No one knows when this war will end.
Every day I see a mix of exhaustion and determination in people’s eyes.
Pure raw determination to continue to keep going, continue to try, continue to hope.
And there is so much creativity. Many things to do. An incredible art scene. Yet it’s all on the backdrop of air alarms and explosions and people dying.
Every day we hear of new deaths and yet we all have to continue going, we wake up to air alarms or go to sleep to air alarms and sometimes we feel anxious, sometimes the blast waves rattle the windows and set off the car alarms and still we continue, pausing for a moment and then continuing on.
Writing emails from the bomb shelter, going for drinks at a bar that doesn’t serve Apero because it’s a Russian-owned brand. Seeing a uniformed soldier playing the guitar as part of a jazz band.
It almost feels like living in a Picasso painting.
Two years of war.
What I try to do is look at this situation and think about what is the opportunity for healing? What is the opportunity for growth? What can we build on?
Ukrainians are an incredibly caring and hardworking people. So many completely devote their lives to trying to help other Ukrainians trying to support the war efforts, trying to help those who are in need.
This is so beautiful and yet 2 years on and it’s difficult to maintain.
As managers you tell your staff to take a break, to take care of themselves but this seems like such a foreign concept, it seems completely unacceptable to them to take care of themselves. In one way this is so beautiful, this desire to help society and devote themselves to the rescuing of others and sometimes this desire is so strong that they cut themselves off from receiving any kind of care themselves.
How can we give AND receive love and care so that we both become stronger.
There is an opportunity to learn the power and strength and courage of vulnerability. We are seeing it already, before the war mental health was really stigmatized but now it’s becoming much more of an accepted necessity, there is still a lot of stigma around it but as everyone is struggling the stigma of needing help is becoming more relatable and understandable. I think this is a beautiful thing in the midst of all the absolute pain and suffering. I think there is an incredible opportunity to forge deep healing connections not just by giving support but by accepting it also. I have seen that once I give space to talk about painful things there is such a thirsty desire to connect on a deep honest level, heart to heart. Seeing people without their armour, without their pretty masks, to see them raw and open is the greatest gift I can ever receive.
This war gives us the opportunity to be real and see others in their realness, that level of connection and honesty is what makes this life worth living.
