Sam Bloom | Resilience, True Love and Unexpected Joy

Sam Bloom is one of Australia's most remarkable and resilient women.   Her life-changing story begins with the blink of an eye, a heartbeat, a split second in time. That’s all it took for Sam’s life to change forever. Sam had everything she had always dreamed of. She’d travelled extensively, fulfilled her childhood dream of becoming a nurse and was a happily married mother of three young boys. She spent her time raising her family on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, and ran, swam, biked and surfed every chance she had. Life was bliss. Without warning, the dream turned into a nightmare. Back in 2013, while on a family holiday in Thailand, Sam leant against a rotten balcony railing and fell through it, crashing six metres onto the concrete below. She was lucky to be alive and had suffered devastating injuries, including severe damage to her spinal cord that left her completely paralysed from the chest down. Broken and hopeless, Sam reached her outer limits of physical and mental suffering. And then Penguin arrived. Penguin was a baby magpie who fell from a tree and was rescued by the Bloom family who cared for her until she was strong. Yet while free to leave, she didn’t. she lived with the Bloom family for two years and in that time, gave Sam the sense of purpose, hope, and courage she was missing. This little bird changed Sam’s life. The incredible story of Penguin Bloom was turned into a book and is soon to be a major Hollywood movie, starring Naomi Watts and Andrew Lincoln. Now, Sam has just shared her story for the first time in a new book, Sam Bloom: Heartache & Birdsong. In the book, she writes about what it is really like to face life in a wheelchair. The new book is humbling, heartbreaking and uplifting in equal measure. You can purchase the book here. In our conversation today, we talk about: Life before Sam’s accident. The day her life and body was broken. The months that followed the accident and the day she was told she’d never walk again. Her new book Sam Bloom: Heartache & Birdsong, where she writes about what it is really like to face life in a wheelchair. What she has learnt about resilience and adversity. The biggest misconceptions about life in a wheelchair. Getting back on a surfboard and how that felt. Penguin – the little magpie that changed her life. The upcoming movie about her life, starring Naomi Watts as Sam. To purchase Sam Bloom: Heartache & Birdsong, click here. To find out more about Sam, go to sambloom.com.au  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.