How Training in Nature Led Lacey J Henderson to the Paralympics

In our All Access issue, we’re spotlighting how the disability community is making the outdoors more accessible for everyone. Explore the package here.

Paralympian Lacey J Henderson describes herself as impulsively optimistic. After being diagnosed with synovial sarcoma, a rare form of cancer, at just 9 years old, Henderson had her right leg amputated above the knee in a lifesaving surgery. Relieved to have her cancer prognosis behind them, Henderson’s family encouraged her to get back to her regular childhood routine, but the transition soon proved to be difficult.

Henderson didn’t hear anyone around her speaking about disabilities in a positive, celebratory way, and it was clear that the world was not built with access in mind. At times, she felt as though she was tossed outside without the tools she needed, but with the added pressure that she would have to figure it out alone. And she did, for the most part, but often at the cost of her energy and well-being, which she says “was not a motivating way to feel as a kid.”

Growing up in Denver, there were plenty of opportunities to get outside. But if disabled kids wanted to participate in class outings, there was an underlying expectation that they should either keep up or stay home, Henderson recalls. During one class trip, she says, “They were trying to put snowshoes on me, and it was not working at all, and I was zero percent having a good time.” Someone had to carry her backpack, and it left her feeling embarrassed — a burden among her classmates who didn’t need support.

On another occasion, the kids endeavored a three-mile trek where Henderson felt uncomfortable taking off her sweaty prosthetic, which resulted in her skin being rubbed raw. These experiences compounded, leaving Henderson feeling like the outdoors were inconvenient, inaccessible, and oftentimes isolating — a notion she references in her aptly named podcast, “Picked Last For Gym Class.”

Nevertheless, Henderson’s athletic prowess and competitive spirit began to emerge as she got into cheerleading. In this space, she was able to push herself, perform flips and tricks, and understand what her body could do. Henderson excelled at cheer and received a Division I athletic scholarship for it.

Competitiveness runs in her family, so it was no surprise that during a cheeky beer pong game, her dad, a national decathlon champion who went to the US Olympic trials for pole vaulting, bet Henderson she couldn’t pole vault two feet. Given the confidence she gained in cheer and her impulsive optimism, she was determined to prove him wrong. Not only did she take on his bet, she completed the jump successfully — and loved it.

Around this time, Henderson started volunteering at the Amputee Coalition Youth Camp (nicknamed Amp Camp). It was her first experience in a place where everything was accessible and everyone felt included. The campers participated in archery, canoeing, hiking, and swimming. People’s prosthetics would be scattered over the campgrounds, she remembers, and the cafeteria would announce, “Who left their legs at the pool?” The one thing that had separated her from everyone in her cheerleading community suddenly became the thing that united her with her fellow campers.

One day, she noticed a camper bouncing around on a running prosthetic. Prior to this, she assumed running prosthetics were a tool reserved for elite athletes only, but she was instantly inspired to try pole vaulting again — after all, if she was able to run faster, she could hit higher jumps.

With a newfound confidence in her disability and the tools she was previously missing for her athletic journey, the pieces clicked. Henderson soon qualified for the Paralympic Track & Field National Championships, and four years after that fateful beer pong bet, Henderson made her first US Paralympic team, going on to compete in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.

Being around other Paralympic athletes, she came to the realization she was more significantly disabled than she’d previously thought. The Paralympic community became a place Henderson felt safe, where she was finally seen for every part of herself, and the experience of being around disabled people taking care of each other changed her profoundly. She began to work through the internalized ableism that was subconsciously instilled in her throughout childhood, and she grew the confidence to advocate for her access needs.

Henderson’s Paralympic experience radicalized her in a new way, and she realized she had a deep passion for creating a world where disabled people have a prominent place in every level of sport and society. This passion led Henderson to go back to school for sports psychology and ushered her to NBC, where she made history as the network’s first Paralympian in-country TV host for the Paralympics in 2024.

Henderson’s relationship with the outdoors has changed, too. Track and field requires hours in the sun every day, and the more time she’s spent outside, the better and more regulated she has felt. Nowadays, whenever she travels for work or sport, she forces herself outside for some grounding time with the grass and trees, which she says “is so good for our circadian rhythms.”

Thanks to her experience with other disabled athletes, she learned to have an authentic and vulnerable relationship with nature. When out walking with friends, she’s comfortable asking to stop and take a break so she can take off her leg if it gets too sweaty. She even faced her childhood nemesis, snowshoes, when she joined the annual fundraising climb for the Range of Motion Project, an international nonprofit that works to ensure access to high-quality prosthetic care for those in need. With the ROMP team, Henderson took on a dangerous climb up the snowy peak of Cotopaxi, an active stratovolcano in the Andes.

Now, when armed with the right tools, a supportive community, and a dose of her impulsive optimism, being outdoors no longer is isolating. Instead, it makes Henderson feel connected, as though she’s part of something far greater than herself.

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Rebecca Sky is an award-winning author from Vancouver Island, Canada. She is passionate about storytelling and the need for more body diversity in media. She was a competitive downhill skier until a poisonous spider bite triggered an autoimmune shutdown that left her chronically ill — she likes to say chronically i(ll)conic — and with dynamic disabilities. Since hanging up her toque she spends her time writing about badass disabled, queer, and plus-size characters living their fullest lives.