my energy where it would make a difference.
I realized the power of the little changes,
and how they could make a difference in the long run.
At what point did I choose my life?
At what point did I choose to fight?
Was it the day that I woke up after my accident?
Or was it the day that my doctor told me that I would never walk again?
Or was it the day after?
The truth is, I chose this every day,
every morning when I woke up, all through the day,
and every night before I went to bed.
It didn't just happen. I chose it.
The good thing about realizing that I'm the one who chooses
is that I'm now in charge.
I don't get to choose the actions that happen to me,
but I can choose how I want to relate to them.
And just knowing that I have a choice
makes it feel a lot easier.
It took me six months
to learn how to put my socks on.
It took me three years to relearn how to walk.
It took me four years to make it back to the slopes,
but six years before I could actually enjoy them.
Two years ago, I stood on a high mountain top in Norway.
It took me five years to make it there,
five years of training, of uncertainty,
and fear of failure, to make it there,
but the joy of making it back,
that's what's made me a complete person again.
(Music)
(Video)
(Applause)
Thank you.
(Applause)
I've been given a gift.
I've been given the gift of seeing into the future,
and coming back to live my life differently.
How would you change if this happened to you?
I chose my life,
and no matter if I would have had to spend the rest of my life
in that wheelchair, I wouldn't have regretted it.
It sure helps, but it's not necessary to crash skydiving
in order to take actions in your life.
Just remember that out time here on Earth is limited.
So, you'd better start making it happen,
because at the end of the day, what really scares me
is the fear of failure,
and the only failure that I can [have]
is if I never try.
And if I were to say one thing to my future child,
it would have to be, "You have one life.
Live it, because what can possibly go wrong?"
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
Thank you.
(Applause)
Thank you. Bye bye.
(Applause)