15/03/2026
“I grew up in Kharkiv, Ukraine, in what feels now like another lifetime. A life that’s mine but, oddly, feels like an echo. My childhood was one of happiness and laughter. An endless chain of days that were safe, simple, filled with school, friends and dance. Those years feel golden now, glowing with innocence.
Then the light went out.
Thursday 24 February 2022.
At five in the morning mum burst into my room, her face white with panic. The war had started. I could hear what she was shouting, but I couldn’t make sense of it. Half-asleep, I asked her if I was going to school that day. She shook her head, and in half a heartbeat, life was changed. Forever.
Within hours, our city dissolved into chaos. Sirens screamed across the skyline, explosions rolled in the distance. We lived on the sixth floor of a rental apartment, and from up there I could see smoke rising. My parents pushed us into the basement, where neighbours huddled close around us. Five of us crammed into a space barely three metres wide: my mum, dad, me, my fourteen-year-old brother and my youngest brother, only three. We stayed there for a week, sitting on concrete, shivering, listening. At first I tried to laugh it off, filming little videos, pretending it was a strange holiday underground. I’d even go back up to our apartment for a shower, deflecting the desperate pleas from Mum to return as I’d climb the stairs.
I was fifteen. Old enough to understand something catastrophic was happening, but too young to truly comprehend what war meant. My brain refused to catch up with the reality in front of me. I told myself it couldn’t be serious, that it would all be over in a few days. It felt like a fever dream. One I would surely wake up from at any moment.
But then one day, my parents stepped outside for air. A missile cut through the sky above their heads and landed only a couple of kilometres away. My mum rushed back inside: hysterical, sobbing so hard she could barely breathe. My dad’s face was blank. That was the moment the truth landed. This wasn’t temporary. This was war. Cold. Numbing. Real. We were no longer children with routines and hobbies; we had become refugees in our own country, carrying only dread and fragments of a life that no longer existed.
When we fled Kharkiv, the fear felt endless. Two cars, our family split in half, pets squeezed between us. Three days across Ukraine stretched like a lifetime. The country was broken: no food, no fuel, no safety. Supermarket shelves were stripped bare except for candies and scattered reminders of life before war. Shops and homes abandoned. The roads were gridlocked with cars, each carrying signs taped to the windows, some reading ‘children inside, please don’t attack’. Every stop felt like an invitation to disaster. We slept one night in a half-collapsed hut, the other nights twisted in the car, waiting for morning.
I remember my dad’s silence the most. He had always been a structured man, practical, organised, a planner. But there was no plan left to make. He moved through those days like a machine, making decisions because he had no other choice. My mum, overwhelmed by the weight of holding us together, broke down again and again. It was painful to watch the people I looked up to, those I loved so dearly, unravel before my eyes. The war stripped them bare: made them fearful, vulnerable, human.
From Ukraine we crossed into Moldova, then Romania, living on the kindness of strangers who took us in. My mum’s sister begged us to come to Australia. We thought it would be temporary: a holiday until things settled down. But three years later, we are still here. We left our pets with strangers, and even now that memory guts me. Leaving my dog behind was the hardest part. I cried every day.
We left behind not only our home but who we were, stepping into a country that quite literally felt like another planet.
When we arrived in Sydney, we had almost nothing. Winter coats. One pair of shoes each. A candle from the basement. And, it was summer. We moved seven times in three years, chasing stability. My dad worked as a painter, studied cybersecurity, and still works nights for his Ukrainian company. My mum did everything she could: aged care, translation, eventually finding a job in IT. Every sacrifice, every sleepless night, was for us.
And then there was Pymble.
After two terms at an English-intensive school, Mum had met a Ukrainian lady through Facebook whose daughter, Lauren, went to Pymble. Lauren advocated for me. I begged my mum not to send me to an all-girls school. I thought it would be hell. How could a girl from the other side of the world, who could barely string an English sentence together, possibly find her place or a friend?
But I was wrong. Through Lauren and her family’s kindness toward a displaced family of strangers, and with the support of Dr Hadwen, the College community, and the generosity of Simon and Alison Rothery, who funded my scholarship throughout my time at Pymble, I was given one of the greatest gifts of my life — the chance to belong. Their belief in me gave more than an education; it gave me purpose, stability, and the confidence to find my place in a new country.
On my very first day at Pymble, I found myself on a three-day camp at Collaroy. It was sink or swim, and somehow, I swam. From the moment I met my buddy, Ashley, something shifted. Girls walked me to classrooms when I got lost, teachers showed patience when my English faltered, and friends invited me in. For the first time since the war began, I felt like I belonged.
It wasn’t easy. Sitting exams in a language I had only spoken for two years was brutal. But I got through it. I survived. And that survival felt like something more than a mark or a number. It was proof that I could rebuild a life from nothing.
Now, three years on, my parents are working, my brothers are settled in school and, for the first time in years, we live in one place. Life has rhythm again. Slowly, we’re finding peace.
When I look back, the contrast is stark. The war showed me the darkest parts of humanity. Fear, collapse, survival at any cost. But it also revealed the quiet strength of my parents, who gave up so much so that my brothers and I could be safe, and the resilience of our family as we learned to begin again. Their sacrifice opened the path to Pymble and a community that showed me the best of humanity in the worst of times: kindness, opportunity and the belief that I have a future here.
I will always carry both the darkness of what we fled and the light of what we found, because in the end I’ve learned that home is not a place on a map or the walls of a house. Home is where you are safe, where you are held by love, and where you are free to dream of tomorrow.”
🤍
Posting a full story isn’t something I do often in this space, but for Kseniia, I just couldn’t share one part without the others. As we sat and chatted for a couple of hours, I was in awe (and still am). Her strength and resilience is clear to see, but what struck me more than anything was her warmth. What a remarkable young woman.
Portraits and story with Kseniia created for Pymble Ladies' College as part of their publication & project, "Celebrating 110 Years".
