Here is the full transcript and summary of Emma Carey’s talk titled “The Girl Who Fell From The Sky” at TEDxCurrumbin conference.
In this TEDx talk, writer, artist, and entrepreneur Emma Carey recounts her harrowing experience of skydiving gone wrong, where she accidentally landed on her instructor and became a paraplegic. Carey shares her journey of learning to walk again and discusses the challenges faced by others with disabilities.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
I want to start today by asking you all to take a deep breath and close your eyes. Now, keep them closed for a minute, I’ll let you know when to open them. And I want you to imagine yourself sitting on the edge of a helicopter door with your legs dangling out into the breeze. You can see the clouds and ground below you, your heart is beating out of your chest, and your hands are shaking as you prepare to do something you’ve never done before.
Your instructor counts you down, 3, 2, 1, and suddenly you’re falling, although really it feels more like flying, and you feel more alive than ever before. You feel a tap on your shoulder, which means your parachute is about to be pulled, so you cross your arms over your chest as you’re instructed and wait to feel the jolt of the parachute slowing you down, but the jolt never comes.
You’re still falling, so you wait for your instructor to say something or to give you a high five like you’ve seen in videos, but he doesn’t speak, and he doesn’t move. You aren’t slowing down, then you see something red flash before your eyes, and your heart drops as you realize what it is, your parachute.
Instead of opening above you, it’s a tangled mess in front of you, and so you panic. You scream at the instructor now, becoming more desperate with each passing second, but all you can do is watch. You know you’re about to crash, you’re only seconds away from impact, when suddenly it hits you, not the ground, but the realization of what it means. You are about to die.
The only life you’ve ever known is about to end. Desire to live pounds through you so strongly it almost shocks you. Life had always seemed like a given, but now suddenly it was a gift you’d give anything to keep. You think of everything you thought you’d still have time for.
You long for your future, your old age, all the things you swore you’d do later. You didn’t know later would never arrive. The ground is so close now, and you’re still falling so fast. Yet in the face of death, you’re thinking clearer than ever before about all of the words you left unspoken and that giant leap of faith you were too scared to make that seems so simple now, but it’s too late.
And you wonder what being dead will feel like, so you count down the seconds until you find out. Three, two, one.
Now open your eyes and come back into the room. You’ll be happy to know you’re still alive, but I’m curious. What would you wish for in those final moments? Who would you want to run to, and what would you want to change?
And what I want to ask you is, why can’t you do all of that anyway? You don’t have to wait until you nearly die to start living. And now I learned that lesson the hard way, and although I know that was a super dramatic way to start my talk, the fall you just experienced is actually what happened to me ten years ago.
I was 20 years old. I had no idea who I was or what I wanted to do. I had no passion, was paralyzingly shy, and didn’t feel like I had anything worth offering the world. So basically, all the characteristics of someone destined to give a TED Talk, right? The one thing I was sure of, though, was that I wanted to travel, so I bought a one-way ticket to Europe with my lifelong friend, Jemma.
A few days into the trip, we got to Switzerland where we decided to skydive. Well, actually, I should say where I decided to skydive because I basically forced Jemma into that helicopter, so thank God this happened to me and not her. Can you imagine? Sorry.
When I hit the ground after my fall, I landed face down on my belly like this, and my instructor, who was strapped to my back, landed on top of me. I assumed he was dead because he still wasn’t moving, but thankfully he wasn’t. It turns out he was unconscious because he’d been strangled by the cords of the parachute as they were coming out. I was pinned down by the weight of him, but I could lift my head enough to see that we were in the middle of a field with no one around.
Now, I was in so much pain, so I had no idea how I was going to possibly move. But I knew it was up to me to go and find help. And so I took a shaky breath in and prepared to stand up. I tried to roll over to get the instructor off me, and just like that, the world stopped. In a single moment, the life I knew was shattered.
