I'm Oprah Winfrey.
Welcome to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast.
I believe that one of the most valuable gifts you can give yourself is time, taking time to be more fully present.
Your journey to become more inspired and connected to the deeper world around us starts right now.
Ever since I saw her awe-inspiring performances on Dancing with the Stars I, like so many of you, have been astounded by her fearlessness.
Her powerful TED Talk about pushing past boundaries has nearly one million views and has been translated into 25 languages.
Amy Purdy has overcome the unimaginable.
At just 19 years old, Amy contracted a deadly strain of bacterial meningitis.
For two weeks, Amy lay in a medically induced coma.
Doctors removed her spleen and a month later, both legs below her knees.
That moment would mark the beginning of a miraculous shift in Amy's story.
Seven months later, when Amy found out there were no prosthetic feet made for snowboarding, she built her own and went on to become a champion.
And when the invitation to compete on Dancing with the Stars came, Amy took another leap of faith.
As a three-time world champion and Paralympic bronze medal snowboarder, and the only double amputee in that competition, Amy Purdy embodies what it means to create a life without limits.
I remember seeing you on Dancing with the Stars and literally not believing my eyes.
So I literally put it on pause so I can see, is that really happening?
Is that really happening?
So that was a big test of will for you.
Yeah, absolutely.
It took all of me.
I think, to be able to accomplish what I did, having two prosthetic legs, like one piece of carbon fiber that I'm balancing on that.
I had no idea if my feet were going to move in the way that they were supposed to move for ballroom dancing, had no idea if I was going to make a fool out of myself, if it was even possible.
It took every bit of me to do what I did.
So it was a spiritual quest for you, not just a physical quest for you.
And when you got the call to be on Dancing with the Stars, did you immediately say yes?
Or was it like, can I do that?
Yeah, I was a little scared.
So I got the call.
The producers asked if I have danced before, which I have zero dance experience whatsoever.
That's amazing.
But I knew I loved dancing with my friends.
I knew I loved music and I knew that I could feel music, so I knew I had rhythm and so I knew I would enjoy it.
And I said yes because I thought well, it's an experience and be great to go from something like the paralympics right into something else.
But yeah, once i said yes, i was quite nervous.
I looked up other dances online and and the other dancers and and honestly, they they moved so quickly, their bodies moved so gracefully that i thought there is no way i'm going to be able to do this.
So why did you say yes?
Why did you say yes?
I said yes because When your head was saying there's no way.
My head was saying no.
Yeah.
But inside, I felt that it was possible.
If I worked hard enough, you know, maybe I'm given this opportunity so that I can figure this out.
And I took it on as a responsibility.
Is this possible?
I don't know.
My head is saying no, but my heart is saying yes.
Now, but for you, I know people come up to you all the time.
I've seen them do it and say how inspirational you are.
But for you, it's bigger than inspiration.
What does that mean?
Yeah, I don't want people to look at me and look at my story and look at my life and say wow, what she does is amazing.
Wow, what she does is so inspiring.
I want them to actually feel something within themselves and say, oh, I can do that as well.
That I'm not just a separate, we're not different.
You know, we're all the same.
We all have different circumstances.
Because when I hear your story I think whoa, you made a decision once your legs came off that you were not going to be crippled by that.
Right.
Yeah, and I actually, I made that decision before my legs were amputated.
I made that decision as I was being wheeled down the hallways into the operating room, very aware that I was losing my legs.
I think at that time, all I had to go to is these goals that I had set for myself, because I was so scared.
I mean, you can't even wrap your head around the fact that you're going to lose your legs.
What is your life going to look like?
I couldn't even bring those thoughts or questions into my mind.
So I think to occupy myself, I thought, well, what am I going to do with this situation?
So going into the operating room, I thought, one, I'm not going to be a victim to this situation.
I had opportunities when I was in the hospital.
I almost died.
And if I wanted the easy way out, I could have taken the easy way out.
And I chose to be here.
And so I'm not going to feel sorry for myself.
And the second thought was when I figure this out, I will somehow help other people do the same.
And the third was that I was going to snowboard that year because I had never missed a season of snowboarding before.
So, having those three things as I went into the operating room very aware of what was going on, it gave me something, I think, to pull me into the future and feel in control of.
OK, so let's backtrack.
You started out as a massage therapist.
How old were you?
Were you 19 when you had that encounter with this stranger?
And this is what I love life.
Oh, I love life.
I love life.
It's, you know, all of us are having divine moments all the time.
And I say often that nothing that ever happens to you is wasted.
Right.
OK, I'll let you tell the story.
It's such an amazing story.
