I wrote these vignettes because I didn’t know what else to do. 

I posted them on LinkedIn with links to The UN Refugee Agency’s Ukrainian donation page.

I published an AMA yesterday morning. 

I planned to spend the day answering questions. 

Then I turned on the news and couldn’t turn it off. I just had to sit there and watch: 

The news played a video of a Ukrainian family in a bomb shelter, a dark, cold room. The adults were singing in the darkness. They were singing to keep their children calm. 

And I recognized the song. I knew it. 

Because I was born in Kyiv:

Those songs are my songs.Those words are my words. Those people are my people. 

The shock is only now beginning to wear off. 

💔🇺🇦

my Mama & Papa c. 1986 in beautiful Kyiv: 

💔🇺🇦

Mom pulled out the photo album yesterday. 

We sat at the table and flipped through the pages. 

She stopped on a picture: “This was our last apartment before we left,” she said, “the last place we lived in Kyiv.”

“Which building?” I said. 

“On the left.”

“This one?”

“Da, the yellow one,” she tapped on the picture, “this was our balcony… this was our window… this one, too.” 

I studied the building. “I didn’t know that,” I said. 

“Da, da,” she said, “you lived there.”

I took the picture out of its sleeve and looked at it.

Mom reached across the table for a napkin. She folded it in her hand. “I really hope nothing happens to it,” she said. 

💔🇺🇦

Please, when you donate today, your compassionate gift will be matched by Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds — up to $1 million.

Double your impact to send lifesaving aid to Ukrainian families in need.
www.unrefugees.org/donateukraine