In the end, you have to forgive in order to heal and move forward with your life. For people who hurt you very deeply, you don't have to forgive them for their sake but for your sake, so that you can move forward and have a healthier and happier life.
— Dominique Moceanu
I never, ever objected to hard work.
Standing on the podium at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta and receiving a gold medal was the crowning jewel in a successful gymnastics career and, most certainly, the confirmation that my parents' sacrifices were not in vain.
When you have traveled the world, won Olympic gold, and gone through a very public court battle against your parents all by the age of seventeen, surprises don't come easy.
In Romania, of course, gymnastics is among the most popular sports, and my parents had a dream of escaping the Ceausescu regime and giving their child a better life. So they came to the United States and put me in gymnastics.
I was so afraid to make mistakes and get reprimanded by my coaches that the joy of the sport started slipping away.
I don't mind sacrifice. I don't mind discipline. But a good coach allows people to blossom. I've seen that. I didn't have it.
I realized I was the one doing all the training, earning the money, and my parents were living off of me.
My parents enrolled me in a gymnastics class when I was three years old, and I just was drawn to gymnastics. I loved it. It was my playground, and I could run around and be free there.
Gymnastics is the greatest sport in the world, and one of the hardest, but we have to watch out for domineering male figures who try to belittle and scream at young girls.
I believe you can be young and compete in gymnastics if you have a coach who is looking out for you and if there is a good gym environment where the coaches are taking care of you emotionally and physically.
My father wasn't allowing me control and the financial freedom that I was asking for. I was 17, about to be 18 within a year, so I started asking more questions because I felt that I needed to start learning about those things.
Gymnastics was my calling. I think it chose me in a lot of ways.
I loved gymnastics. I was eager to compete. I was hungry to go out there and be the best in the world, and I had that determination.
I learned to take those experiences that were difficult in my life and in the adversity that I had overcome to use it for a positive change.
I was awkward-looking with huge brown eyes, dark brown, pencil-straight hair styled into an old-school Romanian bowl haircut from the 1980s. And I was very, very small. I was always the tiniest kid on my street and in my classes at school... The gym was the one place I didn't have to worry about feeling awkward for being so petite.
My parents, Romanian immigrants, struggled to provide me a better life than the ones they had left in their homeland. They worked hard to give me every opportunity in life, and once I showed natural talent as a young gymnast, they spent every last penny on my training.
Since my mother is an extremely devoted Christian Orthodox woman, she prayed a great deal and taught me how to pray.
I was raised into the Romanian Orthodox culture by my parents, and most notably my mother, who is a profoundly religious and spiritual woman.
The time leading up to the 1996 Olympics was the most demanding and stressful of my career. The sport I had loved so much was slowly becoming a nightmare as I trained with Bela and Marta Karolyi the summer before the Olympics.
In football, you're dealing with grown men. In gymnastics, you're dealing with prepubescent teenage girls. There's a huge difference. At that age, you're not confident enough to have a voice.
I certainly believe that having my husband be in my life has been a tremendous blessing.
We need to educate our elite coaches more and have a better approach to teaching the athletes about how to be healthy rather than berate them, humiliate them, use tactics that could scar them for life.
My husband and I believe that if you treat a child well and nurture his talent and physical ability, in a healthy environment, the child will succeed no matter what.
I was able to represent my country and put on the red, white, and blue - how many people in the world get to do that? Standing on the podium with my teammates, and being the first women's gymnastics team to win this gold medal, it was life-changing!
I prayed a lot. That's all I had in the gym; that was the thing I could turn to.
I got injured at the Olympic Trials in 2000. I could not jump. I could not walk on my leg properly. I couldn't bend my knee. I couldn't straighten it.
In my very first interview, at nine years old, I said I wanted to be an Olympic gold medalist. That was the first time I said it out loud in front of somebody other than my parents.
I was 26 years old when I found out that I had a sister who I never knew existed.
I can barely recall a single holiday when my father didn't make a scene or create some kind of chaos. We were always walking on eggshells.
As a competitive gymnast, my life has always been filled with challenges that would ultimately define my future. From day one, I was taught to be prepared at all costs.
For as long as I can remember, my mother went to church every single Sunday. She was born and raised in Romania as a person with limited means, and faith was something she could rely on - something that was free.
I'd challenge myself to see how long I could go without a fall - on beam, I once went three weeks.
I don't think ethical people deal with intimidation as a method to achieve success. Undermining someone's self-esteem isn't a method to achieve success.
Training with Bela and Marta Karolyi took the joy out of the Olympics for me. I look back and feel there was a lot of verbal and physical abuse. For years, I felt it was my problem.
I have a secret sibling that I never knew existed and who was given up for adoption at birth by my parents, and she was born without legs.
Some coaches are not educated at the elite level in health and nutrition. They're not educated in how the body works from anatomy and physiology perspectives.
I was very hungry to compete internationally when I was 10 years old, and I was good enough to compete, so that part never made me afraid or worried at all. When I was at my peak, around 12 and 13, I won my junior national and senior national titles back to back.
My mom always knew I would be able to take care of myself, but my dad was afraid.
I had this sister that was born who was given up for adoption, and I never knew it.
My parents didn't know anything about collegiate scholarships, so they had accepted the national team training stipend, the monthly stipend that I received after making the national team, so I was ineligible for NCAA eligibility anyway.