I was exhausted from a really busy day.
Ready to go see my friends, so getting into my car in the garage.
So my manager called and said, there's been somebody who's been forgotten about.
He's been sitting in the lounge for the last hour.
Is there any way you can come back and massage him?
And so, of course, I took a deep breath and thought ugh okay okay, I'm not going to let this guy sit there.
I went out and I introduced myself to this guy and we shook hands and he was so warm and so welcoming that in that moment I was really happy that I actually came back for him.
And so as I was working on him, we started to get into conversation.
At one point, he said, your touch is amazing.
And I said, thank you.
And he said, you feel like a very intuitive person.
And I said, thank you.
I kind of feel that way as well.
And he said, I have a question for you.
Have you crossed over yet to the other side?
And I did stop for a second to think of what he meant by that.
What's he talking about?
Right.
But I have to say that, leading up to this point, I'd say from middle of high school on, so for the last couple of years, I had this feeling that something was going to happen in my life.
And I didn't know if it was bad or if it was good.
And I felt as if every day that feeling got stronger and stronger.
And I also didn't know if it meant just that I'm supposed to be doing more with my life, more than what I was doing in that moment.
But all I know is there is this strong feeling that something more was going to happen in my life.
So when this man asked, have you crossed over yet?
I associated it to that feeling that I had felt.
Wow.
Intuitively you did that.
Yeah.
And I said, no, but I think I know what you mean.
Did you think he meant out of body?
Did you think he meant like Not necessarily out of body, but definitely what I thought he meant?
Not necessarily dying either, but what I thought he meant is somehow crossing over into just a different kind of living, on a different level of life.
So that made some sense to me.
I mean, I had grown up listening to Deepak Chopra and Wayne Dyer.
And so I was very fascinated with the spiritual world and what existed beyond what we could see.
So it didn't throw me completely off when he asked me this question.
But he then went into a story and said that when he was young he fell down a well and he drowned and he died.
And he said when he was resuscitated, when he came back, he felt that his life was completely different.
Everything was the same, yet it was completely different.
And he felt that he went on to live on a different kind of wavelength, on a different vibration.
And he said I feel, just by your touch, just by your presence, that if it hasn't already happened to you, that it's going to happen.
And he said, just know that when this happens to you, don't be scared.
And I was really emotional in that moment because it was just such a, you know, such a...
It was kind of confirming what I was already feeling.
That would be enormously frightening to me because, first of all, you know, anybody I've ever heard who's crossed over had to go through some kind of devastating thing to get there, like a car accident or some major tragedy or something.
So you weren't thinking that.
You weren't thinking, whoa.
You know, I think because I intuitively was feeling something myself.
That something's going to happen.
Yeah.
I didn't feel like, well, this is out of the blue.
Who is this person?
I didn't feel judgmental on, okay, what is this guy talking about?
I for some reason felt that I'd completely understood.
I didn't know what it meant though.
I really did not know, does that mean I'm going to die?
Does that mean, what does that mean?
And I went home and I just remember thinking okay, when this happens, whatever it is, don't be scared.
But like I said, I didn't necessarily know what it was.
Now, what's interesting to me is that you write that you were home and...
Your mother tells you about a friend down the street who has to have his legs amputated.
Right.
We thought that it was a flesh-eating disease.
He ended up surviving, but he lost his legs below the knees, his kidneys.
He lost his fingertips, his ears.
And your mom's telling you this story?
Yeah.
And I remember my sister and I saying, My God, what would you do without your legs?
And I thought, just being 19 years old, I jokingly said to my sister I said I would, I would wheel myself to the edge of a cliff and just go over it.
There's no way that I would be able to handle that.
And that's just my own 19 year old mind, you know, not knowing how to handle anything like that.
And I remember that night getting into the bathtub and shaving my legs and thinking what if I ever lost my legs?
What would that be like?
And, you know, the thought crossed my mind and then I thought, ah, you know.
Yeah.
That would never happen to me.
Yeah.
So take me to the day.
You were sitting on the side of your bed and you see, your feet are purple, your hands are purple.
Because how did you contract meningitis?
So bacterial meningitis is a pretty common bacteria, but it's something that, most of the time, our immune systems are immune to.
Right.
So that's why we're not all sick from it.
But if, for some reason, your immune system doesn't fight it off like mine didn't I came in contact with it, it got into my bloodstream, my immune system didn't fight it off then it's really deadly.
And actually a month before I got sick, I started to feel like I was coming down with the flu and my neck was a little achy and my mom actually took me to the hospital because she said, oh my gosh, it may be meningitis.
