Ukrainian Heart Torn Apart

My Dearest Diary,

The ink trembles in my hand as I write this, the way my knees buckled on June 3, 2024, when the late-spring sun still painted our Redding driveway gold. I was elbow-deep in borsch—beets bleeding crimson into the pot, the scent of dill curling like childhood memories from our tiny Kyiv kitchen—when the knock came. Not a polite rap, but a demand. The door swung open before I could wipe my hands, and there she stood: a stranger in a black dress too tight for daylight, voice syrupy as poisoned honey. No badge. No warrant. Just words that sliced the air: “You’re abusers.”

My heart—my foolish, Ukrainian heart that had survived Chernobyl’s invisible poison at age four, endless Soviet queues for bread, the collapse of empires—stopped. My child, my vivacious miracle born in 2007 under Massachusetts snow, the one whose first laugh sounded like church bells, was gone. Taken barefoot across sharp volcanic rocks. I hurled her flip-flops after her retreating shadow; they landed like white flags in the dust. CCTV later showed her walking—not running—from the “danger” of parents who had crossed oceans to keep her safe. Eight police cars arrived to escort one fifteen-year-old girl. Neighbors gawked from behind lace curtains. Sunrise Drive became a stage, and we the villains.

We had come legally—H1B visas clutched like rosaries, green cards earned through sleepless nights of paperwork, citizenship sworn beneath an American flag that promised liberty. Liberty. What a cruel joke. In the state of Massachusetts, teachers bullied her until she bled inside; we sued the district, sold our beloved house with the wraparound porch, moved to Acton, then fled east to west, chasing safety like mirage. Seven schools. Seven battlegrounds. serious mental disorders including an ‘adult’ BPD, anxiety, depression—labels slapped on a soul still learning to fly. We carried her newborn brother in a sling to pick her up from an innovation school in Sudbury Valley, forty-five minutes each way, because no bus felt safe. We hired private drivers. We drained savings. We prayed in Orthodox whispers.

California was meant to be Eden. Bay area rented townhouse smelled of new paint and false hope; Redding’s stucco dream with a shed!—three bedrooms, two waterfalls, pellet stove crackling like baba’s hearth, hummingbirds at the feeder—closed in July 2021. Then the Fawn fire roared, devouring neighbors’ homes while ours stood defiant, soot-streaked but alive. We scrubbed ash from the hot tub, planted fire-resistant rosemary, told ourselves the worst was behind us.

It wasn’t.

Discord became her window to the world. Pixels replaced playgrounds. She read psychology texts at thirteen, diagnosed herself, begged for stimulants that made her vomit. Shasta Lake School ended in a parking-lot crash—metal crumpling, her calf pinned, head spared by inches. The principal never called. Phoenix Charter offered hybrid sanctuary; she blossomed academically, withered socially. Unisex hoodies gave way to barber-shop cuts, binders ordered in secret, “he” demanded like a verdict. We honored the birth nickname at home—our private treaty—promising the rest could wait until eighteen. Dr. Sager from Children’s Legacy Center, all booming laughter and lithium scripts, met her alone, whispered affirmation behind closed doors. “Any diagnosis you want,” she joked. I squinted at her then. I weep now.

May 2024: doors slammed like gunshots. She vanished into the garden shed—our whimsical summer house with the pellet stove and fairy lights—declaring foster care preferable to family. June 1: I found her changing sheets, eyes wild. June 3: the black-dress woman. Discord scrolls later revealed the groomer—“markymoo,” Kansan, 17 year old—coaching since October 2023: pack light, accuse abuse, leave barefoot for drama. My child obeyed like a puppet.

Court, June 5–6: a wood-paneled purgatory. Interpreters mangled Russian into nonsense; we were muzzled statues. The petition—filed September last year with culturally unfit verdict, stamped like a death warrant—accused us of “serious emotional damage” in Cali terrible laws. Lies in legal ink: we rejected transition, caused self-harm, ignored a seventeen-year-old online predator (CSEC risk), withheld care. Care? We had spent a fortune in insurance claims, out-of-pocket, on attorneys who later betrayed us. Wisdom-teeth surgery—scheduled months earlier, anesthesia consented—was canceled; she “declined” under CPS whispers. Visitations: KGB interrogation style rooms, CPS sentinel scribbling and mocking every tear. She sat hunched, eyes vacant, repeating scripts: “They don’t support me.”

July 2024: the judge ordered her electronics returned—treasure troves of groomer chats—yet greenlit her sharing a bedroom with a sixteen-year-old boy. An innocent young girl upon removal, now at risk of everything we shielded her from. Self-harm scars hidden under sleeves. Possible pregnancy. Possible abortion. CPS silent.

We fled California at dawn, our eight-year-old son clutching his stuffed fox, fearing he’d be next. Attorneys fired—ex parte shadows with the judge and others in courtroom, it looked and we suspected. Ukrainian resilience—collectivist, stoic, harmony above all—crushed beneath individualist machinery demanding affirmation or termination. My princess who twirled in princess gowns, built rainbow-loom empires, now a stranger in boys’ clothes, regurgitating ideology and green butcher’s haircut hair.

I light a candle nightly before the icon of the Theotokos. The flame dances like the fountains we no longer tend. Somewhere, my child sleeps under alien sheets. I whisper into the dark: “I am here. I will fight until my last breath. Come home when you’re ready, my love. Mama’s arms are still open, borsch still simmering, heart still breaking.”

Forever yours in sorrow, Mama