For most of us this war feels like a nightmare or witnessing an alien attack in a blockbuster movie on our TVs, online media, or the radio. For those who are living in Ukraine, including our families and friends who are there, it is a brutal, terrorizing, dangerous, and unrelenting war. We recognize that writing this for our community may also has such an effect, but we hope and trust that our community and the world continues to witness and fight to end this senseless genocidal aggression. We also hope that this war might be the last of any such wars or any wars — to make visible to us the importance of peace for all people and protection from violence.
Each night, very late, we say goodbye to our families as we try to get some rest here. Each morning we awake with news that seems worse. In each call we make or text we write we tell our families to hold on, stay safe, and that we love them. We send each other memes and poems and newsbits and then we tell each other we love each other. We try to manage our day-to-day lives while checking our texts and phones to tell our Ukrainian family and friends there we love them and we hope they are safe.
From Tatyana: