• Natalia Mayara was hit by a bus in a devastating accident at 2 years old that resulted in partial amputations of both her legs

• An unlikely series of events put Mayara on track to be an athlete — starting with swimming, moving on to tennis, for which she became a Paralympic star, and her journey into bodybuilding today

• Mayara tells PEOPLE what she wants those who come across her story — which has gone viral since she got attention for a Cowboy Carter tour outfit that celebrates her differences — to know

Natalia Mayara doesn’t hide from her differences; she embraces them.

Originally from Recife, Brazil, the retired Paralympic athlete came from “very humble” beginnings.

“It was me, my mom, my uncle, my aunt, my cousin, and my grandma all living in a little two-bedroom apartment. My family came from an even rougher background than me. My mom grew up basically selling things on the street, trying to help my grandma raise all the other kids. She was like a go-getter, like a hustler. She was always working, always doing everything she could to take care of me,” Mayara tells PEOPLE.

Mayara’s spirit is very similar, serving her well after she experienced something life-changing as a little girl. At 2 years old, she was sitting on her mom’s lap at a bus stop, on their way home when her mom put the toddler in front her, standing less than an arm’s distance away as she retrieved their bus tickets from her bag.

The bus pulled up at a high speed, losing control momentarily and hitting Mayara. She was launched a distance and when the panicked driver tried to flee the scene, he ran over her legs. Mayara was stuck to the wheel and dragged for a few meters before the bus came to a stop. The driver left the bus at rest on top of the toddler before fleeing on foot.

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Thankfully, Mayara was in front of a hospital complex at the time of the accident, getting her to help quickly. She was given a 2% chance of survival, but pulled through.

“It’s really interesting because I was so young that I don’t, I feel like even if I didn’t have that accident happen to me, I don’t know if I would have any memories of that time. But it’s kind of bittersweet, because as from one side, I wish I had some memory of that because it’s something that changed my life. And the other side, I feel like it’s probably best that I don’t remember anything,” she explains.

“My mom is the one that, of course, knows everything because she was there with me. And to be fair, even she has some parts of what happened that are kind of blurry to her because I feel like her brain is just trying to protect her from what she had to see. I also don’t know if it could be because I had head trauma — I fractured my skull in the accident, so that could also influence my memory of it.”

Of her mom, Mayara says, “Up until that point, my mom had never even seen or met someone with a disability. For her, it felt like everything happened at once. She was in shock. She didn’t know what to do because she didn’t know what was possible.”

“She had to really learn on her own. And on top of that, the apartment that I grew up, because it was basically on the slums of Recife, it wasn’t accessible at all. So, it was also definitely not ready for a kid with a disability. It was on the second floor. No elevators, no wider doors, nothing.”

Mayara credits a “sense of family and community” for making the challenges along the way not feel insurmountable. Sustaining the injuries she did and losing her legs at such a young age would result in a long medical journey.

“Our zone of growth basically around your knee. So, because my left leg, I was able to keep my own knee after the amputations, I still had that growth area. Your bones keep developing, but your skin, your muscles, and all that, they don’t. So, the problem is that the more that time went by I was so young and growing very fast. That bone kept growing, and growing and growing. And I had to go in to do basically a correction surgery, which is where they have to reopen my leg, and then cut the part of the bone that is starting to grow too much. I had to get surgery every year from when I was 3 until I was about 16. Some years where I grew really fast, they had to do it twice.”

Mayara’s medical needs resulted in her family needing to move from Recife closer to the hospital in Brasilia where her surgeries would take place. They tried to commute as needed, but it was too costly.

“We had to do this back, and forth all the time to do the surgeries because again, because we didn’t have money, my family sold everything they ever owned. My dad sold the tables, the stove, the TV. I remember going into the apartment, and there was only a mattress on the ground,” she says. “That’s all we had. We didn’t even have a fridge, there was like nothing. They had to sell everything to try to just pay for my treatment until they found a place that would do it for free in Brasilia. It got to a point that we just decided to leave everything behind, and then move to Brasilia.”

Mayara never lamented her situation as she got older.

