Scars are the marks of a fighter. And, in fact, I used this saying, this quote, everywhere. It was like: hey, but my scars are sexy, I mean, they’re actually very fine, very cute, and I don’t need to cover them with anything.

Eleven actual cuts in total, including the appendectomy. Ten scars, just from the legs. I was born premature, and there were two of us, and my mother didn’t know there were two of us because back then, you couldn’t tell, she didn’t have X-rays or anything, and only I survived. I weighed 1.2 kilograms, about as much as that Cola bottle. It was a very long process to make me into a grown person, to grow. They realized I was going to have some motor issues because I was very small and had a systolic murmur at birth or something, some little thing. My mother should have had a C-section, but they didn’t know there were issues even though she had a toxic pregnancy. The doctor back then probably didn’t have that flash of insight.

And at three years old, I had my first surgery for tenotomy. My parents realized I wasn’t sitting up at 6-7 months when a baby should. Then, until I was six, I had all the tendons, all the tendons... I mean, my Achilles tendon operated on twice on one leg, twice on the other leg. Then I grew up more and had the last surgery at six years old. I think the surgery didn’t go well, the last one, and as I grew, one leg became slightly longer, the other shorter by 1 cm, and the tibia and fibula grew a bit crooked.

After that, I didn’t do anything else, just recovery. And when I turned 18, I had a kind of breakthrough like, "Let’s change something." My mom found a doctor in Mangalia, and she wanted us to go to him, and in the meantime, I did a lot of recovery therapy. I was very involved in the world of physical therapy. So, I went to Mangalia to this doctor—I knew what he did, knew his story—and I said, "Let’s operate, and that’s that." Well, when I got there and saw the fixators, which look a bit scary... The doctor breaks the bone, the tibia and fibula, well, they also do it higher up; it’s an older method. They fix the bone with those rods to keep it straight so it can heal, so the bone aligns back properly if it’s crooked. And since it was shorter, they could lengthen it. I used a small wrench for 10 days and lengthened my leg by 1 cm.

Telling it doesn’t sound that scary, but being there, me, an 18-year-old kid, because I was still a kid, I started crying. It was one of those moments like, "Okay, I’m going to have that thing? I mean, I was getting along fine with my walk; I could manage on my own, walk on my own, I could live like that." I wanted to do it, but I was scared that I might not walk again, like, what if I can’t walk at all after this, what if it makes things worse?

I had appendicitis surgery in 10th grade, the first fixator in 11th grade, and the second one in 12th grade. My high school experience was funny... yeah. After the first fixator, because it was pretty traumatizing, I took a lot of pills, lots of pills.

Since I’m spastic, my diagnosis being spastic paraparesis, my leg felt like it was in a prison with that fixator. My body reacted by shaking, with my muscles becoming much more spastic, much more upset by the situation. It was really tough during those three months with the fixator, and then three more weeks with a cast, and another three months of learning to walk again, to be able to put my foot on the ground because I had a rod in my foot. That was really complicated because it didn’t let me put weight on it. I was allowed to step on it, but it hurt a lot, so I preferred to walk on my hands and with a frame, like on one leg and two hands, and all my strength was in my arms.

It was really tough, but with the second fixator, I knew how to handle the situation differently. I went to a wedding, I went to a baptism... yeah, I kind of covered the fixator with something because I wasn’t allowed to go out with it uncovered since there were rods... I used rubbing alcohol to keep it from getting infected. I knew how to frame it differently; I was like, "Okay, it’s part of me, let’s deal with it."

After the fixator, a lot of things changed. I felt like, if I survived the fixator and didn’t die, nothing else could happen to me. I could do whatever I wanted; I could have anything.

I stayed at home for a year after that. I passed my final exams, but I didn’t go to college because I couldn’t. It was like, either I choose to climb the hills of Iași, or I do recovery. So I stayed at home for a year, and then I applied to college.

When I started college, I said I was going to become a physiotherapist and that I wanted to leave the country. At some point, for my birthday one year, I think I was in my third year of college, my sister and brother-in-law asked me, "What do you want for your birthday?" And I said, "I don’t know, I mean, right now I have everything I want, I don’t need anything material." They said, "Okay, if you don’t want anything, be careful what you wish for because we’ll give you a surprise." And they made me a card with a riddle, and the answer was in a coffee tin in the kitchen. Inside the coffee tin was a note with an appointment for a Pilates session.

That’s how I started Pilates, as a birthday gift. I started doing Pilates in my third year of college, one-on-one with an instructor, about twice a week. After I finished college, I hadn’t started working yet, it was right after, and I thought I’d take a break. I was kind of in a dilemma like, "Did I finish the right degree? Yes, I did what I wanted, but can I really do it?"

Then, when I came back to the country in January, the Pilates instructor asked me, "So what are you doing with your life? Are you moving forward, or are you sticking with physiotherapy? What are you doing?" I said I didn’t know. She said, "Come on, do something." I submitted my resume to her because I knew she was looking for people, and that’s how the Pilates adventure started. I took the Pilates course with others, then I got a job, and that’s how I started teaching Pilates to others, not just doing it for myself.

I didn’t go to therapy when I was little, or I don’t know, my parents didn’t really have that attitude of, like, our child has a problem. No, I was treated perfectly normally, like, "What? You have no problem." Growing up, though, I think little Cristiana needed therapy, my inner child needed a bit of therapy, maybe even a lot. At some point during college, I started going. There was a bigger breakthrough then, and I said, "Okay, it’s time to start therapy; maybe it will help me discover myself." And it helped me a lot, like, it really did help.

I focused a lot on family issues, answering all the why’s: why me, why is this happening to me? Couldn’t it have been someone else? Couldn’t something else have happened? There were a lot of why’s in my childhood, but not necessarily out of frustration. But internally, I was frustrated; there’s no way not to be. I had a normal childhood, but I didn’t play hopscotch with the kids on the street because, well, I couldn’t stand on one leg. And somehow, there was this untreated Cristiana, this ignored Cristiana, you know? And slowly, I started... I’m not saying I’m 100% healed now, probably I still need to do some growing up. But it’s getting better.