Dominique Moceanu, a member of the 1996 Olympic gold-medal-winning US women's gymnastics team, received the biggest bombshell of her life.
As her father was dying, and weeks before she gave birth to her first child, she got a letter fro, Jen Bricker, saying that she her biological sister.
As ABC's 20/20 reported last Friday, Bricker revealed that their parents gave her up for adoption when they found out that she had no legs.
The news was equally shocking to Bricker, who grew up idolizing Moceanu, the youngest member of the US Olympic teams "Magnificent Seven."
“I wouldn’t shut up about Dominique!" said Bricker, who incredibly had no idea at the time that the gymnastics champion was her sister.
"I knew she was Romanian. I knew we looked alike. Her biggest fan!”
Amazingly, Bricker, now 24, is a gymnast too. Having no legs didn't stop her from excelling in volleyball, basketball and softball in her youth.
But, just like her sister, 30, her true passion is gymnastics. Bricker even made it all the way to the Junior Olympics as a power tumbler.
When Bricker was 16, her parents, an Illinois couple who adopted her as a baby, revealed to her that Moceanu was actually her older sister.
Four years later, Bricker sent a letter to Dominique.
Published in Moceanu's new memoir Off Balance, the letter included photos and Bricker's adoptive papers. Bricker wrote to her sister:
"I feel that I have one chance to show you I'm not some crazy person, but I'm sure after seeing all of the papers, you'll see that I'm serious."
Moceanu recounted to ABC her reaction to the letter: "It was the biggest bombshell of my life. Rage was my first emotion, had my life been a lie? I had this sister that was born who was given up for adoption, and I never knew it."
When she confronted her parents, they told her that Bricker was in fact her sister and was born one day after Moceanu's sixth birthday.
Her mother, Camelia, said that her husband, Dmitry, forced her to give up the baby, saying that they couldn't afford the medical care.
"I never saw my baby. I never held her, never touched her, never even smelled her. I desperately wanted to, but your father told me we had to give her up and that was that," Camelia told Dominique.
Moceanu had had a tumultuous relationship for years with her parents, who had been athletes and put her in gymnastics at age three.
At 17, Moceanu legally emancipated herself from her parents, whom she claimed had repressed her and squandered her fortune.
She also had a restraining order against her father, who had stalked her and who she feared had hired someone to kill two of her close friends.
They later reconciled, however, and Dmitry even walked Moceanu down the aisle at her 2006 wedding before he passed away in 2008.
The sisters now have a close bond and continue to marvel at their similarities.
"The tones in our voices, our handwriting, the way we laugh and chuckle. It's mind-blowing," Moceanu said of Bricker, who enjoys a strong career as an acrobat and aerialist and has even toured the world with Britney Spears!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.