Lyasan Utyasheva, the renowned gymnast and television personality, recently revisited her childhood home in Volgograd and shared harrowing details of her past, marked by domestic violence and hardship. Utyasheva, known for her usually cheerful demeanor, tearfully recounted the difficult experiences she endured as a child during an interview with Laura Dzhugelia.

Utyasheva revealed that her father’s struggles with alcohol, triggered by business failures in the 1990s, transformed him into a domestic tyrant who subjected her and her mother to physical abuse. She vividly remembers the fear and desperation, recalling how she and her mother relied on kind neighbors for help during violent episodes. To escape the turmoil at home, Utyasheva immersed herself in sports, viewing it as her duty to protect her mother and provide for the family.

While her father battled addiction, Utyasheva’s mother worked tirelessly at multiple jobs to support the family, enduring abuse in the rare moments she had at home. Utyasheva said that, realizing the need to stand up for her mother, she decided that her main goal was to become the protector of her mother. She stated that, when she was eleven, her mother made the decision to leave her father.

It took Utyasheva many years and therapy sessions to forgive her father. Eventually, she reached out to him, expressing her love and longing. She now believes that her father was not inherently a bad person but was consumed by addiction, which turned him into someone unrecognizable.

Today, Utyasheva’s father is actively working on himself and building relationships with his daughter and her family, including his grandchildren. Despite forgiving her father, Utyasheva continues to attend therapy to address the lasting effects of her difficult childhood. She is working on overcoming the “excellent student” syndrome, a constant need to be the best and strongest, stemming from her childhood experiences.

This journey of self-discovery was further prompted by criticism she faced in 2018 for her controversial statement about a woman needing to cook to be considered a complete woman. This led her to confront her own internal pressures and expectations, inspiring her to break free from self-imposed constraints and avoid passing them on to her daughter.