When disease took my legs, I eventually realized I didn't need them to lead a full, empowering life.
— Amy Purdy
I love the smell of rain, and I love the sound of the ocean waves.
Since losing my legs, I've found out that I am able to help other people by sharing how I've overcome my obstacles.
We all have things that limit us and that challenge us. But really, our real limitations are the ones we believe.
I lost my spleen, I lost the hearing in my left ear, so I had a lot of internal organ damage.
If somebody would've told me that I was going to lose my legs at the age of 19, I would've thought there's absolutely no way I'd be able to handle that. But then it happened, and I realized that there's so much more to live for, that my life isn't about my legs.
I'm so comfortable on my snowboard that I don't have to think about it very much; it's somewhat second nature.
I've never wanted sympathy votes in anything I do in my life.
I'm not trying to be an inspiration, but I'm flattered to be considered one.
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 can't really say I miss my toes.
Every day that I am healthy, I want to use that day to its fullest now.
Of course, there are benefits to having prosthetics. I can make myself as tall as I want. I can wear flip-flops in the snow if I wanted to. There's benefits.
If you want something bad enough and you work hard enough, anything's possible.
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.
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.
As humans, we need to reach out for support.
If we can see past preconceived limitations, then the possibilities are endless.
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 always say snowboarding saved my life. It gave me a reason to focus on the future; it gave me something to be passionate about.
The way I look at it is, we all have disabilities.
I was in kidney failure. I ended up having a kidney transplant on my 21st birthday.
I knew I loved music, and I knew that I could feel music. So, I knew I had rhythm.
As for how do I respond to those who want to throw stones, well, I don't.
Dancing is about expressing yourself, and the more walls you let down, the better.
My motivation is not to try to inspire, but rather to do things that inspire me and hopefully that will spread to others.
Just the thought of being on Oprah's radar at all is humbling, but to actually have her take time get on the phone with me kind of blows my mind.
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.
My dad gave me one of his kidneys.
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.
The thing with prosthetic feet is you can't have all this crazy motion, or you'd be all over the place - because it's mechanical, and it's outside your body.
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.
I want to live a fulfilling life.
I didn't think about money or cars or anything like that.
You don't have to be positive all the time.
I'm very grateful that I've had the opportunities I've had.
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 tried snowboarding at 14, and I absolutely fell in love with it. I snowboarded every day off I had, every weekend I had off of school, every holiday we had off from school, and it became a huge part of my life, not just what I love to do, but really just kind of who I was.
I knew I loved dancing with my friends.
I simply do the things that inspire me, be that snowboarding, designing clothing, or dancing.
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 believe inspiration is contagious.
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.
I have a very good sense of my body and where it's at. Although I don't feel the ground in the same way that somebody else would, I'm very aware... I can feel pressure, and I know exactly where my toes are and exactly where my heel is.
There are plenty of people who have legs who are way more disabled than me.
I've learned that borders are where the actual ends, but also where the imagination and the story begins.
Growing up in the hot Last Vegas desert, all I wanted was to be free. I would daydream about traveling the world, living in a place where it snowed, and I would picture all of the stories that I would go on to tell.
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.
