Tetyana Denford on Ukraine: ‘Stories of my mother, motherland’

I wear a chain around my neck that was made from my great grandfather Rudnyckyj’s pocket-watch chain. He was a Ukrainian landowner from Lviv and a political activist. I wear my grandmother Yulia Mytzyk’s embroidered shirt, one of the items of clothing she took with her when she left her home at 18 under the threat of war. I also wear her wedding ring, the same one I grew up seeing under a light coating of flour as she taught me how to make pyrohy. My youngest daughter’s middle name is Yulia, and she asks me about her a lot; the memories of her are fresh in her head as her death in 2020 still feels like a fresh wound. “Baba Yulia, I miss her. Let’s visit her grave and talk to her. Tell me more of her stories.”

My married name is Denford, but I am a Bisyk by birth. Ukrainian is my first language. I didn’t speak English until I was six. I am a daughter of immigrants who narrowly escaped their homes during WWII and ended up in a German labour camp. They were moved through various immigrant detention centers in Australia after the war and eventually settled in New York City, but not without living a life looking over their shoulders fearing that their livelihoods would be taken away from them without a moment’s warning because of their ties to political activism.

Although I wasn’t born there, Ukraine is my home. My batkivshchyna. It is my center, my insides, my reason for being an author, even. People ask me if I dream in Ukrainian or English, and I still dream in Ukrainian, because once you allow magic and hope and art to live in your heart for a time, and you are conditioned as a child to understand where you’re from, it never leaves you; it makes you who you are, and it changes your perspective on humanity.

History will always repeat itself. The news recently isn’t really news to a lot of Ukrainians who have always had the present and the past looming over them and their families. We’ve all lived with these stories for over 90 years. They’ve been passed down to us little by little, with older generations sharing cups of tea and reminiscing about their homes and their relatives that they never got a chance to see again, and then tipping into anger and frustration that nothing ever seems to change. We have heard the stories of millions of people starving on the streets during Holodomor, we have heard of the secret police showing up at farmhouses in the middle of the night shooting people in cold blood. Our families have had to endure German labour camps, Siberian gulags, and historical discrimination from the media that discards us. We live with tragedy and yet, we find joy. We celebrate hope. We play music and embroider our stories on our clothes, let ourselves enjoy moments of love and food and gilded monuments that stand tall on the coast, facing Russian dictators in elegant defiance.

When you step foot in Ukraine, whether you’re a visitor who has never heard the language or you’re a native speaker visiting friends and family, you are treated the same: people smile at you in the shops, on the street. You are embraced into the environment like a new friend, you are allowed to barter with the stall holders selling their homemade goods, you are allowed to learn the words to say “thank you” and “have a nice day” and you are encouraged to say them, even if they come out clunkily. Young women proudly stand tall, with their famously high cheekbones, and walk ahead of their men confidently and with purpose. There’s an arrogance in my people, but not in an unapproachable way. In fact, the arrogance feels empowering and valid; they are a proud people, they still look up at their statues and monuments in reverence, no matter if they’ve lived there their whole lives.

This is the kind of humanity that seems fearsome to men in power, because there is a hollow that exists within themselves that will never be filled with anything but money and titles. Wealth and power corrupt many, and Ukraine has been used as a pawn in so many wargames. But there’s a commonality here: so many humble, underprepared countries are used this way, and geopolitics and wargames aside, the thing that we need to remember is to lean on each other’s hope and art in times of unrest. The human toll of war is always the greatest cost, and the way to repay it is to donate time and money to worthwhile causes that support the people who need it most.