My Inspiration
"It feels like a lifetime and the blink of an eye since that day, that I ran a death defying 800-metres with blaring air-raid sirens and and a crying toddler in tow. Now, I am 9,000 km away from my home running for an entirely different reason. "
In March 2022 with her back then three y.o. daughter, Olena left Ukraine as war refugees. She decided to turn her challenges outside her home country into strength.
Running became her coping mechanism for trauma of war and navigating challenges of starting life from scratch in a new country. Running remained one of the few parts of her identity not taken by the war. It is something she carried over with her to Canada, as if it were a treasure trove of resilience and stability.
In the beginning of the war, Olena’s biggest fear was to be separated from her daughter during air strikes on Kyiv. Olena hasn’t slept a minute in those five nights they spent living in a walk-in closet in the first week of the war. Now she supports charities who help to bring forcefully deported Ukrainian children back home from Russia.
Olena is a co-author of the Run for Your Life book, which became a bestseller in Canada in the first week on Amazon.