My name is Olena Yurovnikova, and I cordially greet everyone who is currently reading my story. I'm from the Donetsk region, from the city of Pokrovsk. I am 43 years old, and my two main life achievements are my two sons. They're of the same age. The older one is now 15, and the younger one is 14 years old.
As people say, you don't carry knowledge, it's not heavy, so at certain time I received two higher educations and until 2020 held the position of deputy head of the planning and economic department at one of the enterprises. And since 2020, I have been a creative housewife. I love making concrete planters and floriculture. This has always been a source of inspiration for me.
Therefore, on the eve of a full-scale invasion of Russia, I set up my own winter garden and on February 24, 2022, in the morning I immediately went to visit my tulips, rosemary, ranunculus and succulents. I don't watch TV and my husband brought me the news about the war. He just called and ordered me to pack my things.
In 2014, as a city near Donetsk, we saw refugees firsthand and sometimes wondered where we would go if this happened to us. But the events of 2014, although frightening, were not at all like February 2022.
The turning point in the issue of leaving home for me were the nightmares of my eldest son. Before that, during the end of February and part of March, I was sure that I would stay in my native Pokrovsk. We set up a basement for storage, brought warm clothes there, and made water supplies. But since the end of March, my son was regularly having nightmares. And I was afraid that staying in the city would break the child's psyche. In two days, we packed up our things and went to Bulgaria, which had just started the program of accepting Ukrainian refugees. The mood was bad, because I was leaving my husband, the house and I had to drive almost 2,000 kilometers in my own car. It was very scary, and when in the morning, on the day of departure, there was a missile strike, all my fears, on the contrary, were dispelled – I had to take out the children.
I left my native Pokrovsk on March 28, 2022. And we returned to Ukraine at the end of August, because my husband, children and I decided that, despite the hospitable reception abroad, the desire to study in Ukraine was a priority. At the time of our return, my husband was actively looking for housing for our family in the western part of Ukraine. The search in the Lviv region did not yield any results, and my husband went home to the East. It was during that trip that my Mykola met Andriy, who was himself an IDP and lived in Sloviansk. Andriy gave the phone number of the woman from whom he rented an apartment before moving to Lviv. Actually, through a chance acquaintance on the train, my husband found out about the small town of Volodymyr and about Kateryna, who was ready to accept refugees. Just two weeks after a chance acquaintance on the train, our family was reunited. On August 26, 2022, I returned to Ukraine with my children and on September 1, children went to the gymnasium.
Here in Volodymyr, every Friday, I visit the city library, where we knit different things for the front in a circle of initiative craftswomen. I've always loved knitting since I was a kid. My mother taught me this when I was about 8 years old. And so I saw an ad on Facebook about the VILNI project and the opportunity to join it as a knitter.
In general, knitting for me is an opportunity to create unique, exclusive things. I knit rugs, bags, sweaters, pillows, and blankets. This is relaxation and rest, mastering new techniques. When I knit socks for the front, I think about each individual warrior who will be warmed by these warm clothes. If these are children's clothes, then my thoughts fly back in time, and I remember the smell of my children when they were tiny, mentally burying my nose in their heads.