A month later, I was at work, And this was probably about a month after massaging that stranger.
A month after massaging the stranger who told you you were going to cross over.
Yes.
Hey.
His timing was right on.
Go ahead.
Go ahead.
But about a month later, I was at work, started to feel a little rundown.
I was massaging my third client.
Typically, I could do a full day and have a ton of energy and work out afterwards.
But this day was different.
I was exhausted.
And I thought, gosh, this guy just drained me.
That night, I had a temperature of 101, which is typical flu-like symptoms.
And the next morning, my temperature broke.
So seeing that I felt better, my family, my parents, everybody went out of town.
But that afternoon, instead of feeling better, I started to feel worse.
So my mom called me at one point to see how I was doing.
I said, God, Mom, I feel like I'm dying.
And she said, well, you're probably a little bit dehydrated.
Get to the hospital if you need to.
And after we got off the phone, I shut my eyes.
And then suddenly, I felt like I fell into the deepest sleep I have ever felt.
And then out of nowhere, I heard a voice say, Amy, get up and look in the mirror.
And this voice was it sounded like a mixture of my thoughts and my own voice.
But it was so powerful that I immediately opened my eyes.
I looked around.
Nobody was there.
And as I was sitting up, I started to realize that something was really wrong.
My heart was beating out of my chest.
I felt nauseous.
I felt sick.
I was shaky.
Yeah.
And I scooted over to the edge of the bed and I put my feet on the floor and I stood up and I realized that I couldn't feel my feet.
And I glanced down to the floor and I see that my feet are purple.
And I glanced at my hands and I saw that my hands are purple.
And then I looked at my reflection in the mirror which the mirror was just right by the bed, and I saw that my nose, my chin and my cheeks were purple as well.
And right then, I was dying.
And I knew I was dying.
My cousin walked in.
My mom had called her to check on me and just to see how I was doing.
And she walked in.
Right then?
Right then.
She took one look at me and she said, Oh my God, Amy, it looks like you're dead.
And I said, I'm dying.
I'm dying.
I know I am.
I have to get to the hospital right now.
And by the time I got to the hospital, my lungs had collapsed.
My veins had collapsed.
I was given less than a 2% chance of living, immediately put on life support.
And, um, My life changed forever.
You tell that beautifully.
This is what is so amazes me about life and divine order.
This horrible thing is happening to you, but you get warned by the stranger.
You get warned by the story that your mother is telling you.
It's what I talk about all the time about the whispers and the whispers and the whispers bringing you the message.
And then, you know, the voice, a voice, your voice, the spirit voice says, wake up, Amy.
You stand up.
You look at yourself.
And in that instant, your cousin walks in.
Had all of that not happened as it happened.
I would have died.
You would have died.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
You wouldn't have been here to tell this story.
Right.
Yeah.
And to share your light with us.
So when you're in the hospital, do you remember anything in the hospital?
Yeah, so I was in a coma.
I was on life support.
However, my stomach was starting to get more and more distended.
So the doctors figured that I was internally bleeding.
And they saw that if my spleen had not already burst, that it was about ready to.
So they rushed me into emergency surgery.
And I actually remember at one point feeling him opened me up, so feeling a scalpel, without any pain, and my heart was beating so fast and I remember thinking I know these people are here to save me, but I am going.
I am going right now and it felt as if I was hanging on by my fingertips and every heartbeat I was moving closer and closer to the edge and all of a sudden I felt my last heartbeat and it was so powerful and It took my breath away.
Literally.
Literally, yeah.
Yeah, my last breath.
And I remember suddenly Being in this space, in a dark space, and I knew I was very aware of what had just happened.
And I saw a light, but I didn't see.
You were aware that you had just died.
I had just died.
And I saw a light, not the bright, typical light that you would visualize at the end of the tunnel.
That we've heard about.
Right.
I saw, it was kind of a foggy, hazy, green light.
And it was enough of a light to see that there were three silhouettes standing in front of me.
I didn't feel that they were anybody I had known.
But they were saying you can come with us or you can stay.
And I remember all of a sudden thinking about all the stuff that I loved about life.
I remember thinking, I love the smell of rain and I love the sound of the ocean waves.
Were you thinking it or were you smelling rain?
Were you thinking it or were you hearing the sound of the ocean?
I know.
I want to say it was a mixture.
And I thought, there is no way I am ready to give up this stuff.
And it's really interesting.
It was all sensory stuff to me, the things that I really do love about life.
I didn't think about, you know, money or cars or any of that.
I thought about these sensory things I loved, about life.
That's so interesting to me.
And I think so interesting to other people who are listening to us, watching us right now.
