Since September of 2024, I have spent 3 months in Ukraine, returned to the U.S. for a little over a month, and am now back in Ukraine until the summer.
I was often asked questions about adjusting in between my travels. Interestingly enough, the hardest part of the past few months was this brief return to the U.S. I may have spent the second half of my life there, but my time in Ukraine has touched my soul in ways that the U.S. has not, at least since the war started and I felt needed by my homeland. I know that Ukraine needs military and resources, not another foreign casualty – yet I have not found my peace until I made it here in person. I have found my purpose, community, sense of home, and love – and these have helped my 20 years of depression more than any medication.
Returning to the U.S. was necessary to tie up some loose ends, hug my loved ones, and spread the word about Ukraine and about Kherson. My departure from Ukraine during a particularly unstable time in late December (the holidays are an especially dangerous time, and the security intelligence have been issuing warnings about the Russian forces planning to retake Kherson) has kept me safe but in mental turmoil.
My return to Ukraine a week ago has not led to similar issues readjusting from one country to the next. A long and annoying period of travel was made worse not by thousands of miles by plane but by just 1,000 miles from Krakow to Kherson – through borders and checkpoints see my previous post). Yet, seeing my loved ones and returning to volunteering the next day felt… it felt like I never left. Similar to the now famous TV series “Severance,” where a worker has no memories about their own private lives while at work and no memories of work while they are not on the clock, my brain fully jumped into the present tense and everything that felt familiar and comforting. As if my trip to America was just a dream. One of the very few things that remind me of my short-lived absence is running into Ukrainian acquaintances and friends, who are surprised to see me back so soon and ask about life in America.
There are some minor and some major changes – no leaves or buckeyes on the ground, I am now dressing up warmer, and, as of January 18th, I am engaged to the Ukrainian volunteer I have met during my last term in Kherson. Another major change from my last stay here is that my fiancé Max and I have now relocated to a different part of the city – a supposedly safer location to live. Yet, unexpectedly, this move has not turned out to be much safer.
One of the reasons for this is that the Russians have spread their terror of “civilian hunting” towards this area as well. Not just the riverbank, the center (where we volunteer), but now this neighborhood especially. While nowhere is considered safe, this expansion of artillery targeting has been an unpleasant development for us and others, who try to move farther away from the front.
Another reason this move didn’t turn out as safe as expected is that we now travel to our workplace by city buses. Civilian targeting by Russians tends to include public transportation, because it is a slow-moving target with 20-30 people at a time. The bus stop where we go in the mornings is the same bus stop that a couple of weeks ago has witnessed two back-to-back drone attacks, damaging the vehicle and injuring and killing trapped civilians on the bus.
This is now a daily risk in our lives. Walking is not at option because of the distance, risk of mines (picture below), and also because of frequent stops by cruising police officers, who check documents of young men to decide if they might be a good candidate for drafting.
The move to this new region of Kherson has expanded my experience of the city. From my window I can see new to me areas of damages – a school, a church, and dozens of high-rise buildings with busted out windows and burn markings. I also have the front window view of an underground school that is being built nearby. As I explore the new area to discover new to me post offices, grocery stores, coffee shops, markets, and restaurants, I notice that the atmosphere is now similar to that of the frequently shelled central region. Very few people are outside at this time, some people are packing up to move once again to yet another area considered marginally safer.
The sounds in the city have also changed. While it didn’t take me long to once again start considering faraway explosions and artillery sounds as the background noise, some of these sounds are unfamiliar, for example, multiple back-to-back artillery rounds, multiple per second. I still cannot successfully tell the apart artillery sounds from the Ukrainian side or the Russian side, but the locals have a reasonable understanding that a lot of artillery released by the Ukrainians then leads to the revenge shelling from the Russian side. As I am unable to take and post my own pictures and videos because of safety and security guidelines for the foreigners, I will, nevertheless, share the publically available media.