My legs wouldn’t move. I was trying as hard as I could. I was telling them to move in the same way I had for 20 years, but nothing was happening. “Undo, undo, undo,” this was the only word going through my mind. I just wanted to go back in time. I didn’t know it yet, but I had broken my pelvis, my sacrum, my sternum, a lot of my teeth, and worst of all, my spine. And the doctors would soon tell me I was a paraplegic and that I would never walk again.
You know that saying, “You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone”?
Well, I always thought it was just a clichéd lie, but all I could think as I lay there, terrified and paralyzed, was my life was perfect two minutes ago, and I didn’t even know. I couldn’t believe I had gone an entire lifetime taking my legs for granted. But being as young as I was, I had seen my body as an object rather than the very thing that let me experience the world.
But in that moment, I would have done anything for a body that worked. I couldn’t have cared less what it looked like. All I wanted was the ability to stand up, run over to my best friend, so that was fun, and get on with the rest of our trip and our lives. But instead, when Jemma landed, she had to call for help. A rescue helicopter came to pick us up, and we were flying to the hospital, more scared than we’d ever been, when without saying a word, Jemma and I both looked at each other.
And at the same time, we made a face we’d been making since we were little kids. This one. And we both burst out laughing. And it was so special because it was the first time in my life I realized it’s possible to feel two opposing things at once.
You can laugh when your heart is breaking. You can feel hope when there is none. And you can be grieving the loss of your body, but realize you have something far more valuable. A true friend.
Once we arrived at the hospital, I went in to multiple surgeries, and when I woke up, I learned I was a paraplegic. Now, as you can imagine, hearing this news was devastating, and from the moment I realized my legs weren’t working, I had a death wish. I would try to rip out all of the cannulas in my hands. I would try to push myself off the hospital bed and onto the floor, and I would tell anyone who tried to help me to leave me alone, because I didn’t want their help.
I wanted them to let me die. I was heaps of fun to be around. But then, one morning, about a week later, I remember waking up and feeling as though something was different. I was still in my hospital bed. I still had a catheter draining from me. And my legs still definitely couldn’t move, so physically nothing had changed, but I had.
It was as though the haze of shock had worn off, and I suddenly understood that what had happened, happened, and despite how much I wanted to, there was nothing I could do to take it back. And if there was nothing I could do, it seemed rather pointless to spend my time, time I had desperately longed for just days earlier, wishing for impossible things.
So I knew then that I had two choices. I could be paralyzed and miserable, or I could be paralyzed and try to create a fulfilling life regardless. Either way, I couldn’t change my injury, but there was something I could change, my perspective. Up until then, I’d been focusing solely on everything I’d lost, which to be fair was a lot.
But when I allowed myself to zoom out, I could see that there was so much I still had. For one thing, I had the use of my hands, something I’d never taken a moment to be thankful for, something I’m still figuring out what you’re meant to do with when you speak on stage. I had amazing healthcare, and I had people around me who loved me, so I wasn’t alone.
And then, when I really thought about it, I realized I could take it one step even further. And so I decided to ask myself if there was anything I’d actually gained from my situation. Now, I’m not Buddha, and I was still pretty annoyed that my holiday slash life was ruined. So it didn’t feel like it at first, but there was.
I had gained an immense appreciation for my life while I was falling. I had gained an irreversible gratitude for my body and all it could still do. And above all, I had gained the knowledge that I had survived something unsurvivable. I had no idea how or why, but I knew I owed it to myself to find out.
As you can see today, I am very lucky to be walking again, and you might even be fooled into thinking I’m completely healed. But 10 years on, my spinal cord injury still affects me every single day. Even though a lot of the movement in my legs has come back, I still can’t feel anything from the waist down.
So, if I’m looking a little wobbly up here, I promise I’m not drunk, just what they call a walking paraplegic. Who knew that was a thing? Not me. I am also now completely incontinent in both my bladder and bowel, and have accidents all day every day, which is super fun, highly recommend.
