After a life-altering traumatic brain injury, former world champion freestyle skier Jamie MoCrazy rebuilt not just her body, but her identity. In this powerful conversation, she opens up about resilience, grief, healing, and what it truly means to thrive after everything changes.
From the heights of elite sport to the depths of recovery, Jamie’s story is one of extraordinary transformation. Once ranked World #1 in freestyle slope skiing, her life shifted overnight after a near-fatal accident in Whistler. What followed was a long, complex journey through physical rehabilitation, emotional rebuilding, and ultimately, redefining purpose. Today, through her advocacy and platform, she’s helping others navigate life after trauma. In this candid Q&A, she reflects on loss, growth, and the mindset that carried her forward.
GLAMOUR: You were once ranked World #1 in freestyle slope skiing and made history at the X-Games, but your life changed dramatically after your accident in Whistler. Looking back now, how do you reflect on that moment and the journey that followed?
Jamie: When I first woke up, I was overwhelmed with gratitude to just be alive. I embraced the new challenges each day brought, and that initial spark carried me far. But somewhere past the one-year mark, that spark began to fade. The visible challenges caused by my TBI were over…
I had relearned how to walk and talk, but my cognition and emotional stability still had major challenges. The frustration crept in quietly at first - then depression, anger, and a hollow sense of aimlessness settled over me. There were moments when I had the chilling thought that it simply wouldn't matter if I ever got out of bed again.
What I've come to understand is that this is almost universal among TBI survivors. Your brain is where your emotions live and when it takes that kind of impact, those emotions get damaged too. On top of that, your entire life has changed overnight. Feeling grief and anger about that isn't weakness. It's human. It's okay.
What pulled me through was making a decision not to stay depressed and at the bottom.I made the choice to start taking action to climb an alternate peak. My mom tricked me into starting therapy. She also convinced me to go back to college. I gave myself structure, commitment, and things to work toward. Slowly, I began to understand that the choices I make each day build the habits that shape my outcomes. Healing from a TBI isn't fast — and climbing back to any kind of peak takes even longer. I've had to learn patience, and to celebrate the steps rather than fixate on the summit I feel I haven't reached yet. I will always keep climbing for the rest of my life. I can honestly say, Jamie 2.0 truly has a wonderful life.
GLAMOUR: You survived a near-fatal ski accident that left you in a natural coma with eight brain bleeds and damage to your brain stem. What was the most challenging part of the recovery process, both physically and emotionally?
Jamie: After my near-fatal TBI, I had to relearn everything — how to walk, how to talk, how to perform the most basic movements my body had once done without thinking. But as a former athlete, I had a framework for that kind of work. I knew how to push through. I knew how to show up at your personal best on any given day, even if that meant spending an hour climbing a single flight of stairs. I knew how to set small, attainable goals in service of a much bigger one. So the physical recovery was hard — but it was never really a question of if. It was always: what modifications do I need to make to live the life I want to live?
The emotional recovery was another story entirely...
After the accident, I felt completely lost. I had no dreams, no vision for the future, no sense of who I was anymore. I wanted to live a life of impact — but it felt like the only purpose I'd ever known had been taken from me. And that kind of challenge is invisible. No one can see it. But it shapes everything. I was just beginning to rebuild my identity when grief hit me again. My sister — Dr. Crane — who had flown to Canada and became my primary care physician while I lay in a coma, died of cancer. She left behind a two-year-old baby. I was devastated. Confused. Depressed all over again. And that's when something shifted in how I understood life.
You cannot manifest everything. You cannot control what happens to you. But you can always control how you respond. And what we have — truly, all any of us ever has — is today. So make today the best day ever.
GLAMOUR: Recovery from traumatic brain injury often requires relearning even the most basic skills. What helped you stay motivated during those early stages of rehabilitation?
Jamie: I had to relearn everything. And I mean everything….swallowing water, writing my name, walking, talking, eventually skiing again. People always ask what kept me motivated through all of it. The honest answer is that motivation wasn't really the point.
I understood that there were attainable steps I needed to take to reach the outcomes I wanted. It was never about whether I felt like doing something. Take one of my hardest therapies: my mom would tie down my strong arm to force my paralyzed arm to rebuild its synaptic connections. The paralysis came from brain stem damage, and the only way to rewire it was to make my weak arm do the work - over and over again, with no shortcuts. I hated it. It was overwhelming. It was depressing. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done. And I did it anyway.
Because progress doesn't care about your likes and dislikes. It only responds to action. That reframe changed everything for me. Instead of asking "do I want to do this?" — which is a trap, because the answer will often be no — I started asking: will this action move me toward the life I want to live? If the answer is yes, then as Mel Robbins says, you have five seconds. Five seconds before your brain talks you out of it. Five seconds to just go. That's it. That's the whole formula. Not motivation. Not inspiration. Just a decision to build a habit that is repeated every single day.
