Love letters to the unloved.

I live in a country that still fundamentally misunderstands racial injustice. ("He/She is going off of statistics...", "I am not racist, but...") Conversations about racial inequality are, admittedly, exhausting. As a post-Soviet country, Russia has been shut down from the rest of the world for so long that many people here have cannot even begin to grasp racism in places like the US, its complexity and historical implications. I have accompanied/ helped/ interpreted for several musicians from the USA in the last few months. Unbelievably talented, gorgeous, fun, humble, warm, kind and black. Each time they'd play a show, they would stick around afterwards to sign CD's and thank the audience. Never turning anyone down, they took time to chat and take photos. Amazed at their ability to still be nice to people after giving their all on that stage and disgusted by how inappropriate some listeners were, I'd ask "Should I just tell them to back off? Th...

A couple of days ago two pretty famous people in Russia, a married couple, made some nasty comments regarding women who survived sexual assault and abusive relationships. (Your sadly typical "you should not have been dressed this-or-that way", "you were asking for it by...") Interestingly enough, the wife has received plenty of criticism (obviously) and has already apologized twice. She claims to have decided to turn her platform into a safer space for survivors and has even reached out to some organizations that help survivors in Russia. While her sincerity is still questionable to me, I find it much easier to have empathy and grace for her than for her husband. In all honesty, he has been a total a-hole about the whole situation, calling people names in his comment section on IG (full of pretty heated comments too) and has shown absolutely ZERO remorse or compassion towards those he had hurt. All this to say, we still have a LONG ASS way to go in my country a...

I am BIG on uplifting others and doing things like sending random messages of love and encouragement to those I love. This week, I have decided to turn that energy inward. In a society that is only now warming up to the idea of self-love and self-compassion, doing things like this takes major guts. I hope that reading this gently nudges you to take a moment and appreciate yourselves. You deserve it. Here they go: 1) I like how your hair looks today! 2) Good job being patient and taking the higher route when your initial reaction was to loose your cool. 3) You deserve all the love you give to others. 4) People who say they love you actually mean it. They don't just say it out of pity despite what you have been told. 5) When people don't respond to your messages, it's nothing on you 98% of the time. 6) You are whole and have all you need within you to be your best self. 7) You do NOT need external validation. 8) You have the power to hold yourself accountab...

We are very often taught how to stand up to hate and receive/process it with bravery, grace and maturity. And that.is.awesome. Extremely needed and can actually save someone's life. But what about a genuine compliment? Encouragement? A constructive feedback with some suggestions for improvement? Even a back-handed, hurtful compliment that is actually also love, but the kind that cannot even be seen or accepted because how it is shown is so sickening? I actually think that knowing what to do with hate and being able to internalize love could go hand-in-hand: both make us cringe at times. What I think it comes down to is permission. We need to give ourselves permission to heal from hate, take back the power and, eventually, come to a place of forgiveness just like we do when love comes our way. This is, of course, never easy so I wanted to give a shoutout to all the beautiful souls in my life who have been finding it especially hard to hear kind words, accept kind actions from...

Moms are superhuman to me. Always have been, always will be. For that very reason, whenever I see a mama being hard on herself, my heart breaks and I jump into a "how many encouraging words can I fit into the time I can spend with this mama" kind of mode. It comes as no surprise, then, that my first love letter is to mamas. ALL mamas. If it touches you, please feel free to share with a mama friend who you love and want to uplift.  Here it is.  Dear new mama, I see you.   I see you trying to figure out this new role you have been given. I see you terrified out of your life looking at a tiny human that is now pretty much fully dependent on you to stay alive. I see you struggling to make even the slightest bit of sense of what has just happened to your body. I see you looking at yourself in the mirror and not recognizing the person looking back at you.   I see you trying to navigate this life, get to know the new you AND your baby. I see you ...

“Put into the world what without you may never exist” I heard this phrase while listening to Oprah Winfrey’s podcast with Lupita Nyong’o and it really struck a cord with me. It used to be that the more hatred, ignorance and discrimination I saw, the more furious I got. (Thus the countless angry rants that my FB wall was full of)  After a while even I myself got tired of the negativity and bitterness.  The state of our world still drives me absolute bonkers, do not get me wrong, but now I am a big believer of promoting the things I love instead of judging the things I hate. That is why it’s been on my heart for a long time to start a blog and name it “Love letters to the unloved”. Do I expect it to change the opinions of narrow-minded, judgmental people I used to get so mad at? Or may be change to policies in place that impede the peaceful, fear-free existence to those near to my heart whose rights have been overlooked for way too long? Of course not. My only hope is ...