Natalia is featured on the November 14th issue of Ogonek Magazine. I’ve added the cover to the gallery and you can read the article below. Please note: The following article has been translated into English using google translation.
Over the past ten years I worked as a model, I was able to achieve success, wealth and fame, which I did not dare to dream. However, this does not make sense to me, if I can somehow help others.
More than anything, I hate injustice. It angers me to the core. So, after reading the book “Give me a chance” *, I experienced a strong shock.
Difficult and painful to think about how my country is for children with disabilities. Hard to imagine what would have happened with my sister, if my mother had given her in the care of the state.
I remember that up to seven years I have had a perfect childhood. I lived with my mother, stepfather, grandfather and grandmother to four-room apartment in Nizhny Novgorod. And of course I was terribly spoiled. My grandmother sewed me pretty dresses and stuff Crimean grapes.
Everything changed when I was seven years old and I was born the first sister Oksana. Doctors put her diagnosis – infantile cerebral palsy. Vanya from the orphanage N 10, which describes in his book “Give me a chance”, was born in the same year as Oksana, and perhaps why his story is particularly strong hold of me. Birth Oksana literally destroyed our family. In the nursing home my mother strongly advised to abandon the child and give the girl in the care of a state institution for children with disabilities. They said that she would never go and do – grow “vegetables.” Perhaps they sincerely believed that a sick child at the hands of my mother put an end to his life. “Your own life will end, if you take a girl. Do not even think about it.”
But I have a strong mother, and she rejected all the arguments of doctors. Oxana – her daughter, she said, and care for her she would be herself. This decision is adopted mother yourself, did not listen to any doctors, no relatives and friends. Her husband, my stepfather, said, or child, or me. And he left us.
My grandmother and grandfather worked at the automobile plant and even grown fruits and vegetables in the country near Nizhny Novgorod. Throughout his life, they have been working hard. At the same time my grandmother was a very sociable man, fond of fun for the holidays and collected a lot of guests. Presence in the house of a sick child would radically change her life. “We are no longer so young and deserved rest. Let us disperse.” So we with mom and sister were in a studio apartment is not in the best area of ??town. The apartment was so small that we were sleeping with Oksana in the hallway.
