Paris, August 28, 2024
Dear readers,
This summer I felt 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 will only be truly happy if I can see my Sasha. Which is impossible at the moment.
My father is still here, in France, with us. We talk a lot together. Even about topics like breastfeeding. In Ukraine, almost all women breastfeed, it's very popular. As for me, I wanted to call on a Ukrainian breastfeeding consultant. I discovered Khrystyna, who lives in Kyiv [Kiev, en ukrainien], on Instagram and I got in touch with her. She advised me and I also discovered that her job had really evolved since the great invasion.
I learned things I never suspected about the daily lives of mothers at war. With the arrival of the Russians [Olga et Sasha ont choisi de ne pas mettre de majuscule à « russe » et « russie »], bombings and occupation, Khrystyna accompanies women for whom breastfeeding is literally a matter of survival for their children. Without clean water or food, breast milk saves lives. The support of a professional 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 counsels Ukrainian women refugees all over the world. So many women have difficulty breastfeeding because of the stress generated by the war. She even created a platform for exchanges on Telegram called Vilne Moloko, “free milk”where mothers can chat and find a milk donor. Kind of like a solidarity breast milk bank. She has been very supportive of me, but most importantly, her role in what we are experiencing – allowing Ukrainian babies to live – brings so much to our nation. To its survival.
There is a Ukrainian expression that says that you learn a language with your mother's milk. For me, even if it was not with breast milk but at school and then at university that I learned it, Ukrainian is now my mother tongue. It has become so dear and precious to me, it costs us so many lives, that for nothing in the world would I change it.
As you know, the subject of language questions me a lot and as I had discussions about it with my mother in July, I decided to do the same with my father, who is, like my sister and me, a French teacher. His parents spoke Ukrainian, but only at home. Dad reminds me that at that time speaking Ukrainian meant being considered a low-class villager, it meant belonging to a kind of rural sub-population. “If you spoke only Ukrainian, you couldn't make a career or study. All school literature was in Russian. It was total Russification,” he told me.
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Source: Lemonde
