Janine Shepherd: being at rock bottom is actually the perfect place to start!!

 

 This is a tremendous story that literally moved me. I've already watched over and over again. Unfortunately, this has only English subtitle so that you can't watch with Japanese subtitle for some of you guys reading it. So I leave the outline of this story here.

 One day, she crashed into a speeding utility truck, and everything went black. In the next breath, she was airlifted from the scene of the accident by a rescue helicopter to a large spinal unit in Sydney. she'd broken my neck and my back in six places. In addition, broke five ribs on her left side, her right arm, collarbone. some bones in her feet. Her whole right side was ripped open filled with gravel. Her head was cut open across the front, lifted back exposing the skull underneath. She had massive blood loss about five liters.

For over 10 days, she driftef between two dimensions, and she kept asking herself that you really want to be alive with a body that was so broken or... After 10 days, she decided to go back to the broken body, and the internal bleeding stopped. She also decided to be going forward. But it was really demanding task, maybe it was a lot harder than she had thought then. Fortunately, her operation was a success, but felt that she was paralyzed from the waist down. the next concern she had was whether she would walk again.. because her back was completely crushed. The vertebra at L1 was like you'd dropped a peanut, stepped on it, smashed it into thousands of piece. They picked as much broken bone as they could that had lodged in my spinal cord. They took out two of my broken ribs, and they rebuilt her back,L1, they rebuilt it, they took out another broken rib,

 At last, her body did never be restored to its former state that she can never run as much as she did before. I imagined many times that if I were her, what would I do.. how could I think of my future to the end of my life. it'd fill me with full of fear and concerns that might never be able to get rid of.. but she was different!! She got another dream which was the most creative project ever!! Actually she realized that this wasn't just her life. It was life itself. She realized that this wasn't just her pain. It was everybody's pain. And then She knew, just like before, that She had a choice. She could keep fighting thisor She could let go and accept not only my body but the circumstances of my life. And then She stopped asking, "Why me?"And She started to ask, "Why not me?"And then She thought to myself, maybe being at rock bottom is actually the perfect place to start.

Sitting at home in her wheelchair and her plaster body cast, an airplane flew overhead, and I looked up,and I thought to myself, "That's it!If I can't walk, then I might as well fly." "Pass me the yellow pages." She passed me the phone book, I rang up the flying school, I made a booking, said I'd like to make a booking to come out for a flight. Didn't know how on Earth she'd ever pass a medical. But she'd worry about that later, because right now I had a dream. Just gave it a go. And she practiced my walking as much as she could.

So while the doctors continued to operate and put my body back together again, she went on with my theory study, and then eventually, and amazingly, she passed my pilot's medical, and that was my green light to fly. And she spent every moment she could out at that flying school, way out of my comfort zone, all these young guys that wanted to be Qantas pilots, " you know, and little old hop-along me in first my plaster cast, and then my steel brace, my baggy overalls, my bag of medication and catheters and my limp, and they used to look at me and think, "Oh, who is she kidding? She's never going to be able to do this." And sometimes I thought that too. But that didn't matter, because now there was something inside that burned that far outweighed my injuries."

And little goals kept her going along the way, and eventually she got my private pilot's license, and then she learned to navigate, and she flew my friends around Australia. And then she learned to fly an airplane with two engines and she got my twin engine rating. And then she learned to fly in bad weather as well as fine weather and got my instrument rating. And then she got my commercial pilot's license. And then she got my instructor rating. And then she found myself back at that same school where she'd gone for that very first flight, teaching other people how to fly, just under 18 months after she'd left the spinal ward.

And then she thought, "Why stop there? Why not learn to fly upside down?" And she did, and she learned to fly upside down and became an aerobatics flying instructor.

The philosopher Lao Tzu once said, "When you let go of what you are, you become what you might be." She now know that it wasn't until she let go of who she thought she was that she was able to create a completely new life. It wasn't until she let go of the life she thought she should have that she was able to embrace the life that was waiting for me. She now know that my real strength never came from my body, and although my physical capabilities have changed dramatically, who she am is unchanged. The pilot light inside of me was still a light, just as it is in each and every one of us.

''I know that I'm not my body, and I also know that you're not yours. And then it no longer matters what you look like, where you come from, or what you do for a living. All that matters is that we continue to fan the flame of humanity by living our lives as the ultimate creative expression of who we really are.''

 What comes to my mind after watching this story is that women are strong. I can't say how wonderful she is!!

 

  素晴らしいスピーチです。初めて聞いたときは泣きそうになりました。残念ながら機能上、日本語訳が出せないみたいなので、あらすじだけ書いておきます。

　彼女はある時、事故に巻き込まれてしまいます。それもとても重大な。それまで彼女はオーストラリアのクロスカントリーチームの一員で冬季オリンピックを目指し、練習の一環として自転車で山を駆け上っていました。その時に事故は起きたのです。いきなり彼女にトラックが突っ込み、ヘリで搬送され即手術。血圧は４０まで下がり、首、腰、腕、鎖骨、あばらが５本に足の骨も何本か折れ、事故当初は頭皮がめくれあがり脳はむき出し、右半身の皮膚もほとんど捲れ上がった上に砂利が無数についた状態だったそうです。まさに瀕死の状態です。

　手術時の脊髄は、ちょうど皆さんがピーナッツを机の上から落として、その上を足で踏んづければ粉々に潰れてしまいますよね？まさに骨があの状態だったそうです。それを見たとき、医師は助かっても下半身不随は最低でも避けられないだろうと感じたそうです。

　全体的な蘇生手術は奇跡的に成功し、一命は取りとめたJanine。ただ退院できるまで６か月を要し、退院後も車椅子の生活を強いられました。彼女は当然今までアスリートだった体が、今では歩くこともままならない事に、退院して初めて大きなショックを受けたそうです。まさに絶望です。自分がそうなったことを今考えても彼女のその当時のショックさが痛いほどわかります。しかし彼女は自分の人生を投げ出さなかったのです。

　そこから懸命のリハビリ。しかし、残念ながらアスリートとして復活することはできなかった。そして彼女はある時、空を見上げて母親に言ったんです。

　「思うように歩けないなら・・・。走れないなら・・・。飛べばいいじゃない！」

　母親は笑いました。そして彼女は電話帳を手に取り、パイロットの訓練学校に連絡したのです。「歩けない、だから空を飛びたいの。どうしたら空を飛べる？」と。

　そして実際に訓練学校に行き、最初は教官、彼女よりはるかに若い同じ訓練生達からも怪訝な顔を浮かべられたのですが、彼女はそれをモチベーションに歩行訓練に一層の努力を費やし、最終的にパイロットのライセンスを取ってしまったのです。そして彼女は今では訓練生に教える教官の立場になり、後進の育成に全力を注いでいます。これは病院から退院してわずか１年半後のことです。

　「私は事故で人生が大きく変わってしまった。と思っていた。実際はそうでないんだ、と気づくまでは。自分の体がどうとか、出身はどことか、何で生活しているのかとかは関係ない。なぜなら私達はみな繋がっているのだから。大事なのは、自分が本当は何なのかを問いかけ続けることで、自分自身に風を送り続けることなのです。」

　ざっと、自分なりに翻訳してみました。もしかした少し原文をずれているかもしれませんが、その辺は専門ではないので、あしからず。

　女性は本当に強いですね。彼女の言葉が、世界中のどれだけの人達に勇気を与えたのか、尊敬できますよね。