Children in a War Emigration
Part 2
There are two phrases I don't like more than anything else in the world:
God doesn’t give trials beyond our strength.
What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.
No matter how much the person uttering these words tries to sound supportive and caring, these phrases are always laced with nauseating moralizing, arrogance, and condescension.
For the person hearing them, 99% of the time, they feel like hanging themselves. In the other 1%, they feel like killing the speaker.
My close friends, colleagues, and family know how much I despise these two phrases and never say them to me. But when I hear them directed at someone else, I’m overwhelmed with uncontrollable waves of aggression and indignation. Because we never truly know the personal hell someone else is enduring or their threshold for pain.
Such phrase-concepts are just another social stamp trying to box us into neat categories for convenience. And it’s always painful when someone stamps you.
I draw strength from the idea that
we survive not because of traumatic events but despite them.
People who possess resilience, endurance, energy, and adaptability navigate their challenges without breaking not because they had no other choice or miraculously found inner resources — but because the strength that carried them through was already there.
It existed long before the tragedy. They cultivated and reinforced it. Not because of, but despite. It’s their character, willpower, intellect, and inner might.
And it doesn’t mean that God sits at a desk scrolling Instagram, observing how we struggle, and carefully measures out challenges proportionate to each individual’s capacity. Like this:
Strong mom? - Special needs kids.
Strong woman? - A cartload of trials and iron balls.
Strong child? - A heap of bullying and humiliation.
Trauma? - Genius.
And so on.
At 12:30 PM on Thursday, my phone buzzed with a message from Daniel’s teacher:
Daniel ran away from school. He should stay in the Polish lesson.
I’ll never be able to convey what I felt in that moment. My usual well-practiced algorithm of actions instantly generated a pile of solutions, but at the edge of my consciousness, a thought reverberated:
“I can’t anymore. I really can’t anymore. Please, God, let this be my last trial. I’ll accept it if I have to keep battling life’s surprises on my personal frontlines every single day without any support or backup. I’ll accept it if my career never advances beyond middle management. I’m even willing to sacrifice the pure dream of writing a novel —just let my kids be okay.”
We all negotiate with the universe and make our sacrifices.
I started calling the school on every number I had. My mother rushed there immediately. Meanwhile, I sat on the couch, frozen like a statue. It felt as though I needed to fully endure yet another piercingly painful experience, something that seems to happen almost daily here.
Every single day.
It’s as if the border guards, when letting me leave for Poland, decided to skip the usual date stamp, held a mock funeral for my “calm Kyiv life,” and sent me off with a sarcastic “Goodbye, Olya. You’re in for a wild ride.”
My mother found Daniil within an hour and a half. I cried, yelled, hugged, and scolded him all at once. No rational thought — that we were safe — worked on me. All I knew was that he didn’t speak Polish or English and that when he’s nervous, he’s impulsive and could end up in trouble.
It was terrifying. The last time I was this scared was when a pediatrician examined newborn Daniel and mentioned that a bluish tinge around his mouth could indicate a heart defect. For a month, while waiting for a cardiologist appointment, I went gray, lost weight, and my breasts stopped producing milk. The heart defect wasn’t confirmed.
Daniil was found.
That day, I wrote to every psychologist I knew. Every single one responded.
Daniil and I met with a child psychologist, and the three of us talked for an hour about what had happened. During that session, I metaphorically sprinkled ashes on my own clever, educated head a thousand times because, as a psychologist myself, I learned a lot about my older son that I hadn’t known:
That he’s bullied during after-school care (he attends once or twice a week until they can establish a regular schedule for religion and ethics classes).
That when we don’t pick him up on time (due to misunderstandings), he thinks it’s because no one loves him, rather than because I failed to inform the teacher to let me know if classes end earlier.
That when kids see their mom struggling emotionally, they often withhold their problems to avoid burdening her.
That my son, who rarely speaks to me without irritation or yelling, can calmly and tenderly articulate his needs to a stranger who magically finds the right approach.
Now every member of my family has a psychologist. I’ve shed the armor of “I’m a psychologist, so I’ll handle it myself.”
And it helps tremendously.
Thank you to my company, iDeals Careers, for fully covering psychotherapy sessions for me and my family, and to Wellbeing Company for patiently waiting while I remember the one-hour time difference between Poland and Ukraine.
I don’t know what advice to offer mothers who feel drained and lost from exhaustion and emotional depletion. You’re automatically the only Adult in this tiny refugee egregore, responsible for safeguarding the well-being of all the physically surviving members of your family and issuing the “correct” responses to any event.
Now it’s time to save everyone psychologically.
But try to see beyond the surface of your loved ones’ behavior in emigration. Listen to what’s quietly surfacing, seeking warmth and acknowledgment in the home you’ve built amidst all this pain and tragedy—the tragedy the entire world is experiencing right now.
As one of my mentors repeatedly said during organizational coaching training:
What the system wants to reveal must be revealed.
Because god does give trials we cannot bear.
And what doesn’t kill us today might kill us another time.
March 27, 2022