Alana Nichols became an athlete at 5 years old. It started after her grandparents enrolled her in T-ball, when she hit her first home run and felt the thrill of running the bases. Since that moment, athletics have been a crucial part of her identity. 

As a little girl, Nichols played softball, basketball, and volleyball. Then, in junior high, she discovered snowboarding — a sport that allowed her to get creative and explore her limits. She could go as fast as she liked, move however she wanted, and immerse herself in her own style. “The mountain was my canvas,” she explained, “I could just create.”

The jump that changed everything

It was during a trip to Colorado in November of 2000, 17-year-old Nichols took a risk that would change the course of her life: She attempted a backflip off a ski jump. Mid-air, she over-rotated and came down hard, landing on her back against a buried rock. 

“The first question I asked my friend as he got to me is where my board and my boots were,” she recalls. “I was so confused. And when he said that they were on my feet, that’s when I knew something was terribly wrong.”

Nichols was airlifted to the hospital and endured an extensive, eight-hour surgery. Doctors found that part of her vertebrae had shattered, and the bone fragments had severed her spinal cord. Not long after, she was given the news: She was paralyzed from the waist down and probably would never walk again. 

Trapped in her body — and beliefs 

For the first 17 years of her life, Nichols’s body had responded to every high-intensity demand she made of it. It sprinted, sweated, slid into home base, and jumped to dunk basketballs. Now she was immobile. Seemingly simple tasks like sitting up in bed and getting dressed became major achievements.

“I would just stare at my toes, like, ‘Move, move. I know you know how to do this.’ It was like putting a bird in a cage, my little athletic self who loved to celebrate her body and how it moved.”

Nichols, now 42, looks back at her younger self with a deep sense of compassion. Here she was, on the cusp of adulthood with the whole world at her fingertips, being reborn into a body that couldn’t move. Athleticism was so central to her life that the accident took more than mobility — it took her identity. “I really compare it to somebody dying.”

She returned to high school that February and graduated in May, receiving a standing ovation from her hometown community. That fall, she enrolled at the University of New Mexico, still adjusting to life in a body she barely recognized.

Who was Alana Nichols, without the ability to compete, to train, to push her body the way she always had? Her plans to play fast-pitch softball, go to parties, and thrive as a young adult had been ruined by her injury, and now she felt forced to watch from the sidelines as the rest of her peers moved on. 

Then, one day as she was taking a shortcut through a university gym, she experienced what she now refers to as “a God moment.”

A new image in the mirror 

To Nichols’s surprise, the gym was bustling with wheelchair athletes at basketball practice. “At this point in my post-injury life and recovery,” Nichols explains, “I had never met anybody in a wheelchair my age. I certainly didn’t know that there were adaptive sports or that you could be athletic.”

But there they were, these students in wheelchairs, dribbling basketballs and shooting three-pointers. She stayed to watch the rest of practice, and afterwards one of the players approached her and said, “You look really athletic. Have you ever thought about playing wheelchair basketball?”

Nichols hadn’t seen herself as an athlete since the accident. But that brief interaction revealed a truth that had eluded her: Identifying as an athlete had always depended on how she saw herself and what she believed was possible. And now, for the first time in a long while, that perception was beginning to change.

“That little athlete that started T-ball when she was 5, she never got paralyzed. She always had that drive in her. I just needed to figure out how to keep going physically and how to adapt.”

Seeing strength in a new form 

Soon after, Nichols joined the wheelchair basketball team. For the first time since her accident, she felt fast, agile, even free. Everything she had missed about her pre-injury self came flooding back: her competitive spirit, that unforgettable rush of adrenaline, her sense of power.

Until then, she had viewed a wheelchair as a symbol of limitation. But seeing it used as a vehicle for strength and competition forced her to reconsider. It challenged her to untangle her old beliefs about what capability looked like. 

She kept training and working her way through tryouts until she earned a spot on the U.S. national team for the 2008 Paralympic Games in Beijing, ultimately winning the gold medal against Germany. The next year, she started training for skiing, and in 2010 in Vancouver, she won again, becoming the first American woman to win Paralympic gold in both the Summer and Winter Games.

Standing on the podium, she thought of the girl in the hospital bed who believed her athletic career was over. But now, after taking new risks — trusting her body, her team, and herself — she’s achieved more than her 17-year-old self ever imagined.

Momentum from within 

Today, after winning six Paralympic medals, Alana Nichols has one key piece of advice: “For anyone in the midst of untangling their lives, or trying to find their way after a life-changing experience — just keep going. If it’s an inch, a foot, or a mile a day, like keep moving through it. You are going to see brighter days.”

We interviewed Alana Nichols for Perception Box Stories Untangled, a Big Think interview series created in partnership with Unlikely Collaborators. As a creative non-profit organization, they’re on a mission to help people challenge their perceptions and expand their thinking. Often that growth can start with just a single unlikely question that makes you rethink your convictions and adjust your vantage point. Watch Nichols’s full interview above, and visit Perception Box to see more in this series.

ALANA NICHOLS: I've always been a risk taker. I've always been somebody that wants to dance on the line.

