October 8 — Retracing Her Footsteps: A Journey Through Ukraine

The two photos say what time cannot conceal:my mother, eighteen, fresh from high school, standing on the edge of her life’s beginning, and then, nearly sixty years later, the same gentleness, the same gaze, just months before she said her goodbyes and placed the baton in the hands of those who would carry her work forward.

I’ve been looking at this photograph today in Kyiv, where I now also teach. I was around her age when I graduated from Kyiv International School, when we last lived here this long, after our family arrived thirty years ago, in 1995. The city feels at once unchanged and entirely reborn: the same river, the same skyline, the same stubborn hope that somehow outlives every storm.

And now, I am two years shy of the age she was when we moved here.That thought stops me. Because I can see, almost measure, the span of her next thirty years, the years she used to build the platform her children stand on now. A lifetime of quiet construction: faith laid brick by brick, lesson by lesson.

She did not build for recognition. She built so that others could reach farther than she had. Her strength was not loud; it was steady. Her reward was not applause; it was endurance.

So I ask myself: what will I do with the next thirty? How will I use the time she once held in her hands, the time that turned faith into foundation, and affection into legacy? Perhaps this is how we inherit vocation: not through ceremony, but through continuity. Her gaze in both images reminds me that the task is never to outshine the generation before us, but to extend its light a little further into the dark.

A Week of Building, Stone by Stone

And so, this week becomes a threshold. Over the next three days, I will begin to lay the first visible stones of something that has lived quietly in prayer for years: In Her Words — a living memorial to my mother’s faith and work.

• Today begins with remembrance, the story behind the photograph, the recognition that legacy begins long before we name it.

• Tomorrow will bring the first reflections: short devotionals drawn from her favourite Scriptures, written as she would have taught, simple, strong, full of grace.

• And on October 10th, her birthday, the memorial itself will open online: a space where her words, and those of others shaped by her teaching, can continue to breathe.

Each day will add to the one before, like stones forming a foundation, not to build a monument of nostalgia, but a home for faith to keep living.

What In Her Words Will Hold

The memorial will carry the same spirit that filled the decades between the two photos. It will gather lessons turned into devotionals, letters re-written as reflections, and voices of those she mentored. It will also open the first circle of a small community — the Legacy Circle — for anyone who wishes to walk this path of remembrance and renewal with us.

Inside that circle, we will share the deeper material:drafts from her forthcoming biography My Mother’s Story, early reflections from readers, private prayer notes, and the simple rhythm of weekly encouragement. It will be the quiet continuation of her classroom, where stories become lessons, and lessons become life.

My hope is that In Her Words will grow like a lampstand: one steady light with many wicks, each person adding their own flame. Because remembrance only becomes legacy when it multiplies; when it invites others to speak, to write, to carry the story forward.

An Invitation

Today’s reflection, then, is also a quiet invitation:to remember what she built, to help carry it forward, and to join in the work of turning memory into mission. Over the next three days, as these pages unfold, I invite you to follow, to read, to share a word of your own. By Sunday, the circle will open; by Monday, the first prayers and testimonies will already begin to gather like candles in a digital chapel. Because a legacy is never finished. It only changes hands, and hearts.