2008, I wanted to make the Beijing games and I didn't.
And that loss was what made me realize how much I wanted to do this.
And that's where I think I learned what I wanted.
I learned my identity, I learned my passion, my purpose.
And I am so happy to have not made the games my first time around because it lit a fire that just.
I can't imagine my life without that just burning and fueling me for everything that I do now.
So, born in 1989, Ukraine, in the shadow of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, my guest today, Oksana masters, was really left to fend for herself in an orphanage.
And that wasn't all.
She also was left struggling with pretty extensive physical challenges, from missing bones and parts of limbs, to muscle and organ tissue due to in utero radiation poisoning, from that very disaster.
And the world was really stacked against her.
And the conditions in the three orphanages that she would endure, as she described, were truly brutal.
But she refused to give up at every step along the way until at age seven, she would find herself adopted by a single american mom whose own years long journey, by the way, to bring Oksana home is its own astonishing story.
The simple fact that she survived is remarkable.
But she didn't just survive.
Once in her new home and during multiple additional surgeries and amputations over the years, her indomitable spirit, it just.
It refused to let anyone tell her what she could or could not do.
She was unstoppable and she would not let anyone say anything else.
And nearly a decade later, Oksana would end up stunning.
Not just her mom and the local community, but the entire world, becoming the United States most decorated winter paralympic or even olympic athlete, taking home 17 medals in four different sports.
She has since been featured everywhere from Sports Illustrated to the New York Times has written a powerful memoir, the Hard Parts, a memoir of courage and triumph that recounts her incredible journey from the shadow of Chernobyl to the world's biggest stages.