I started snowboarding when I was in junior high school. Snowboarding was really cool because I hadn't yet discovered what it felt like to be creative as an athlete. The mountain was my canvas. It's like this incredible sense of freedom.

I love to go fast. I love to risk it. I love to push the limits. I was sliding down that hill and I thought, I'm going to try a backflip. And I hit the jump and I threw my feet as hard as I could over my head. I knew I had overdone it. I ended up landing back-first on the snow with my board and my boots over my head.

I felt this shock go through my body. It was so loud and confusing inside of me that I didn't know what to make of it. I felt the feeling that I had in my lower body just leave from the waist, all the way down and then out my feet. That's when I knew something was terribly wrong. It wasn't long after that that I thought I must be paralyzed.

I was adopted by my grandparents when I was five years old. My dad was actually killed in a drunk driving accident. The lack of structure really was tough for me. And I needed to feel like I belonged somewhere. I belonged in sports.

I was so athletic and I had recruits looking at me and offers to go play in college. I was expecting to go off to college and be an athlete and just find myself like every other 17 year old.

Any damage I had done to my spinal cord in this accident would be permanent. I was laying there in the hospital bed, giving my lower body the same information I'd given it for 17 years and nothing was happening. I would really just stare at my toes like, move, like move.

The doctor said, you probably will never walk again. And I'll never forget. He said, you will never ski again. I just remember thinking, this doctor doesn't know who I am. My truth was, if I work hard enough, I can achieve anything. Because that's what sports taught me.

After a week laying down in the hospital, I sat up like a baby for the first time and it felt like as unstable as when you see a baby sitting. I had to learn how to get dressed again and get from the bed to my wheelchair and sit in the wheelchair and push a wheelchair. It was a lot like being reborn again.

I think about that 17 year old. I feel really bad for her sometimes. She needed somebody to tell her it was going to be okay.

I didn't have any illusions that I was going to heal my spinal cord, but I thought I would be building muscles and that wasn't really happening. I felt really alone and misunderstood. I just didn't want to do it anymore. I didn't want to live.

My little athletic self, who loved to celebrate her body and how it moved— it was like putting a bird in a cage.

It was right around that time when I call this a God moment. I was rolling through the gym at the University of New Mexico, which I had never done before. It was this random shortcut I was taking, and as I entered the gym, I saw this whole group of people playing wheelchair basketball.

At this point in my post-injury life and recovery, I had never met anybody in a wheelchair my age. I certainly didn't know that there was adaptive sports or that you could be athletic. If somebody had told me about it, my ego would have gotten in the way. I would have said, “I'm not playing adaptive sports.” But my jaw was on the floor and I couldn't believe what I was seeing because it's so fast. It's so athletic.

I needed to see it, to believe that people with disabilities could be athletic.

At the end of their practice, I remember a girl coming over to me. She looked at me and she said, you look really athletic. Have you ever thought about playing wheelchair basketball?

And for a stranger to come up to me and say, you look really athletic. Like—what? I'm in a wheelchair. What do you mean, athletic?

But she saw it in me, you know, and I was athletic. I am athletic. That part of me never got paralyzed.

And that day, I got into a basketball chair and it really changed everything for me. And I pushed it as fast as I could. It was like running again. And I got my heart rate going, and I felt like agile for the first time. And it was just like this real fire in me that I always had.

When I saw all of these other people with disabilities doing the best that they could with what they had, I realized I don't really have an excuse. It really inspired me.

I tried bouncing a ball and I bounced it off the wheel, and there was this really tense energy that was happening because I was being really vulnerable and I was taking another risk.

I could look at what I had, or I could look at what I had lost. Up until that point, I was just so focused on everything I had lost. It was this really subtle transformation that was happening, building my confidence without me even really knowing it.

By the end of the first season, that's when I made the Paralympic team.

We finally get to Beijing after four years of training. We're in the gold medal game against Germany. When it came to that final match, we put a full court press on Germany and we wore them out and the buzzer at the end of the game rang and we all completely lost it.

We lost it so hard. We were screaming and crying and crashing into each other and falling over in our wheelchairs. It was incredible to win that gold medal.

I thought, you know, it would be really fun. I would love to be a ski racer, and I would also love to go to the 2010 Paralympic Games in Vancouver.

There I was, two years after the Beijing win. I was in Vancouver as a rookie on the Paralympic Alpine Ski Team and actually made history, becoming the first female American to win gold in the Summer and Winter games.

Thinking about my 17 year old self laying in a hospital bed, thinking that her life and athletic career was over because she'd just become paralyzed, she had no idea that not only was it not over, but that it would be bigger and better than she could have ever imagined.

As I was untangling so many of the experiences in my life, I had to redefine what my worth was.

Before my injury, I didn't really care as much about myself. I didn't value who I was. I think that was really why I was able to take the risks that I did take, including the one that broke my back.

And as somebody that has really been to hell and back, I just—I'm so proud of who I am.

It was really a struggle to not believe what society says about people with disabilities, that you're not worthy because you're not able to produce like an able-bodied person does.

And I'm worthy because I am alive and I am a human, and it doesn't have anything to do with what I look like or how my body functions.