“If you have faith in yourself, you can push through,” Shepherd tells PEOPLE.

At 13 years old, Shepherd told herself that she would be a Paralympic athlete, and today she’s part of Team USA.

That faith has pushed her through a life with challenges that began as a baby in Vietnam. At 14 months old, her birth parents held their healthy baby girl between them and detonated a suicide bomb. The force, she’s been told, propelled her into the air.

Her parents died, and she lost both of her legs. Yet she says that she doesn’t carry resentment for what happened. “That’s a life I never lived; I don’t remember it,” she says.

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