Crossing the border into Poland, I turned off my air raid app. A small gesture, yet it brought relief after weeks in Ukraine, where tension lives in the air. I am glad to not hear air raids or warning pings on my phone. This trip, I found myself saying mantras, in cars, beside memorials to fallen defenders. Their photos, their faces, my heart ached. I breathed out compassion, exhaling a yearning for peace of which we are so painfully far from. Life continues here, because it must. Funerals are part of the landscape. Traffic stops. People kneel as hearses pass, a quiet reverence, a collective grief. Everywhere, the sobering weight of loss. Every city holds a growing memorial square, as if grief itself has become part of the geography. Cemeteries are full, some have no space left.
NORMAL is day and night sounds of war, loud, piercing sirens disturbing sleep, pings from your phone app ALERT. Military terms become ordinary vocabulary: fly bomb. ballistic missile, drone, alert, take shelter. We continually hear when talking with our friends, colleagues, people we met about life choices reshaped by war. Some families support loved ones becoming defenders, others make the painful decision to flee, to get their kids out of the country. So many Internally displaced people, uprooted from the east, having left, given up homes, jobs, communities, carrying memories of home and a fear of return. Starting over with minimal means and an uncertain future. (I know this well from HARRT refugee work in Helena.) Rationed Electricity rule daily routines. Some have no electric seven hours a day. There is an app telling you when you will or will not have electric. Generators seem to run the businesses and restaurants. Disruptive career choices, young people avoid studying medicine because doctors are conscripted. Families rush to have a third child to avoid being conscripted. Others delay parenthood because the future feels too fragile. There are far too many widows.
I hope these glimpses show some of the human impacts beneath the news, not in the headlines, not drawing the numbers. What does it truly mean to live a war in your own country? What becomes “normal” that should never be normal? How do people carry losses so deep, and how does a society adapt to the unthinkable?
And yet, in all of this, kindness persists. The community comes together, unifying in purpose, organizing support. Heightened awareness of the present. Supporting their country and each other. Our team re-visiting our friends, our colleagues, found our relationships strengthened, friendships deepen each time we show up, Our conversations go deeper, more intimate and our questions answered thoughtfully. People are grateful for our presence. The external fixators are gold and we brought many.
Also excited to have brought specific medical supplies requested and how grateful the Doctors were to receive them. So glad they were the right stuff! And the Babushkas. They greeted us with warm embraces and homemade cakes, their affection crossing every language barrier.
Our showing up is a show of solidarity. Ukrainian people need to know we stand with them!!!!! We had many conversations, young and old, understanding more the layers of history, identity and longstanding Russian oppression. Their stories are complex, but not one person doubted their sovereignty or the need to defend it against the Russian aggression. And they understand far too well the cost of this.
All this, as global powers debate Peace proposals as if borders and sovereignty were pieces on a game board. But for Ukrainians, peace is not a game, not theoretical. Their land is their identity. Their democracy is deeply theirs. They will not give up soil after so much blood loss. They want their country, all of it, a whole Ukraine.
War is hell. It kills. It scars bodies and souls. It destroys homes, hospitals, schools. Leaving rubble on the land and rubble in the heart. The so-called “winner” inherits a wounded landscape and a traumatized people. And always, those who conduct wars from a distance are not the ones who bleed. It is ordinary people, the players, who pay the price.
I find myself asking again and again: What is it about our species that repeats this?
Why is war still a language we speak? In such moments,
all I can do is continue to bear witness, so we KNOW the truth and look for guidance from the Dalai Lama calling for great compassion, the BSUU belief in the inherent worth and dignity of every person And the ancient instruction to love our neighbor. As empathetic, caring people sending compassion in the face of such suffering We witness. We refuse to look away. We stay present to the pain and to the resilient hope that persists even here.
We act where we can. We choose compassion again and again
because compassion is the only antidote to the violence our world keeps creating. And we keep believing that peace is not only possible, it is necessary, it is urgent,
and it is our shared human responsibility TO WORK FOR PEACE.
And the news, as I sit in my hotel in Germany, an increasing threat for a new war in Venezuela and Putin demanding the Donbas and Democracy in decline OMG
I long for the peace of my home my family my friends and especially my dogs OTW
