The Idaho resident said the accident happened five years ago, just two days after a breakup. Her friends encouraged her to go with them to a nearby mountain for a hike, with plans to park the car at the base before heading out.
But on the drive home, Kennedy became upset and started to cry. She then lost control of the car, causing the vehicle to flip and roll over in a crash that would leave all three people inside facing a terrifying fight to survive.
“I wasn’t on the ground, I was actually hanging in the power line by my broken leg so all three of us were thrown out, and I was hanging up there,” she previously told Inside Edition.
Her memory of that moment remains hard to hear. Instead of landing on the ground after being thrown from the car, she said she ended up trapped above it, caught on the power line with severe injuries.
Kennedy was left hanging about 30 feet in the air from a power line by her broken leg. She remained there for nearly an hour before emergency crews were able to get her down and begin treating her injuries.
“I remember I was drowning in my blood because it was running from my leg, it was running from my arm, and it was going in my nose, and I was just wiping it out because it was literally drowning me,” Kennedy recalled, describing how the blood from her injuries made it hard for her to breathe while she waited for help.
Her injuries were severe. Her arm was almost torn off, her femur had snapped over the wire, and the electrical damage from the power line added another serious layer to the trauma.
Doctors later told Kennedy she had a severe brachial plexus injury. The nerves had been ripped from her spine, leaving her arm permanently paralyzed and changing how she would use her body from that point on.
Those attempts did not work in the long run. After repeated efforts and a long recovery process, doctors eventually amputated her leg.
The amputation became another major turning point in her life, but Kennedy has since spoken openly about what happened and how she learned to move forward after the crash.
‘I knew I could do it’
Even after facing injuries most people can hardly imagine, Kennedy has built a new life as a motivational speaker and a source of encouragement for people who follow her online.
The content creator recently finished a HYROX fitness race while wearing her running blade. The race combines running with functional workout stations, and Kennedy trained for six months before taking it on.
“I knew it was really scary, and I knew it was gonna push myself more than anything I probably could’ve chose,” she told PEOPLE. “But I knew I could do it.”
She continued: “The training was honestly the worst part.”
“I was like, ‘I’m so tired of going to train, running and sled… the same thing every day.’ It got really draining.”
‘Choose your hard’
Kennedy said running was probably the hardest part of the HYROX process, especially because of the way sweat affected her prosthetic. She added: “It just gets so sweaty that [the prosthetic] will literally completely fall off. And so that gets really frustrating when you’re trying to hit your goal.”
Even with those setbacks, Kennedy said she plans to take on another HYROX. She said she would go through the hard parts again for the rewarding feeling, and for the chance to feel like she made a difference in someone else’s life.
When she spoke about why she chose to share so much of her experience, she told PEOPLE: “The whole point of sharing it… is to help others be like, ‘Oh, I can go do something really hard’.”
Kennedy went on to say: “Choose your hard. You do you and go push yourself… go have a good life.”
Her message is simple, but it carries the weight of everything she survived. She wants people to see that hard things do not have to stop them from building a full life.
