The 1984 Paralympic Winter Games in Austria

She could only hear the cheering of the crowd and the hammering of her heart as she flew by on the slalom course. Soon, she found her space and moved into a Zen-like calm with only the woosh, whooshing of her skis as she expertly maneuvered around each flag. She had never gone faster—not even in her dreams. Skiing had become so much a part of her that decades later her husband would kiss her awake.

“You were skiing again, weren’t you?”

“All night,” she would reply beaming.

Yes, everything was finally coming together, and then she lost control and spun out on a slick patch, landing on her butt in the middle of the course. “Nooooo!” All the years of training adding up to nothing; all the fanfare that would never be. The gold was gone for sure. Then, a voice in her head cut through all the buzzing anxiety. “Get up, Girl. You’re not over yet.” And somehow, she did. Up, up and back to her rhythm. Nothing else mattered but getting up, just like when she was a little girl first leaning to walk on her artificial leg.

And indeed, it was far from over. Each of her competitors had also fallen on the same patch of ice. She won the silver and two bronze medals that day and was declared the second fastest woman on one leg and the first African-American woman to win a medal in any Paralympic event. Her unusual road to Olympic victory inspired the quote, “I learned that people fall down, winners get up, and gold medal winners just get up faster,” which was prominently featured on a Starbucks cup. It can be seen as an encapsulation of her personal philosophy of life to embrace resilience and never ask for permission.

How did downhill skiing become the life obsession of a Black girl from Detroit with one leg? One day, her mother came home with a photo of a skier with one leg with the caption, “I can do this, I can do anything!” Bonnie’s first thought was that Black people don’t ski. However, even though her mother was too busy and financially strapped to give her skiing lessons, that image stayed in her mind.

Bonnie was born missing a growth sensor in her right femur, which meant it didn’t grow like the other one. When she was five, she had the bottom part of her foot and some of the leg amputated so that she could wear a prosthesis. In spite of these challenges, or because of them, she graduated magna cum laude from Harvard, became a multi-medal winner in the Paralympic games, a celebrated motivational speaker, and a bestselling author of inspirational books including How Strong Women Pray, Micro-Resilience, How Great Women Lead, and Live Your Joy. She also develops training and leadership programs for Fortune 500 companies to teach women to be more resilient both in business and in their daily lives. She helps multi-cultural women in particular to build support networks and learn how to more effectively communicate with men in the corporate world and take charge of their careers. Men and women have very different ways of presenting themselves to the world. For instance, men are much more comfortable “bragging” to others about their accomplishments. Instead of simply telling women that they must “brag” more, she encourages networking and teaching women to be “helpable,” which has nothing to do with being dependent or needy.

You have to be somebody that people want to pick to give away the awards on TV. You have to be the kind of person that people want to help. What does that mean? It means being available, being visible, sending really good thank you notes when people help you. It means getting out, meeting people, connecting, and even asking for help, too.

Bonnie St. John is also concerned about the rising stress and depression levels among adolescents, which has been attributed to social media because teens are constantly comparing themselves to others and trying to present a perfect image. In her speech directly addressed to high school students, she emphasized the differences between looking extraordinary and being extraordinary. She asked them to list how these two concepts contrast.

Looking extraordinary is really for everyone else, being extraordinary is for yourself. Looking extraordinary lasts five minutes; you post the picture and you move on. You need another picture tomorrow, and the next day. Looking extraordinary is fleeting, being extraordinary is lasting.

They came to the consensus that looking extraordinary can actually get in the way of being extraordinary. It will suck your energy and make you do things that aren’t going to help you be the best version of yourself because you’re so worried about being the best version of somebody else.

In many ways, she inherited her optimism and toughness from her mother who had suffered many setbacks as a child. She was raised by an alcoholic single mother who had dropped out of school in the fourth grade. Her mother was both physically and sexually abused by her stepfather. And even though she was forced to walk past the beautiful school for affluent White kids every day on her way to the run-down, Blacks-only school, this strong-willed girl somehow learned the value of education, went on to get her Ph.D., become an educator, principal and a transformational leader.

One of the biggest things I got from my mother is to work at being positive. I am a motivational speaker by profession. I inherited that. She used to write affirmations. She would write down a positive statement over and over, almost like journaling. If your brain says, ‘No, that’s not possible,’ you rewrite your brain’s commentary. You write affirmations and then you kind of process the commentary. Even though she had demons, she worked to fight them. That is something I certainly inherited, the concept that you could overcome challenges, you could dream big. Positivity is a muscle that you have to exercise, just like going to the gym. She clearly gave us examples of what to do in the face of adversity.

This woman who had dropped out of school in the fourth grade made a pact that she would educate her children and fill her house with books. All three were awarded scholarships to a private school. Nothing was beyond reach. She never catered to her children by doing everything for them. She could have over protected Bonnie because of her disability or because she was the baby of the family, but instead she was expected to do everything her sister and brother did. She was responsible for doing household chores, walking to school, and working at a fast-food restaurant part time in high school. She never quit even through the hard times. She never backed down because she never realized that that was an option. Their mother was always cultivating passion and planting seeds of inspiration in her children. She would then stand back to watch them flourish.

Bonnie was also sexually abused as a child, as her mother was, which she realized was part of the legacy of not respecting her own feelings, not being very in touch. She says, “Some of being able to be tough on myself was probably because of being very shut down emotionally. My mother had also been abused and was very tough on herself. It kind of goes down the generations.” When he left, it was like “a dark cloud had lifted from our lives.”

Many years ago, Bonnie stopped wearing her cosmetic leg covered in “flesh-colored” foam, which her daughter always referred to as the “Barbie” leg. It was not at all functional and would lose its shape like a worn-out couch cushion. She always felt much more powerful in her metal “Terminator” leg, which would usually bring about compliments and lots of compassionate questions from strangers. For example, when she met the Dali Lama after medaling in the Paralympic games, he said, “I love your leg!” with his usual infectious enthusiasm.

As a Black woman with a disability, she has experienced racism, sexism and ableism, which over the years, she has come to realize are all linked. People who are uncomfortable with those who are different will discriminate against all minorities. Her mother taught her not to take it personally when people say offensive things. However, the motivations are very different. She has found that racism is much more hate-based and toxic, while ableism is more well-meaning yet patronizing. As every person with a disability can no doubt relate, people try to “complement” her by telling her that she is not really Black, not really disabled because she moves so well, is an accomplished athlete, and has had so much success in her life.

They don’t understand that what they are actually saying is ‘my stereotypes of Black people and people with disabilities are so bad that I’m going to compliment you by saying you’re not those things.’ I think they would be surprised to hear that that is what they’re effectively saying because they don’t realize it. Another thing people say is, ‘I’m color blind, I don’t see color, I just see people.’ Again, what they are saying is, ‘I don’t want to deal with the complexity of your reality.’ If you’re Black in America, there are a whole lot of things that you’d have to deal with. I don’t get to choose to say, ‘I don’t see color,’ because, it’s part of my reality. Somebody who is White saying, ‘I don’t see color, I just see people’ is saying, I really don’t want to know what you have to live with.

As Bonnie stood at the Olympic podium, the three medals heavy around her neck, she was in a state of shock and had a permanent smile about to crack her face in two. Her life had truly changed with the attainment of this dream. How did she get here? She never gave up and never asked for permission.