Good afternoon. I remind members of the Covid-related measures that are in place and that face coverings should be worn when moving around the chamber and across the Holyrood campus. The first item of business this afternoon is time for reflection. Our time for reflection leader today is Joanna Butterfield MBE, parasport athlete.
Please close your eyes for a moment and imagine with me.
You are 14, playing rugby for your school. Crash! Bang! That was a huge tackle—and you are lying on the floor, unable to move.
You are in your 20s, speeding home from a party. For a split second, you lose concentration. Crash! Bang! The car is in bits and you are sitting there, unable to move.
You are 65, going for a shower. A simple slip on the floor and the next thing that you remember is lying in hospital, unable to move.
You are a 30-something girl, working for the Army—just normal. Routine tests discover a tumour on your spinal cord. One week later, after surgery to remove it, you wake up unable to move.
Those are all real stories of people that I met in hospital. That shows us that life is fragile. No one is exempt from the possibility of a life changing completely and irreversibly in a moment.
You can open your eyes.
28 January 2011 is a date that is impaled on my brain forever: the day that I walked into an operating theatre and woke up paralysed from the chest down—the day that my life changed forever. It would be very easy for me to be sad and depressed, and to ask, why me? However, I am not here to tell you that story. Today, on international women’s day, my story is one not of sadness but of happiness and success.
People ask me what that moment was like, waking up paralysed. It is hard to explain but, for me, it was very matter of fact. I could not change it, but I was not going to let it defeat me. I had a choice that day and on every day since. I still have a choice: to be angry for what I cannot do and do not have, or to be thankful for what I do have, what I can do and who I am. I choose to be thankful. Am I thankful that I am a tetraplegic? No, but I am immensely thankful for the opportunities that I have been given because of that. I love my life.
I find myself sitting here talking to you as a multiple world, European and Paralympic champion. Sport gave me a reason to carry on—an avenue to be successful and achieve great things. I have travelled the world and met so many great people. I no longer hear the words, “You can’t do that ... you’ll never achieve that.” I now get to see kids’ faces light up as I share my story and flash a medal or two. It has taken a lot of hard work and dedication, and I still struggle—don’t we all?
My message to you is that many things happen in life that we cannot control and that we cannot change. However, we can control and determine our own actions and choices in response to such events.
I am stubborn. I chose to never give in; not to accept “you can’t do that”; and to take every helping hand and opportunity that was presented to me. There have been a lot of those and you never know what lies behind that unopened door.
I chose to take the tatters of a shattered life that was broken by injury, pick them up, mould them and make them into something beautiful again.
Thank you for listening. [Applause.]
Thank you very much, Joanna.