GLAMOUR: Many people know you as an elite athlete, but your story today is also about resilience and redefining identity. How did your sense of self evolve throughout your recovery?
Jamie: For most of my life, my identity was simple: I was an athlete. That felt unshakeable..until the crash. In early recovery, I believed I was going to return to exactly who I was prior to the accident. I equivocated my TBI with an ACL surgery. I had already had to relearn how to walk at other times in my life. But as the physical milestones came back, I realized my relearning process was much deeper than a torn ACL. I also began to understand that by returning to being a competitive athlete I was at a much higher risk for death. So I stepped away from competing and into therapy. Because a deeper question surfaced: if I'm not an elite athlete, who am I? I felt lost in a way no physical therapy could fix. I had to grieve the version of myself that no longer existed before I could build something new.
Just as I was finding solid ground, life handed me another blow. My sister Amy, a physician who had flown to Canada the moment she heard about my accident and became my primary care physician through my recovery, died of cancer in 2022, leaving behind a two-year-old baby. She was one of the reasons I survived. And then she was gone. I was broken all over again. And that's when I arrived at the deepest truth recovery ever taught me: you cannot control what life takes from you. You can only control how you respond.
The discipline and resilience I'd built as an athlete belonged to me. They carried me through the coma, through rehab, through grief, through loss. Jamie 2.0 wasn't born from one moment. She was built through every hard thing I refused to run from. And she has a wonderful life.
GLAMOUR: You returned to skiing just eight months after your accident, which is remarkable. What did that moment mean to you personally?
Jamie: Returning to skiing was never a question of if for me, it was always when and how. The answer came through the National Ability Center (NAC) in Park City, Utah, one of the most remarkable adaptive sports programs in the country. I started on the bunny hill. Me, someone who had once competed at the top of the world, back at the very beginning. And honestly? That first day was exhilarating. I believed I could do it, I was surrounded by exactly the right people, and so I did.
For the first several months I skied multiple times a week exclusively with the NAC. Having a coach who understood adaptive progression and could control the risk and challenge level at every step wasn't just helpful, it was essential. It gave me the freedom to push without fear, to trust the process, and to rediscover a part of myself I thought I might have lost forever.
What I didn't fully anticipate was how profoundly that experience would shape what came next. Skiing with the NAC planted the seed for Alive to Thrive. Because I felt it firsthand, that electric moment when someone who has been through trauma accomplishes something they weren't sure they'd ever do again. That feeling is transformative. It rewrites the story you've been telling yourself about what's possible. That is exactly what Alive to Thrive events are built to create…. for every brain injury survivor who needs to feel it for themselves. That feeling mixed with education of resources available and mindfulness. I went home every night to a mom with a masters in psychology. So I naturally was prodded to think through my feelings and thoughts. That is another important aspect of Alive to Thrive events.
GLAMOUR: You founded MoCrazy Strong to raise awareness about traumatic brain injury and support others on similar journeys. What inspired you to turn your personal experience into a platform for helping others?
Jamie: During the years of my recovery, people told my family constantly - "Jamie is so lucky."
And in many ways, they weren't wrong. But luck is a complicated word. I was fortunate enough to live with someone who had a master's degree in psychology and had studied neuroplasticity. That meant our family didn't just hope for recovery… We made informed, intentional decisions about how to build the habits and environments that could actually rewire my brain. We understood the science, and we used it.
So yes, I had luck. But most of it was what I'd call controlled luck, the outcomes shaped by the deliberate actions of the people around me and the choices we made together. Even something as extraordinary as becoming the first patient in North America to receive a combined pressure and oxygen brain monitor, that was from a medical team that pushed boundaries and collaboration in medical advances worldwide.
Some things I had no control over. But far more than people realized, our outcomes were being actively engineered by opportunities to make science backed choices that lead to creating habits that rewired my brain. That realization changed everything for us. Because if our education and opportunities made that kind of difference for me, well what could it mean for the millions of brain injury survivors who don't have those same resources?
That question became our mission. We wanted to share what we had learned with brain injury survivors, with family caregivers, with policymakers, and with medical staff whose decisions ripple out to affect millions of lives around the world. Not everyone will have a family member with a master's in psychology. But everyone deserves access to the knowledge that could change their outcome. That is the foundation everything we do is built on.
GLAMOUR: Through MoCrazy Strong, you’ve helped educate and support people navigating life after traumatic brain injuries. What are some of the biggest misconceptions people have about TBI recovery?
Jamie: The number one misconception about brain injury is this: that your life will be worse. From the moment of diagnosis, survivors and their families are conditioned to expect less - less function, less joy, less possibility. We are handed a list of struggles and told to manage them, rarely a roadmap for how to overcome them. Anxiety, depression, these deficits become the defining narrative, when they should be the starting point of a much bigger story.