Because in that moment, what will be the things that you actually think about?
What will you cherish?
Right.
So, okay, the beings are saying, come with us, and so you got to decide?
You did?
You got to decide whether you went or stayed?
I did.
Interesting.
Yeah, and I've talked to quite a few people who have had similar experiences, and some people remember having a choice and some people remember not having a choice.
But I was going to say It's so interesting because I know when people try to challenge near-death experiences and there's so many that have been documented based on the number of people I've interviewed who've had them, I think everyone's different.
And I think everyone depends upon the life that you have lived.
Yeah.
And how you relate to what you saw.
And how you relate to what you saw.
Yeah.
And before this happened, the doctor did say Amy, whatever it is you believe in, think about that now.
And the first thought that popped into my mind, the first feeling that I had was, I believe in love.
And I thought love creates everything.
That's why love creates everything.
It creates the world we live in.
It creates us.
It's energy.
It's gratitude.
It's purpose.
It's everything.
It's everything positive is love.
I believe in love.
I believe in love.
Love is my religion.
Yeah.
Love is my religion.
So that's what I hung on to during that last heartbeat.
I believe in love, and so I started thinking of all the stuff that I love about life and that I wasn't ready to give up.
And all the sudden, I got so frustrated and I feel like, with every bit of energy that was in my body, I yelled.
But I don't even know if I yelled, I feel like it just came out of every pore in my body.
I revolted and I said no no, I'm not going anywhere.
And Right then everything got silent and there was a bright light.
So this is the brightest light I've ever seen in my life.
This is maybe the bright light they talk about at the end of the tunnel, but it was sitting right over my shoulder.
And this light was telling me OK, you made the choice to stay, but just know that your life is going to have these ups and downs and that it could be very beautiful, but it could also be very challenging.
It wasn't saying it in those words, but that was basically what I was getting.
The essence, yeah.
And it said but no matter what happens in your life, just know that it will all make sense in the end.
And that, for me, is what you know.
That was the thought, the feeling, the understanding I had when I came back.
Yeah.
That it will all make sense in the end.
And also what the stranger had told you over a month before, don't be afraid.
Right.
And when I was laying on the hospital bed, that thought went through my head, don't be scared.
That the stranger had said?
What I love love, love is that your mom made a declaration and said nobody was to come into your space, into your hospital room, unless they were bringing positive energy.
Absolutely.
That there'd be no speaking of death, that there'd be no speaking of how hard it was going to be.
Right.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Did you know that she had done that?
I didn't know at the time.
It was in that period of time where I was so unstable.
And my mom felt that I was hanging on by a thread.
The doctors were outside the door debating on who was going to tell my parents.
It was time to pull the plug.
I mean, I was barely hanging on.
And my mom felt that even the slightest bit of negative energy, even a thought of death, would be enough and I would leave.
To send you over.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
And I felt that way too.
Yeah.
Not only did the meningitis cause Amy to lose her spleen and both legs, she also lost hearing in one ear.
Amy spent two months in treatment before returning home to continue her recovery.
Amy's kidneys had also failed later, requiring a kidney transplant, which she received from her father.
One of the things that you say, and on my own two feet, and look at those legs now.
One of the things you say is that you were watching the Oprah show a lot.
Thank you very much.
And Eckhart Tolle became one of your faves, who was also one of my great teachers.
The way I got through it is just staying from this moment to that moment.
I wouldn't worry about what's gonna happen tomorrow.
Not even what's gonna happen two hours from now.
Just what do I do now?
What do I do now?
What do I do now?
And for you, same thing.
Yeah, same thing.
And I think I was forced into that place.
I was forced into the moment when I was in kidney failure and my lungs were hemorrhaging, my adrenals were hemorrhaging and I was facing losing my legs.
I couldn't even think about my legs.
That was not even the worst of what was happening.
I had to think of that moment and just getting through that day.
And that's it.
When you wake up and your legs are gone, does it still feel like they're there?
And I actually am grateful for that.
I mean, some people get phantom pains.
I don't get those very often.
But I have what I guess you would call phantom sensations, which is my feet feel like they are in my shoes.
And I can wiggle my toes.
I'm wiggling all my toes right now because all the nerves and that energy, your body and your brain still think your feet are there.
And I have to say something that is pretty amazing, that this has happened a couple of times.
I've stepped outside and felt a wet raindrop on my foot.
And I look down and there's a raindrop.
So I feel it.
I feel the wetness of it.
And that to me is always interesting.
You know what?
Interesting.
That is crazy.
Crazy.
I know.
It is crazy.
That is amazing.
