To this day, Christopher Reeve does not know why the horse he was riding in a competition on Memorial Day 1995 suddenly stopped in its tracks. That stop sent Reeve flying directly over the horse's head with his hands entangled in the reins. Reeve landed directly on his head, breaking his first and second vertebrae. Had he fallen with his head twisted slightly to the left, he would have been killed instantly. Instead, the accident left him quadriplegic, paralyzed below the neck and dependent on a ventilator to breathe.

Reeve was taken by ambulance to a hospital in Culpeper. Virginia, near the site of the competition, then flown by helicopter to the University of Virginia Medical School. His doctor recommended surgery--an operation to reattach Reeve' skull to his spinal column.

Reeve knew that his chances of surviving the operation were only about 50 percent. He questioned the risks--and his very desire to go on living. He feared becoming immobile and ending up a burden to his family. "Why not die and save everyone a lot of trouble?" he said to himself. But Dana, his wife, promised to support him no matter what. She uttered the words that, according to Reeve, saved his life: "You're still you. And I love you."

Until his accident, Reeve had a promising career as an actor. He became a celebrity through his roles in four Superman films. In addition, Reeve was an accomplished stage actor. At the time of his accident, he had already planned a trip to Ireland to act in Kidnapped, a film to be produced by Francis Ford Coppola.

Reeve also led an active life off stage. He'd sailed since age 7 and flown planes for over 20 years, making two solo trips across the Atlantic. He skied, played tennis, and did scuba diving as well.

Reeve's riding accident canceled all this activity. He wondered if would ever move again, let alone work.

In his autobiography Still Me, Reeve reports that two things helped him reconstruct his life after the accident. One was the choice to create a vision for his future: "I gradually stopped wondering, What life do I have? And began to consider, What life can I build? Is there a way to be useful, maybe to other people in my predicament?" Most of all, he looked for a way to participate meaningfully in his family life.

The second source of help was a new outlook. Reeve had never been religious in any traditional sense. But he concluded that spirituality itself, "the belief that there is something greater than ourselves, is enough." According to Reeve, God does not cause catastrophic accidents but does enter human life as grace--the power to respond positively to tragedy.

Reeve's new outlook also led him to re-think what it means to be a hero:

When the first Superman movie came out, I gave dozens of interviews to promote it. The most frequently asked question was "What is a hero?" I remember how easily I'd talk about it, the glib response I repeated so many times. My answer was that a hero is someone who commits a courageous action without considering the consequences. A soldier who crawls out of a foxhole to drag an injured buddy back to safety, the prisoners of war who never stop trying to escape even though they know they may be executed if they're caught. . . .Now my definition is completely different. I think a hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles. . . . Travis Roy, paralyzed in the first eleven seconds of a hockey game in his freshman year at college. Henry Steifel, paralyzed from the chest down in a car accident at seventeen, completing his education and working on Wall Street at age thirty-two. . . . These are the heroes, and so are the families and friends who have stood by them.


Reeve succeeded in reinventing his family life and creating work that contributes to others. He heads the Christopher Reeve Foundation, which funds medical research to develop new treatments for paralysis. He also raises money for organizations such as the American Paralysis Association and speaks frequently on behalf of people with disabilities. One of his passions is enacting legislation to raise the cap on lifetime benefits for health insurance, a change that would help many people with spinal cord injuries. Reeve also returned to work in film after his accident: He directed In the Gloaming, a movie for HBO about a young man with AIDS who returns home to die. The show won respectable ratings and positive reviews.

Reeve still requires constant medical care from a team of nurses and health aides. And he reports that he's still not "adjusted" to his disability. Though he acknowledges that people are more than their bodies, he finds it difficult to live by that philosophy. He feels jealous when he sees friends embrace each other or talk about their ski vacations. And he laments the fact that he has not hugged his children since 1995.

However, Reeve does find strength through focusing on the present moment, an idea expressed in Power Process #2: "Be here now." Instead of dwelling on memories of what he could do before his accident, Reeve returns to what he can do in the present.

"I have to stop this cascade of memories, or at least take them out of the drawer for a moment, have a brief look, and put them back," Reeve writes. "Just as my accident and its aftermath caused me to re-define what a hero is, I've had to take a hard look at what it means to live as fully as possible in the present."