How and why my legs regained movement is a mystery, not just to doctors, but also to me. And I think sometimes when I share my story, people expect me to get up here and say that if you believe in yourself enough. And if you put your mind to something with unwavering certainty, then you can do anything. And that would be a lovely story, but it’s not the truth. People often tell me that it was because of my positivity or determination that I learned to walk again.
And although it’s always really well intended, it’s actually quite a dangerous idea because it takes away from all of those who can’t walk. And over the years, I’ve made so many friends with spinal cord injuries, and they are some of the most hardworking, brilliant people I’ve ever come across, yet they haven’t got out of their wheelchairs.
And to suggest it’s a matter of self-belief or effort is to suggest that others just didn’t try hard enough. So, for me, I put it down to nothing more than the specific way my spinal cord must have been damaged, that and an unexplainable, wondrous thing called sheer luck.
Now, I don’t like to focus too much on my physical recovery because I feel it was largely out of my control. But what was in my control and what I prefer to speak on is the recovery I had to make up here. And there was actually a specific moment about a month into my injury where I made a very conscious decision to focus on that instead.
I met a guy in the hospital, another paraplegic, and we were talking one night when we somehow got onto the topic of tattoos. And I told him I was planning on getting the date of my accident. When he said why, I told him because every day since that date is essentially extra time I get to live.
So, it’s a reminder to not take it for granted. I then asked if he ever planned on getting any, and he said he would get the date he learned to walk again if that ever happened. And when I asked why, he said because it’ll be the day I feel happiness again. He said I won’t be happy unless I can walk.
And now at this stage, I couldn’t walk either, and hearing those words truly scared me because subconsciously I guess I felt the same. In hospital, it felt like walking was the aim of the game, it was what we were all working towards, but hearing the words laid out so simply like that, “I won’t be happy unless I can walk,” I realized how big of a gamble it was.
Suddenly we were placing all of our future happiness onto one specific and honestly pretty unlikely thing, and I suddenly knew it wasn’t a risk I was willing to take. So, I vowed to myself then and there that I would always put my energy into healing my whole self, not just my body, because even though I desperately wanted to walk again, I didn’t want it to become the sole purpose of my life.
I wanted to make sure I would be okay with or without it. And that conversation made me ask myself a hard question. One that makes me nervous to say out loud because it feels almost arrogant now that I can walk, but it was this. What would happen if I woke up tomorrow and was magically healed?
And the answer seems obvious, right? I would be so insanely grateful, I would become one of those people who runs marathons and climbs mountains and does everything else they possibly can with their body. But then after all of that, I imagined there would come a day when I would stop, look around, realize the thrill had worn off, and ask myself, now what? I still had the rest of my life to live whether or not I was on my feet.
And now don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to stand up here and pretend that walking doesn’t make life easier, because it certainly has, and it’s something I’ll forever be thankful for, but does it make life better? If walking was the one thing I was working towards in order for my life to be perfect, then why hadn’t I been happy when I’d had it?
There was a time before my accident when I had everything I was now wishing for, working legs, a functioning bladder and bowel, and yet I hadn’t been happy when I’d had them. And so perhaps happiness wasn’t found in something as circumstantial as walking, perhaps it wasn’t found in any one thing.
And perhaps I was never going to find it while I was stuck in this notion we so often get trapped in of, “I’ll be happy when.” I thought back to the worst day of my life and how I’d managed to laugh in the helicopter with Jemma, and I remembered it was possible. We don’t have to wait for things to be perfect in order for them to be good. If we wait for things to be perfect, we might miss out on them altogether, and that is something I learned more than ever the morning of my skydive.
The night before, I told myself I would wake up in the morning and go for a run before our jump. Running was my favorite thing to do, and I knew there would never be a more beautiful place to do it than Switzerland. But when I woke up that morning, I was feeling lazy and couldn’t be bothered, which my day at is fine, we’re allowed to be lazy, but for the sake of what happened next, it didn’t feel fine.