That's pretty miraculous.
So there's something.
There's more than just, I think, a body-mind connection.
There's an energy connection where I think your body still believes your legs are there.
Well, one of the reasons why you are such an amazing guest for Super Soul Sunday because we speak a lot about calling on this show and about setting a vision for your life.
And the story that you tell about visualization is just really how did you learn to be such a great visualizer?
I was born a daydreamer.
So I think daydreaming just turned into visualizing, especially when I understood the power of it.
In my worst moments, in my darkest moments, is when I've done my most visualizing.
And even being here today with you was part of that vision.
And when I lost my legs.
One of the toughest periods was when I stood up in my legs for the first time, because they were so painful and they were so confining that I thought how am I ever going to live this life of my dreams?
How am I ever going to travel the world?
How am I ever going to snowboard again?
And that day this was the first day I'd stood up in my legs I was so emotionally and physically broken that I crawled into bed and I didn't get out for a good 15 hours.
I just laid in bed, completely exhausted.
It could not wrap my head around the fact that this is my life and I have to navigate my life with these hunks of hardware as my legs that barely move, that are so uncomfortable.
And I'm sure there's a part of you that you're anticipating, OK, I'm going to get my new legs.
I'm getting my legs.
My legs are coming.
Yeah.
And I thought, these are my legs that I'm living in the rest of my life.
So emotionally physically, mentally just broken, drained.
It was times like those though, like times where I think I had just hit a point where I was so sick and tired of being sick and tired.
And I didn't allow myself to sit in that spot too long.
I just, I can't, I'm just not that type of person.
I have to keep moving somehow.
So I hit this point where I realized my legs are not coming back.
I mean, they're not coming back and there's nothing I can do about this situation right now.
And it was that moment that of prompted me to ask myself this question if my life was a book and i was the author, how would i want this story to go?
And i thought well, i don't want to see myself as this sad disabled girl.
I know that i don't want other people to see me as that either.
I thought what do i want to see?
I want to see myself walking again gracefully, and i wanted to see myself somehow sharing, somehow helping other people through this journey.
And I saw myself snowboarding again.
And I visualized it so strongly in that moment that I didn't just see myself carving down this mountain of powder.
I could feel it.
I could feel the wind against my face.
I could feel the beat of my racing heart.
I could feel my muscles twitching as if it was happening in that very moment.
And I didn't know how I was going to do it, but I knew that I was going to do it.
That's incredible.
That's incredible.
That is incredible.
And now I try to live my life with that knowingness that if you can see it and you can feel it and you believe it, then it is completely possible.
If you can see it and believe it, then you can achieve it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Does this mean now you're not afraid of dying?
Because what do you think happens when we die?
Yeah.
It's kind of nice.
It's kind of nice getting to a spot where you're like, well, I'm not scared to die.
I just knew that when I came back I wanted to live this second chance at life the absolute, fullest and best that I could.
So what happens when we die?
You've died.
Tell us.
Well, you get invited into another place.
I don't know.
Do we become one energy?
I mean, I think, I don't know, but there's something.
And so I can say my faith lies in that there is something and that feels good.
It's not just the end.
There's no way.
How could it be?
Love is so, you can't see it, but you can feel it.
It's so real.
How does that not continue?
So what do you make of your life now?
I think that what the stranger predicted has come to be a reality.
For sure, you're now operating on a completely different vibration.
You know what most people on the planet do not know.
You've had a glimpse, you say, of the other side that has to change you.
And what do you make of your life now?
I mean...
A lot of it makes sense, you know, it makes sense.
I can see why I am where I am, and I love how you say that we're co-creators of our lives, because I feel like I'm very grateful for the platforms and the opportunities I've had to stretch myself to figure out the possibilities and share that with other people.
But at the same time, i know that i've worked my butt off for each and every one of those opportunities.
So i just um, you know i, i just know i want to continue living an inspired life.
I want people to not look at my story and say oh, it's amazing what she's done.
That's so inspiring.
I want them to also feel that they have that inside of themselves.
Yeah, To live an inspired life.
Live an inspired life.
Yeah.
Well, you're doing that.
You know you're doing that.
So I've had all these little whispers throughout my life.
You're meant to do more, Amy.
You're meant to do more.
And now those whispers have quieted down, I feel like, because I'm doing it.
You're in the space where you belong.
Right.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Beautiful.
Thank you.
I'm Oprah Winfrey and you've been listening to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast.
You can follow Super Soul on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
If you haven't yet, go to Apple Podcasts and subscribe, rate, and review this podcast.
Join me next week for another Super Soul Conversation.
Thank you for listening.
