Unless the scars caught your eye, you would never guess she has suffered misfortune, let alone the trauma that cost her almost eight pints of blood—and very nearly her life. Janine Shepherd has a breezy, country-gal air that only fades when recounting her epic story’s darkest, strangest chapters.

Rewind to 1986. The blond Australian was a champion cross-country skier tipped to win her country’s first Winter Olympics medal. Shepherd, 47, recalls the run-up to her downfall calmly, and quizzically, with the words “It was funny.”

Just back from training with the Australian ski team in Europe, she was about to head to Canada in preparation for the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics. “I was just on top of the world,” she says. Shepherd was not in top form, however. Her doctor had just detected she had anemia and she yearned to relax. “I was tired. I was really tired.”

But a fellow skier on a visit to Shepherd’s home state, New South Wales, persuaded her to come for a bike ride over the scenic local hills known as the Blue Mountains. Shepherd acknowledges she should have refused, but casts her decision as “destiny.” The last thing she remembers, she says, her voice trailing off, is riding up a hill with her friends.

Then a pickup truck slammed into the back of her bike, shattering her body and dreams. Shepherd suffered a broken neck and back and abdominal gashes. Her right leg was ripped open, her collarbone and five ribs were fractured, and she sustained serious internal injuries and more. The complete picture makes gut-wrenching reading.

Shepherd believes her will to live made the difference. She describes herself as “a damn stubborn fighter.” But as a maimed athlete who had worshipped her body, her recovery would be fraught with heartbreak and frustration.

To shield her from the full horror of her condition, doctors provided information on a need-to-know basis. The list of wounds would have gone on forever and driven her to surrender, she says. Meanwhile, her head propped on sandbags, she sprawled in disbelief.

“I always thought, No, no, no. That’s not me—part of me knew that people broke their necks and backs and didn’t walk, but that wouldn’t be me. Not me.”

Six months of hell followed, punctuated by the sound of other patients sobbing deep into the night. Finally, the nurses lifted her for the first time since the accident in a plaster body cast. In a darkly Alice in Wonderland moment, she realized she had no feeling from the waist down. “I’m looking down and I was actually standing, but I had no sensation of standing,” she says, “so that was a really strange experience.”

After her hospital ordeal, the partial paraplegic went on an emotional roller coaster, seesawing between depression and bitterness toward the driver who voiced no remorse. A simple “Sorry, how are you?” would have been nice, she says.

“Finally, I got to the point where I thought, My God, this accident controls every part of my life—every single part. And I thought, What are you going to do? Are you going to spend the rest of your life being a victim—or are you going to get on with your life?”

Shepherd believes all her strengths and experiences up until the accident prepared her for the challenges of her life-changing injuries— and for the lessons she took from the trauma and fulfillment she finds today.

Born in 1962, Shepherd’s father was an orchard tender who joined his father-in-law in a gas station business that built pickup truck bodies, among other tasks. Her parents were not afraid of hard work, and encouraged that same ethic in their daughter. As she blossomed into a champion athlete, snapping up several national titles by the age of 10, the Shepherds nurtured Janine’s desire, urging her to be disciplined and to commit to being the best.

Innately, she was strong and equally at home sprinting or performing half-marathons or triathlons. “I was just so damn good.”

Shepherd also possessed an inquisitive nature; one of her favorite quotes is from the book Playing in the Zone: Exploring the Spiritual Dimensions of Sports by Andrew Cooper. The quote defines sports as a container where passions are channeled and virtues cultivated.

“I think about all the training and all the virtues that I’d cultivated up until my accident. And I really think that they gave me this strength to overcome everything that I was about to encounter,” she says.

“The technique I used when I ran or rode my bike up a hill was that I put my head down: Just focus on the next pedal push or the next step—until I finally got to the top,” she says. “I dealt with my recovery the same as I prepared for a ride. I put my head down. I had a plan. I focused. I was dedicated. I strived for excellence, whatever that meant for me—at one point it was just to be able to use a catheter. And so everything shifted from my outer life to all the inner victories.”

Progress was agonizingly slow. “I couldn’t look too far ahead—it was just too overwhelming.”

But her strategy worked. Not only did she recover, but Shepherd set her sights on new challenges. “When I got home and an airplane flew over, it dawned on me very quickly and I thought, Oh well, I can’t walk. I might as well fly.”

She became a commercial pilot and aerobatics instructor. She ultimately confounded the doctors by learning to walk. In addition, she married and—again defying medical opinion—had three children.

Shepherd’s life story became the basis for a TV movie. She was also recognized by the positive-change institute Junior Chamber International, which named her one of the Outstanding Young Persons of the World.

“I used to ask, Why, why, why me? But I didn’t have any answers,” Shepherd says. “I don’t care about the ‘why’ anymore. It’s about what you put into life—that’s what matters.”

Still heavily scarred, Shepherd walks with a limp but is in-demand on the talk circuit, drawing as many as 8,000 people in Australia and overseas. Through telling her story, she says she can make a difference in ways she might otherwise not have been able. “Giving to others is a much more fulfilling life than Olympic medals,” she says.

Shepherd has forgiven the pickup driver who changed her life. “I moved on, and I have no hard feelings at all,” she says. “In fact, in a weird way, I’m thankful because this made me who I am today. So life is a little bit of paradox, isn’t it?”

Dealing with the accident was a huge lesson in forgiveness—a key theme when she tells her story, and one that has a profound effect on audiences. Another important message she delivers: “I know that every single person has the strength and the spirit within to do what I have done. I truly believe that.”

Her advice to people enduring tough times is simple: “Learn to love the hills. Embrace adversity, because everything is here to teach you something.”

For more information on Janine Shepherd you can visit her website.