Helping Hands for Ukraine
My last name, Shostak, is Ukrainian. My paternal grandparents met in a refugee camp in Germany... my father was born there. My grandmother escaped the Russian regime in Ukraine at 19, having fled in the night. She left her family behind and without warning, never to see them again. She did this to protect them…she wouldn’t even write them letters, for fear that the letters would be discovered and her family sent to Siberia as punishment for her betrayal.
There were many times in early adulthood I thought about using my middle name as my surname, just for the sake of ease. I made a conscious decision to go ahead and struggle through it, as I have always been pretty proud of that heritage. My grandmother (Eva) was a bit of a legend, and growing up it was quite clear to me that to be Ukrainian was something special. I decided to double down on that last name, and am proud my boy has it too. I chose his name (Leo) to compliment it... his middle name (Joseph) is my paternal grandfather’s. My last name is pretty immediately recognizable on the occasion I meet someone who is actually Ukrainian. There is joy in that recognition...it’s as if they know I am aware of a beautiful secret they have. The secret is that Ukrainian people are fierce, strong, noble, and beautiful. I’ve always known this because of my grandmother...and now the rest of the world knows it too.
My grandmother’s journey from Ukraine to the US took ten years. For much of this journey, she was alone. There was a time in my life I imagined writing a screenplay about this journey, having pieced together scraps of the story told to my aunt. I would spend hours imagining the story from beginning to end, trying to envision a seamless movie. As I was an actress then I imagined trying to enact it. I imagined fully being in my grandmother’s shoes, how she felt. The anger, fear, the despair, the hope. I imagined the village that she left, the danger there so great it was unlivable. I read about the famine imposed by Stalin, in which millions died. I looked up pictures from the era and saw skeletal children and people dying in the streets. I heard about Russian soldiers raping villagers and desperate survival measures. Man-made, relentless, imposed terror... for every story shared I know there were a dozen worse ones withheld. Stories such as the ones being revealed now, in Mariupol and Bucha. They sicken me to hear, but I am not surprised.
Sometimes I make dark jokes about generational trauma. There is a sliver of me that has always expected the unimaginable horrors my grandmother witnessed to erupt at any moment, as the people of Ukraine are experiencing now. My grandmother was one for using every last scrap of anything and wasting nothing...I am the same to a degree. She reused the water in her house...from her bath to her laundry to the garden. When she passed there were spotless oatmeal and yogurt canisters full of folded dried paper towels she had saved to reuse. I joke that I too live with a refugee’s sense of scarcity...and I’m only half-joking. And then of course just to be a woman is to have generational trauma...this rape or Ukraine and Putin’s gaslighting used to justify it has been experienced by every woman at one time or another, I think.
I loved my grandmother’s accent and her slanted eyes. I loved her tidy house with its carpet scraps in the basement, making a patchwork floor. I loved the colors and the needlework in her pillows, and her practical patterned house dresses with pockets she would wear when working in the garden. We all loved her pierogi (she would work on them for days but never sit down to eat them, instead just making sure everyone was fed) and her apple pie (the simplest recipe...no sugar, just apples cut into the crust). But most of all I loved her strength and resilience. This more than anything to me symbolized what it was to be Ukrainian.
My grandmother was a dedicated Catholic. I have some artwork from her house representing this...taken from a calendar, and holiday cards. The climax of the story of her journey to the US was that after a long journey by boat over the Atlantic, with my grandfather and two small children (and during which she was violently seasick) she finally arrives in America. She is standing in line attempting to enter the country and discovers that she will be tested to be able to read or else be turned away. She was unable. The story goes that she was handed a newspaper, and panicking she began to pray in her native language. The officer, mistaking her prayer for reading, passed her and her family - my family - through.
God was with her, she had said. And for as long as she was with us that was clear, it shone from her the way it shines from the Ukrainian people now. When I heard that Russia had invaded I thought it would be a matter of days before they fell. And instead, they are standing strong and proud once again, and, in the face of this assault and this abuse, it is clear God is with them. Little old ladies who look just like my grandma are making Molotov cocktails in the streets. When Russia invaded I felt utterly hopeless, and yet they have given me hope in humanity.
It’s hard to know what to do when faced with such overwhelming distress, fear, and anger. It’s understandable to want to look away, give up, or go numb. It’s easy to think in the age of “thoughts and prayers” for one tragedy after another that thoughts and prayers are meaningless. But they do matter, absolutely everything matters. Our job is to just put one foot in front of the other and do what we can... as my Grandmother did.
Ukrainians happen to make incredible estheticians, and fittingly many of them work with DMK both in the US and abroad. It brings me a lot of joy to share with you that DMK has organized a drive with UNICEF in support of their ongoing response to the war, in which they will be matching $250,000 in donations. Please, take this opportunity to help us to meet this goal. Donations may be made through the link below.
And, in addition to this contribution (or in lieu of, for those who can’t) I’m asking anyone interested to join me daily at 8 am and/or 8 pm in saying this prayer for them, provided by Marianne Williamson.