Learning to Trust Myself
Names have been changed. Growing up, I believed my family was a close one. My siblings and I spent time together, and we traveled every year to new places as a family. We lived in an apartment in East Harlem and I felt comfortable living with my parents, who mostly seemed to care for me. […]
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Home in My Heart
When I was 5, I had lived my whole life in Luhansk, Ukraine. Then, in April 2014, Russia invaded Luhansk and another nearby region, Donetsk. Russia declared them independent states and renamed them Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic. These name changes are part of how the Russian government tries to erase the Ukrainian […]
Read MoreAccepting My Mom’s Limits
When I was 8 years old, I asked my mother why I’d never met her parents. She said, “My dad was a very cruel man, and every night, he would come into my room and do terrible things to me. My mother knew, and she did nothing to help me.” When she was in 4th […]
Read More‘Grief Is Like the Ocean’
My father died of cancer in June of 2020, a few months into the COVID-19 pandemic. At first he was diagnosed with a chronic, but not fatal, inflammatory arthritis that affects the spine and large joints. But after his condition continued to deteriorate, a trip back to the hospital revealed that he had metastatic brain […]
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