“I never asked my mom, ‘Why don’t I have legs?’ I never asked my mom, ‘Why am I different?’ I never ever questioned that. I really do think that everything happens for a reason. And whatever was meant to be was meant to be, and I’m happy with it,” she says.

At the same time, she also grew up understanding how tough the accident and its aftermath were on her mother.

“My mom had a rougher time, especially because she saw it all. She could remember it. Sometimes she would cry while trying to take care of me. And it’s funny, because I was the one trying to tell her that it was okay.”

Once she was out in the world, there were people who may have noticed her injuries, but if they did, it barely registered to Mayara, who “never looked at myself as any different.”

“I never thought of myself any different than any of the other kids. And that really helped too because it helped them not look at me different either. I never had bullying. I never had people messing with me because of my disability, or pointing that out,” she says. “I was just another kid. And I feel like a big part of that is because of how I always held myself. I also feel like I owe a lot of that to my mom, because they never stopped me from doing anything.”

Mayara was encouraged to keep up with her peers but also understand the potential consequences.

“So, if I want to go to the ground, go to the ground. If you hurt yourself, you’re going to learn from it. If you want to play with your kids, try to run, go try it. They never told me no to something that I want to try just because I had a disability. And I feel like that really made me this person of, ‘I’m just another kid. I’m just doing everything I can do, everything I want. I can do everything you do.’ “

Mayara began the “complex” process of getting prosthetics.

“They look simple, but there’s a whole thing of balance to it. And it hurts. There’s a lot of adjustments that you have to do, especially growing up when you’re a kid. You still don’t really know anything, and you can’t tell your doctor, ‘Oh, it hurts here, it does this. I feel unbalanced.’ So, it’s really just them trying to learn from you and watching you, and everything was pretty fast,” she says. “I had just learned how to walk before my accident, which is very ironic, but now I had to relearn everything from a very young age.”

Mayara would go through many prosthetics as she grew, using them a lot of the time. “I didn’t even have a wheelchair until I was probably 12,” she shares.

“Prosthetics, at that point, were just not working for me. I just felt like whenever I was in a wheelchair, I was a lot more capable. I could do more things. I was faster, I was more agile. I just felt like I was more self-sufficient.”

She continues, “Because with prosthetic legs, I would get tired. I would be in pain. I would have to sit and wait a little bit because it’s hurting. The wheelchair, I just felt like it gave me freedom. And because I never cared to fit in, I chose to stay in a wheelchair. A lot of times I feel like whenever I was putting my prosthetic legs on, I was just putting it for other people because it’s more acceptable to see somebody walking with a prosthetic leg than an amputee sitting in a wheelchair.”

“I do still use prosthetics, but when they benefit me. I’ll use them sometimes in the gym, for example,” she adds.

Sports became a big part of Mayara’s life, though not intentionally. Before her move to Brasilia, when her family had to commute back and forth from Recife, her mom was approached about adaptive sports options.

“My family has no sports background whatsoever, in the slightest. We’re from Brazil. Everybody loves soccer. Everybody watched soccer. My family does not even watch soccer, so that’s how bad it is,” she laughs.

After being approached more than once, her mom finally started to consider it. They started with swimming lessons. Mayara enjoyed it, but inaccessible travel made it hard for her to keep up. They stopped for a while until another opportunity presented itself closer to home.

“The only thing is that it was not with people with disabilities, it was just regular kids, no disabilities at all. And I really have to thank her for that because she didn’t think twice. She was like, ‘Yeah, she can keep up,’ ” Mayara recalls.

“She enrolled me into the swimming lessons with kids with no disabilities. And because I feel like I had to always try to keep up with them, and try to show them that I was just as good, that made me a really competitive kid.”

After a while, “I got invited to start competing for Brazil for swimming and I did.”

“At that point we moved to another location that was a training facility for adaptive sports. It was a place that has all the sports, and it had the pool. The pool was next to the tennis court and then that’s when things took a turn. I was doing super well. I was representing Brazil. I swam at the World Cup for Brazil. I got three medals in the Youth World Cup here in the U.S. Actually, it was my first-ever international trip, which I already didn’t even know ever would happen, having my background in mind.”

She was hesitant to switch sports, even though the thought was constantly on her mind. “Once you’re good at something, you don’t want to switch,” she says. “But eventually I did try and I fell in love with it.”

