Sam’s accident happened in 2013 when she was on a holiday in Thailand. She leaned against a rotten balcony railing, which broke and sent her plummeting six metres on the concrete below.
Her journey as a paraplegic moving forward was filled with challenges and heartache, but Sam says that sport helped reignite her tenacity and indomitable spirit.
Sam now holds four golds at the World Para Surfing Championships, and multiple Australian and Hawaiian titles.
“Sports is giving me a purpose, and it's made me feel like myself again,” Sam tells Women’s Agenda.
Paracanoe
Before her accident, Sam lived a very active lifestyle – running, mountain biking and surfing. To bring some of this back, she began thinking of other ways to take part in the outdoor adventure she’d so loved.
“I remember when I was in rehab, I suggested maybe I could kayak, just for fun,” she says.
It was that attitude and willingness to ‘give it a go’ that transitioned Sam into her next chapter of sporting feats.
“I loved it because I was out of the wheelchair and on the water and being surrounded by nature can be so healing. It was exhilarating to feel so free again.”
After a few years, Sam made the Australian Paracanoe team, and in 2015, she travelled to Italy to represent her country.
“When you’re going through a rough patch or struggling in some way, try reconnecting with something you’ve always enjoyed,” Sam suggests. “Discovering your purpose can transform everything overnight.”
“That's what happened with me because I think when I got on the Australian Paracanoe team, then I was like, ‘Yes, I finally have a purpose now, to get fit and have goals I can strive for’.”
Along with finding her sense of purpose through sport, Sam says she’s learned the importance of asking for and accepting help from others.
“I know that is really what helped me a lot, to ask for help,” she says, noting that before her accident, she hadn’t had to ask others for help very often.
"If you need help, it’s important to accept that you can’t always manage everything on your own. I've come to learn that people are more than willing to help, and they often gain just as much from it as the person being helped."
Reconnecting with the ocean
Along with paracanoe, Sam decided to get back on the surfboard as this had been a huge part of her childhood and adult life previously.
“I've grown up always surfing or being in the ocean,” she says.
“So, sure, it's not the same these days as it used to be – I still get so frustrated – I would do anything to be able to go out on my own, to just run down the beach and dive into the surf like I used to – it can be a bit frustrating having to rely on people, but once I’m out there it's just unreal.”
The first summer after her accident, Sam’s husband, Cam, took her for a swim and one of their friend’s was out on a surfboard in the ocean, encouraging her to get back into surfing.
“I was like ‘no’,” she says. “And then he convinced me. So I was lying down and he pushed me on a wave, and I [thought] that’s not surfing.”
It took around five years after her accident to reconnect with the ocean, Sam says, noting that it was a letter she received from a woman named Nola Wilson that gave her the mental push she needed.
Nola is the mother of professional surfer, Julian Wilson, and Sam says the letter was a true “act of kindness”.
“She just said, ‘you should get back out in the water, I think it’d be really good for you’,” says Sam, who then decided to give surfing another go.
Six months later, Sam entered her first Australian adaptive surf competition, and then she made it onto the national Australian team.
When she won her first World Para Surfing Championship, Sam says one of the highlights for her was having her kids there to experience the victory with her.
“I was so glad I won because I wanted to win for them, to kind of say, ‘thank you for putting up with me’,” she says.
"I wanted to show them that despite the challenges life throws your way, you can still achieve pretty amazing things.”
This article was written in partnership with and originally published by Women's Agenda.
