I love the smell of rain, and I love the sound of the ocean waves.
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.
You don't have to be positive all the time.
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.
If you want something bad enough and you work hard enough, anything's possible.
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.
A lot of times, people think 'para' as far as 'paralyzed.' 'Para' means 'alongside,' so the Paralympics are alongside the Olympics on the same courses, the same hills.
I'm a big oatmeal fan. For my every-morning breakfast, I will do oatmeal with cinnamon, goat's milk or even butter, with apples and raisins, and then I'll maybe do some eggs, say two poached eggs with that.
That's the problem with bacterial meningitis: it progresses really fast. You think you have the flu, and they say within 15 hours it's severely deadly - for sure within the first 24 hours - but even the first 15 hours.
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.
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.
At the age of 19, the day after I graduated high school, I moved to a place where it snowed, and I became a massage therapist. With this job, all I needed were my hands and my massage table by my side and I could go anywhere. For the first time in my life, I felt free, independent, and completely in control of my life.
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.
I believe inspiration is contagious.
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.
My spleen burst. I remember feeling my heart beating really fast. Beating right out of my chest.
That's really what the Paralympics is about: these amazing athletes and this technology that's allowing them to reach their full potential.