“I loved it so much that I quit swimming. I did both for a little time, but again, I was representing Brazil with swimming. I was starting to do really well with tennis, and I was going to school, and I was taking my driving lessons, and there was not enough time in my day. I had to make a decision. It was the easiest decision of my life. I love tennis so much that that’s what I chose, and I just felt so happy to be able to choose that instead. Being good at something you love means so much more.”

All the while, Mayara had the support of her family. “They were there every step of the way. They were always sending me messages saying how proud they were of me, and how I was representing the family, and how they were so happy for my success, and for how much I pushed myself that I feel like they even didn’t really think about any of that. They were just so happy that I was able to accomplish all that by myself.”

These days, accomplishment looks different for the two-time Paralympic medalist, who is enjoying a new sport and growing her social media following, catching attention with cosplay ideas that incorporate her amputation.

“The first time I shared a costume with my leg, I did Woody and Bullseye. But what people don’t know is that I’ve been doing this since I was a little kid. Of course, it was a little simpler,” she says with a laugh.

“I was going through my hard drives a couple of weeks ago, and I found videos of me doing that at school. So, I’m literally put a jacket on my leg, and then put my arms through the arms of the jacket, and just like I’m dancing with my legs, and my team, my classmates are around me, and laughing, and they’re filming it. Then there’s another video I found that was me actually dressed as a very, very bootleg Mario with Yoshi,” Mayara continues.

Mayara has gone viral with her looks dedicated to Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter. The athlete will check out the tour on May 4 in Inglewood, Calif

“It’s also so hard to always get the accessible seats, so I’m so excited I did,” she shares.

“I have been a fan of Beyoncé ever since I was a kid. And I actually liked a lot of her songs I used for my before playing, or before competing. For example, one of her songs that is called ‘I Was Here’ means so much to me, even during a really hard time mentally for me that things were not going as well as I wanted to. I would just listen to that, and be able to kind of understand why I’m doing what I’m doing, and to be able to full circle now like I am Beyoncé … it’s really funny,” she shares.

Commenters have even tagged Tina Knowles and Yvette Noel-Schure, the icon’s publicist, in hopes of getting the star’s attention. While it hasn’t happened just yet, Mayara says she’s just having fun with the look and the album. It’s also her way of changing how people see amputees, on social media and off.

“I want people to see that people with disabilities are not suffering. I have fun with it. I can laugh about it, and I’m happy with it. There is no heaviness to it. There’s no dwelling about it,” she says.

“And I feel like that’s what I loved about starting basically that series on my social media, because I feel like I get to show that side of I am not suffering. I’m not a sad person with a disability. I don’t wish I had my legs back every day. No, I’m happy. I have fun with it. I have humor. I can do whatever I want. I’m creative. I just can do whatever I want with it.”

Mayara says that she’s also heard from parents of children living with different medical complexities that are inspired by her fun cosplay looks.

“That means so much to me. It’s like I became their character, their superhero. There’s so many amputees out there that have fun with it. They’re just not online for most people to see. And I feel like that’s why I want to be online for everybody to see, so everybody knows that we’re okay. We’re not this fragile thing that you can’t talk, or laugh about, or laugh with.”

“I want people to know that everything is possible,” she continues. “I want people to know that if you really have your mind set to something you can achieve whatever. It doesn’t matter where you came from. It doesn’t matter what language you speak, it doesn’t matter if you have a disability, or not. You can really achieve whatever you set your mind to, and you really dedicate yourself to.”

Mayara continues to push herself to achieve and enjoy. At the end of May, she’ll compete in a bodybuilding competition for the first time, Muscle Contest Idaho, an National Physique Committee  (NPC) national competition.

“I want to use that to basically show people, look, I was an athlete my whole life. I retired, felt depressed, gained a lot of weight, lost all the weight, actually got in the better shape of my life, even better than when I was an actual professional athlete,” she shares.

“And I’m actually going to compete now on the highest level of the fitness goal that you could ever have. It’s like the contrast is just so big that I want to live there, I want to see what I’m capable of.”

Mayara also hopes to share more of her story, “to provide more value to the people that follow me on my social media and really get to help people achieve their goals.”

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