The second misconception is that you don't have the power to change your outcome. People are led to believe that meaningful recovery requires resources, funding, and access that most don't have. That simply isn't true. You can build mind-body habits right now, with what you have access to that will create real, measurable changes in your brain. Neuroplasticity doesn't wait for a grant. It responds to action.
The third misconception may be the most painful: that you are completely alone. You are not. Not even close. Brain injury is one of the leading causes of death and disability worldwide. In South Africa alone, the incidence rate is estimated at over 300 per 100,000 people. This is a global crisis hiding in plain sight. It hides, in part, because of the shame and stigma created by that first misconception. When survivors are told their lives will be worse, many choose silence over disclosure. They don't identify as brain injury survivors. They disappear into isolation, never knowing how many others are carrying the exact same invisible weight.
That silence is what we are determined to break. Because the moment a survivor realizes they are not alone, that millions of people around the world know exactly what they are living through, something shifts. Hope becomes possible again. And that is where recovery truly begins.
GLAMOUR: Your documentary #MoCrazyStrong shares your journey through medical breakthroughs, rehabilitation, and rebuilding your life. What did telling your story through film mean to you?
Jamie: The moment my mind came back to me in that hospital bed, I knew one thing with complete clarity: I was going to tell this story through film. That instinct only grew stronger as my recovery deepened and I began to truly understand how many people needed to see a story like mine. Not read about it, see it. There is something uniquely powerful about watching someone face many similar struggles that you face. Seeing is believing. And for brain injury survivors who have been told their lives will be worse, seeing someone thrive on screen can be the difference between giving up and deciding to fight.
We launched production on #MoCrazyStrong with very little experience and even less funding. What we had was a story worth telling and the determination to tell it. The film went on to win multiple awards and became available on Amazon Prime - including in South Africa, where brain injury affects hundreds of thousands of people and stories like mine are rarely seen.
That reach opened my eyes to something bigger. One film wasn't enough. There are millions of brain injury survivors around the world whose stories have never been told, never been seen, never been believed, even by themselves. That realization lit a fire in me to create more. More films, more voices, more proof that recovery is possible and that a full, meaningful life after brain injury isn't the exception…It's something every survivor deserves to see reflected back at them.
GLAMOUR: Wellness is often about both mental and emotional resilience. What daily practices or mindset shifts have helped you maintain balance and strength in your life today?
Jamie: People often ask me about wellness like it's something grand…a sweeping transformation or a rigorous routine. For me, it's actually the opposite. It's small, intentional, and deeply personal. I do yoga almost every day. Not an hour-long class, just about fifteen minutes. I journal in two distinct ways; first to write out my emotions, unfiltered and honestly, because getting feelings out of my head and onto paper keeps them from taking up permanent residence in my nervous system. And then I shift into strategy. I use my journal to map out the specific actions I'm going to take.I get a massage every few months. It's not a luxury - it's maintenance. My body has been through extraordinary stress, and learning to care for it without guilt has been one of the most important mindset shifts of my recovery.I take baths frequently. There is something about that quiet, unhurried time that resets me in a way nothing else quite does.I pay close attention to what I eat and how I sleep. Every single day. Not obsessively, but intentionally. I've learned that my brain and my mood are directly connected to both, and honoring that connection is one of the most powerful things I can do for my resilience.
And perhaps the most hard-won practice of all: I find my boundaries and I hold them. That one didn't come naturally. As someone who has always pushed beyond limits, learning to recognize and respect my own has been a different kind of athletic achievement…Wellness, for me, isn't about doing everything. It's about doing the right things, consistently, with intention. That's what balance actually looks like in my life.
GLAMOUR: In a powerful full-circle moment, you chose to hold your wedding ceremony in Whistler — the same place where your accident occurred. What did returning to that space represent for you?
Jamie: I got married on a mountain. I climbed an alternate peak. Not just any mountain…the mountain. The same peaks that had almost taken my life became the backdrop for the star of my new chapter of life. If that isn't a definition of reclaiming your story, I don't know what is.
Standing there, looking out at those breathtaking snow-covered mountains, surrounded by every person who had loved me through the hardest years of my life, I was overwhelmed in the best possible way. My neuro doctor was there. The man who had helped put me back together was now watching me walk toward the man I was choosing to build my future with.
I walked down the aisle holding both my mom and my dad's hands. And as we moved forward together, Climb Every Mountain from The Sound of Music filled the air.
I couldn't have scripted it more perfectly if I'd tried. Because that song, those words, captured everything. Every mountain I had literally and figuratively climbed to get to that moment. Every step taken when I didn't know if the next one was possible. Every person who had walked beside me, held my hand, and refused to let go.
Returning to the mountain that almost took my life to marry the love of my life wasn't just a wedding. It was a declaration. That I was still here. That I was more than surviving. That Jamie 2.0 had arrived, and she was radiant. That was also the time I legally changed my last name from my birth last name to my childhood nickname of MoCrazy.
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