Valeriia Litvinova Cunningham was pursuing her master’s degree at North Carolina State University as the war escalated in Ukraine.
She helped her parents and her sister Anya start a new life in North Carolina.
“They basically came here with only the clothes on their back,” Cunningham said.
Once reunited, her family hit the gym. It quickly became an escape. “We started strength training together as a way to distract ourselves from what was going on and also do something together as a family,” Cunningham said.
She began posting the family gym sessions on <a s confidence, and she started having a sense of belonging in the gym.”
“Our entire life we’ve been told that Anya wouldn’t be able to achieve anything, that she wouldn’t be able to even walk. Now she’s strength training; she’s in the gym with other bodybuilders, with powerlifters, and just out training them,” Cunningham said.
The sisters’ online <a >