So I told myself I’d go tomorrow instead. Flash forward to tomorrow, the day I told myself I’d run, and there I am, lying paralyzed in a hospital bed, being told I would never walk again, let alone ever run again. And I was so mad at myself. I couldn’t believe I had passed up a chance to do the thing I love most in the whole world, and now it seemed I would never get that chance again. I felt so much regret, and I wanted to make sure I could never make that same mistake.
And so I got out my phone, and I wrote a letter to my future self. I wrote five words, “If you can, you must.” And what I meant by that was, if by some miracle you can ever run again, you must. You must remember this feeling of yearning for something so badly and being physically unable to have it.
I remember going to bed that night and feeling like the future wasn’t just bleak, but insurmountable. But then time went by, as it always tends to do, and I completely forgot about my note until a few years ago. And I was going through my phone and found it again. And when I read my words, I thought, past Emma was wise, because even though to this day I still can’t run, those words are about so much more than just running to me now. If there is something you can do, and you desire to do it, then you must, for no other reason than the incredible and unlikely fact that you can.
We tend to think we have forever, and so we push things back for another tomorrow, which more often than not does arrive, but what if it doesn’t? And I don’t just mean that in the morbid sense of death or serious injury, but just that opportunities don’t hang around forever. And just because something is available to us now doesn’t mean it always will be.
And so, whatever it is for you, that thing that lights you up inside, that you lay awake at night thinking about, that you keep putting off for a better time when you’re more capable or brave, I think you should do it. Do it before it’s too late. Before you get the chance to wonder what if. Before the parachute doesn’t open. Do it now, because if you can, you must.
Remember, you don’t have to wait until you nearly die to start living. Thank you.
SUMMARY OF THIS TALK:
Emma Carey’s talk titled “The Girl Who Fell From The Sky” is a profound and moving account of her life-changing experience. Here are the key takeaways from her speech in a summarized form:
Embracing Life’s Fragility: Emma begins her talk with a vivid reenactment of her skydiving accident, highlighting the thin line between life and death. This experience made her realize the fragility of life and the importance of cherishing every moment.
The Accident and Its Aftermath: At 20, Emma’s life took a dramatic turn when her parachute failed during a skydiving trip in Switzerland, leading to severe injuries, including paralysis. The accident was a pivotal moment, forcing her to confront the possibility of never walking again.
Appreciating the Gift of Life: Lying paralyzed, Emma experienced a profound sense of loss and regret for taking her abilities and life for granted. This incident brought a newfound appreciation for life’s simple pleasures and the functioning of her body.
Overcoming Despair with Resilience: Following the accident, Emma went through a period of despair and self-destructive behavior. However, she eventually chose to focus on what she could still achieve and enjoy in life, despite her physical limitations.
Recovery and Rediscovery: Emma discusses her journey of recovery, both physically and mentally. Although she regained the ability to walk, a feat considered miraculous, she emphasizes that her real recovery was psychological, involving acceptance and adaptation.
Rejecting the “I’ll Be Happy When” Mindset:Emma’s story challenges the idea that happiness is contingent upon certain achievements or physical abilities. She stresses the importance of finding joy and contentment in the present, regardless of circumstances.
Importance of a Supportive Network: The role of friends and family in her recovery is highlighted, especially the bond with her friend Jemma. This support was crucial in her journey towards healing and acceptance.
Valuing Every Opportunity: Emma reflects on missed opportunities, like not going for a run the morning of her accident. She advocates for seizing the day and embracing opportunities when they arise, as life is unpredictable.
“If You Can, You Must” Philosophy: Emma shares a personal mantra she developed, “If you can, you must,” which encapsulates the idea of not taking one’s abilities for granted and making the most of them.
A Call to Live Fully: In conclusion, Emma urges her audience to live fully and not wait for a life-threatening event to start appreciating life. Her story is a powerful reminder to embrace life with all its uncertainties and to find joy and purpose regardless of physical limitations or challenges.
Emma Carey’s talk is a testament to the human spirit’s resilience and the capacity to find hope and happiness in the face of adversity. Her message is a universal one: life is precious, and we should live it to the fullest.