Paris, August 28, 2024
Dear readers, dear readers,
This summer I was happy: in July I welcomed my mother, in August my father. They met their grandson, my son, who is now 6 months old. But I would only be truly happy if I could see my Sasha. Which is impossible at the moment.
My father is still here in France with us. We talk a lot, including about topics like breastfeeding. In Ukraine, almost all women breastfeed, it is very popular. For my part, I wanted to turn to a Ukrainian lactation consultant. I discovered Khrystyna, who lives in Kyiv. [Kiev, en ukrainien], on Instagram and I reached out to her. She gave me some advice and I also discovered that her work had really evolved since the Great Invasion.
I learned things I didn’t know about the daily life of mothers during the war. With the arrival of the Russians [Olga et Sasha ont choisi de ne pas mettre de majuscule à « russe » et « russie »], In the midst of bombings and occupation, Khrystyna supports women for whom breastfeeding is literally a matter of survival for their children. Without clean water and food, breast milk saves lives. Professional support is crucial for the mother to maintain mental balance and continue breastfeeding. As in Mariupol, where, from a distance, she followed mothers in terrible situations.
Khrystyna also told me that she has done a lot of free consultations and counselling for Ukrainian refugees around the world. Many women have difficulties breastfeeding due to the stress caused by the war. She even created a sharing platform on Telegram called Vilne Moloko. “free milk”where mothers can chat and find a milk donor. A bit like a solidarity breast milk bank. She supported me a lot, but above all, her role in what we are experiencing (allowing Ukrainian babies to live) contributes a lot to our nation. To its survival.
There is a Ukrainian expression that says that a language is learned with mother’s milk. For me, even though I did not learn it with mother’s milk but at school and then at university, Ukrainian is now my mother tongue. It has become so dear and precious to me, it has cost us so many lives, that I would not change it for anything in the world.
You know, the language issue is something that I am very interested in, and since I talked about it with my mother in July, I decided to do the same with my father, who is, like my sister and I, a French teacher. His parents spoke Ukrainian, but only at home. Dad reminds me that at that time, speaking Ukrainian meant passing for a lower-class villager, belonging to a kind of rural sub-village. “If you only spoke Ukrainian, you couldn’t have a career or study. All school literature was in Russian. It was total Russification.” told me.
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