Who Is Janie Shepherd A Motivational Person

Janine Shepherd is a cross-country skier phenom turned motivational speaker and author. Born in 1962, Shepherd excelled at a number of sports, winning several national championships by the age of ten. She eventually settled on cross-country skiing as her niche. After being extremely successful at the World Circuit, she received an offer to train for the 1988 Olympics. Shepherd’s goal was to be the first Australian to win a medal at the Winter Olympics and she was well on her way to victory until the unthinkable happened. She was on a training bike ride with her teammates at the Blue Mountains in West Sydney on a beautiful autumn day with the sun shining down on her face, but with ten minutes left in the ride she was hit by a speeding utility

truck.
Shepherd suffered extensive and life-threatening injuries.

She broke her neck and back in six different places, broke five ribs, her right arm, some bones in her feet, and her collarbone. Her whole right side was torn open and filled with dirty gravel. The truck sliced her forehead open and exposed her skull and she had lost a total of five liters of blood. Shepherd was airlifted from the scene and was taken to a spinal unit in Sydney. She describes that for ten days she was torn between two dimensions. Part of her saw no point in returning to a body that was broken beyond repair and another part was telling her to hold on, to fight, and to stay. Janine chose to stay.
She awoke to a terrible good news bad news situation. Good news, her neck fracture was stable. Bad news, her spine had been completely crushed. Crushed so badly that thousands of shards of bone were shot into her spinal cord, paralyzing her from the waist down. Doctors operated and were able to rebuild her spine, but the damage was permanent. Janine Shepherd, future Olympic medalist, would never ski and never walk again. Janine was in complete shock. She was an athlete. Being an athlete was the only thing she had ever

known.
Shepherd spent six month in a spinal unit with other people who were paralyzed. She had an instant connection with these other survivors and made life-long friendships When she was released, she eventually got depressed. One minute she was training for the Olympics and the next she was broken. She was in a wheelchair with no feeling from the waist down. Then she thought back to her friends that she met in the spinal ward, they were just like her and she was gonna fight this for herself and for them. She changed her mindset. Janine stated in her Ted Talk, “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”(Shepherd). She stopped asking, “why me?” And starting asking, “why not me?”
Janine decided to defy all odds and decided that if she could not walk then she would fly. And that is exactly what she did. Shepherd went to flying school and quickly grasped the mechanics of flying. In less than 18 months after her release from the spinal ward, she achieved almost every flying license in the book including her instructor rating. In 18 short months she went from not being able to walk to teaching other people how to fly airplanes. Not only did she learn how to fly but she also learned how to walk again. She even has three children, which was another thing the doctors said would never happen. Janine says in her Ted Talk, “But then I knew for certain that although my body might be limited, it was my spirit that was unstoppable” (Shepherd). She never gave up and did not let her broken body define her.
Janine Shepherd’s presence is strong throughout the whole Talk. There is a strong connection between her and her audience. Even though I was watching the Talk second-hand through a computer screen I could still feel her energy and her passion. I also felt a strong connection to Janine, not only because her presence was electric, but because like her I am an athlete. She made her talk applicable to all athletes not just the ones who suffered from an injury and can no longer compete in a sport they love. I understood her story and her reaction even though I had never gone through a series of life-threatening injuries as she did.
Janine’s Talk touched on a very real situation going on in my life right now, I am currently going through an injury that severely affects my performance.

I was beginning to get discouraged and even disappointed in myself. I was discouraged because there were these workouts that I could complete easily a few months ago, but now I can barely walk up the stairs without feeling tingling in my entire leg. Despite this, there was still an immense amount of pressure being put on me by myself and others. I could not do what those people, myself included, were asking me to do. I simply couldn’t. I was disheartened and I was frustrated. I wanted to give up, but then I watched Janine Shepherd’s Ted Talk. She proved to me that just because my physical abilities have changed doesn’t mean that I personally have changed. She proved to me that just because I cannot do the stuff I did before my injury, that doesn’t mean that I’m any less of a person. In her talk she said, “I know that I'm not my body. And I also know that you're not yours.” (Shepherd). That line really resonated with me because all my life I have focused on how well my body

performs.
Like Janine, being an athlete was all I have ever known and when parts of that are taken away you think that you are broken, but you’re not. An injury is just an obstacle that can be overcome like anything else. It’s hard. It’s painful. It’s exhausting. You will get discourage and want to give up. You have to remember that it gets easier, day by day. New opportunities will reveal themselves, but you have to overcome the obstacles. You have to realized the “a broken body is not a broken person.”