When feeling fear do this
I’d been here in Ukraine for almost two weeks before the fear hit me, then, on Monday, I woke with a weird sense of foreboding. Ukrainian Independence Day was approaching and I couldn’t help wondering if Russia would have a special surprise in store in the form of more widespread bombing. This message from my landlady highlights the reality of Independence Day since the Russian invasion…
Every morning yellow buses park down below my apartment and loads of soldiers get out and mill about before disappearing off somewhere. After I’d been here a few days someone told me that they were there for the funeral of fellow soldiers.
Every single day they come here for the funerals of fellow soldiers from Lviv, killed on the frontline, defending their country.
On Monday I happened to be going out to get some food when the soldiers were returning to the buses. I noticed that the locals had all stopped walking and were lining the pavements so I stopped too.
Three black vans drove past slowly - the funeral cortege. Each van had a large photograph of a soldier in the front window. All of them young men about my son’s age. Some of the bystanders dropped to their knees and started crossing themselves and praying. An elderly woman beside me holding a shopping basket began to cry.
My eyes filled with tears too. I didn’t know the men who’d been killed but you’d have to be made of stone to not be affected by the enormity of the loss and sacrifice being made by the people of this country.
For the rest of the day I felt on edge and my fear continued to grow.
That night, alone in my apartment, I searched for a podcast to listen to to distract me.
As luck would have it, I came across a show where the writer Elizabeth Gilbert was talking about an exercise she does whenever she’s feeling afraid. She said that it never fails to help her so I decided to give it a go.
The first part of the exercise is to get a notepad and pen and start writing from the point of view of your fear.
‘Our fears need to be acknowledged and heard instead of being pushed away,’ Gilbert said. ‘So let your fear speak freely to you on the page.’
I picked up my pen and started to write. Or rather, my fear started to write. Here are some edited ‘highlights’…
I’m afraid of war. I’m scared of the world descending into hell. I’m afraid of losing life as we know it. I’m scared my Ukrainian friends and family will be hurt. I’m scared of Russia bombing Lviv when I’m here on my own. I’m scared for my future grandchildren.
The tears I’d been holding off since seeing the funeral cortege that morning began sliding down my face. Then my fear moved onto other subject matters. Fear for a close family member who is experiencing some serious health issues. More tears fell.
I kept writing and writing until I felt that my fear had nothing left to give and I had no more tears to shed.
Then it was time for the second part of the exercise. This is where you turn your pen over to Wisdom and ask what it has to say to you. I picked up my pen and began to write anew, without thinking, just allowing whatever needed to come through, and it felt a little as if I was channelling something. Here’s what Wisdom said…
Dear sweet child, what a lot you have taken on your shoulders - and so much of it completely out of your control. But there is something still in your control. Your apple tree!
(This is a reference to a quote from Martin Luther that I wrote about a few weeks ago here on Wonderstruck: ‘Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree today.’ You can read that post here.)
And even if the world will end tomorrow, Wisdom wrote to me - through me - you can still plant your tree today. And plant it with love and joy. Dance around it as you water it. Try an experiment tomorrow. Put all of your focus on whatever you want your tree to be. And feed yourself with Love so that you can feed your tree.
Think of what your grandparents faced during the Second World War. Their DNA is in you. Their Blitz spirit. Call upon your grandma, who experienced years of bombings in London.. She wants to comfort you.
There is a light here, Wisdom continued flowing through my pen. Find it. Focus on it. The more you focus on it, the more the light will grow.
I went to bed that night feeling completely at peace. And when I was woken by an air raid alert at 2am (a flase alarm, thankfully) I rolled over and went straight back to sleep.
I met a Ukrainian woman the other day who is the perfect example of someone who has found and is focusing on her apple tree.
I’d gone to an open air museum in the middle of a forest in Lviv. The museum is full of houses from different parts of Ukraine from the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. All of them had been carefully transported there from around the country and painstakingly rebuilt, log by log and brick by brick. So these aren’t modern reproductions, these are the real historical deal.
It was like wandering around the pages of a fairytale. In every clearing there were clusters of beautiful log cabins and magical old churches. I half expected to come across the gingerbread house from Hansel and Gretel!
I met Myroslava in an old school house from the 1800s. Back then half of the school building was the classroom and the other half, the teacher’s living quarters.
The teacher’s personal rooms were roped off but when Myroslava heard my voice and discovered that I’d come all the way from England she welcomed me as if I was royalty and pulled back the rope to allow me and my party to come in for a private viewing.
For the next half an hour or so she gave us the most interesting and informative talk about the house and the teacher’s life, crammed full of fascinating facts, such as the teacher’s bedroom having an extra bed in case one of the pupils wasn’t able to make it home in the evening due to a snow storm. And the teacher’s desk having not one but five locks to keep people from reading their private documents! We also learned how they made coffee and butter back then, how they preserved meat without refrigerators, and how they made fly traps without any harmful chemicals!
She was so passionate about her subject it was infectious and she really brought the old school house back to life.
At the end I thanked her for her passion and told her she was wonderful at her job. She hugged me and thanked me profusely.
Then she explained that before the war she’d been a doctor, but she had to flee her home in the east of Ukraine when the Russians invaded (3.7 million Ukrainians have been internally displaced due to the war and 6.3 million have sought refuge overseas).
‘I cried every day for months about the war,’ she told me, ‘Then eventually my son said, “Enough, Mum, you have to get a job to try and take your mind off things. So I came to work here at the museum and I’ve fallen in love with it.’
I felt choked up again, but this time with admiration and awe rather than sorrow, and I felt so, so grateful that our paths had crossed in an old schoolhouse, in the middle of a fairytale forest, and for the valuable reminder Myroslava had given me.
Even if the world will go to pieces tomorrow - even if we’re living in a country that has been invaded and occupied and is regularly being bombed - we can and we must plant our apple trees today - whatever they might be. We must still pursue our passions and dare to dream. We must still choose hope over fear. And do so defiantly.
Until next week, when I have a hilarious tale from Kyiv to share with you, plus a moving and enlightening interview with a Ukrainian soldier.
Siobhan