“We pray constantly for the war to end as soon as possible. I don’t know what will happen to us, where we will be, what will happen to our homeland, and to the children we’ve taken into our care.”

On February 24, 2022, I woke up to a call from my husband, who was returning home from work. He told me that war had broken out in our country. At that time, our family was living in a private house in a village located in the Zhytomyr region. We are a religious family, and the only thing we could do at that moment was pray. For a week, our whole family went to church and prayed for the war to end. My husband and I run a family-type children’s home. This is a form of foster care in Ukraine where orphans and children deprived of parental care live in a family environment.

The story of my family began long before I got married. At the age of 14, after going through some very difficult times in my own family, I came to a church, where I felt relief and peace. I started attending services regularly, became a member of the church, and couldn’t imagine my life without God. I took in my first two boys when I was 25 years old. At that time, I was a volunteer working with orphans — children born into troubled families who desperately needed attention and love. The two boys I took in were just over one year old and two years old, but they had already gone through a lot: traumatic family situations and serious medical diagnoses affecting their physical health. Then, in 2014, I met my husband, who accepted me and the children with an open heart. During our marriage, we had two biological children: a daughter born in 2015 and a son born in 2018. In 2019, we welcomed our first group of foster children into our home — three brothers aged 3.5, 9, and 12. In 2021, we took in a second group — two sisters and a brother aged 2, 8, and 10. All the children had experienced psychological trauma and developmental delays caused by neglect in their early lives.

According to Ukrainian regulations, a family-type children’s home may not exceed 10 children, including biological ones. At the start of the war, we had exactly 10 children in our care — two of them biological and eight foster children. Soon we began facing problems with food. Items started disappearing from store shelves in our small village, as people, overwhelmed by panic, began buying up everything. Military aircraft were constantly flying overhead, and we could hear explosions. I really didn’t want to leave our area — our homeland. But the news grew worse with each passing day. After a while, my husband and I decided to go to a nearby town to get groceries — we needed to feed the children. The trip took hours, as we had to pass through many checkpoints. The roads were packed with large military trucks, and armed Ukrainian soldiers were stationed everywhere. We left in the morning and didn’t return until one in the morning the next day. My husband started insisting that we leave our home. Given the conditions in the country at the time, it was extremely difficult to care for the children we had taken responsibility for. There was a military base not far from our house, which Russian forces were constantly trying to target. As a result, we heard explosions almost every day. They terrified both the children and us. We tried our best to distract the kids from the horrors around them, but the anxiety about our fate never left us.

Our car was broken down, and I reached out to the social services that supervised our family. Unfortunately, they were unable to find us any transportation for evacuation. We were left completely on our own in a critically dangerous situation. We didn’t know how things would unfold, but we felt that if we didn’t leave soon, we might never be able to. My husband found some people from our church who agreed to help evacuate our family. My mother, who had been helping us with the children, also decided to come with us.

On the morning of March 8, 2022, our entire family — 10 children, three adults, and our Labrador dog — left our village in two vehicles. It was International Women’s Day, and at one of the checkpoints in Western Ukraine, the soldiers gave flowers to me and my mother. We were brought to tears by such kindness in such dire circumstances. We were taken to the Polish border, where we had to separate from my husband for a while, as he needed to cross in the car, and the queue was extremely long. So I ended up crossing the border on foot — with 10 children, my mother, and our dog. We walked about four kilometers on foot, and it was an incredibly difficult ordeal for everyone. In Poland, we had the address of a church that was ready to receive Ukrainian refugees, but we still had to get there. Polish volunteers picked us up, found transportation for our large family, and took us first to a refugee reception center. The youngest child became nauseous and developed a fever. We found a place for her to rest and recover. At the reception center, a man approached us and offered to help us travel to Sweden. He had contacts with a charitable organization in Sweden, which then got in touch with a local church in the town of Höör. They were ready to accommodate our family. Later that evening, we reunited with my husband, who had finally crossed the border, and we made the final decision to go to Sweden.

On March 10, 2022, we arrived by ferry in Karlskrona, Sweden. We were met by locals in two minibuses and taken to the town of Höör, where we were initially housed at a tourist base. For about a month, we lived there with other families from Ukraine. Then we were given two separate tourist cottages, and our family began living there. That’s how we ended up with “Dad’s house” and “Mom’s house” — some of the children live with me in one house, and the rest live with my husband in the other. By May 2022, all of the children had started attending local schools and kindergartens. During the day, they studied, and in the evening we all gathered together. At night, they went to their beds — some in House 1, and others in House 2. The town of Höör had originally been preparing to receive an entire orphanage and was expecting a large number of children from Ukraine. Instead, we came.

During the first six months, local residents brought us clothes and food, and we were incredibly grateful for all the support the Swedish people provided. The church that took us under its wing gave us not only housing but also two minibuses so we could transport the children to and from school and daycare. Our base is located in a forested area, so it’s a bit of a journey to get into town. Having transportation was essential. From the moment we arrived in Sweden, my husband started looking for work and did various seasonal jobs he could find. Later on, I also found a job for six months doing house cleaning. Right now, we are expecting our third biological child, who is due at the end of April 2024. We are also attending SFI (Swedish for Immigrants) language courses. Life is gradually settling down, but our hearts still ache for our homeland. We continue to pray constantly for the war to end as soon as possible. I don’t know what the future holds for us — where we will be, what will happen to our homeland, or what lies ahead for the children we have taken into our care. They are registered at the consulate in Sweden as adoptable children from Ukraine. In reality, they call us their parents, but legally, they are still registered in Ukraine as orphans living in a family-type children’s home. If tomorrow, the Ukrainian government demands their return, we will be forced to comply. I don’t know what awaits them there. These children have already been through more than enough trauma since birth, and their hardships are far from over. My husband and I have poured our hearts and souls into changing their lives for the better — and we were succeeding. I would not want to lose them because of the war or the situation in the country.

But I trust in God and believe that everything happens for a reason. I believe that we are where we are meant to be — that we are meant to go through these trials with dignity and come out of them stronger and better. We have our children, our family, and we will continue to care for them with God’s help, no matter what. We want to preserve the values of purity, respect, and dignity in our children. We hope that they will not lose these values, but instead carry them in their hearts and pass them on.

Ukrainian version written by – Olena Andryeyenkova.

Translated to English by – Olena Andryeyenkova.