“Here we have everything except our home.” Liuda gestures around the room where she has lived for the past two years with her sons, aged 11 and eight, and her mother. “We don’t have a home anymore. I am not a snail, I couldn’t take my home with me on my back, but I took with me what is most precious, my kids.”  

Their room is located in a JRS shelter in the Ukrainian city of Lviv, where families displaced by the war are hosted until they get their lives sorted out, without having to worry about being served notice to leave. Typically, the families are headed by women, either because they are widowed or because their husbands are on the frontline or have fled the country to avoid ending up there.  

Inga Dul, JRS Ukraine Country Director, says: “We want to create a space where the women may breathe, first of all where they may feel safe, and then start to get on with their lives.” 

The JRS House is more than just a place to stay. Services include legal and psychological support, referrals, childminding, Ukrainian-language lessons, art-therapy workshops – colourful paintings adorn many of the walls – and more. Former residents return for classes and workshops.  

There are 25 people in the shelter now. The house is full, with one bedroom doubling up as an office during the day and a big room dedicated to the relatives of injured soldiers who come to Lviv for a few days for rehabilitation. JRS gives priority to families and individuals who face conditions that make them vulnerable, such as orphans or children who are seriously ill, or with disabilities. Sometimes, like Liuda’s family, there are three generations taking shelter at the JRS House. 

Liuda fled war in her hometown of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine in May 2022, heading for Lviv because the surgeon who tending to her younger son was there. The little boy has already had four highly specialised operations and needs two more by the time he is 18 years. His mother is determined to get him the treatment he needs, one operation at a time.  

Liuda is deeply appreciative for all the help she receives from JRS. “We don’t need to think about what to eat, where to live and what to buy so we are really grateful for the support,” she says warmly.  

The appreciation is mutual. Showing me around the shelter, Inga gestures towards Liuda, who is out of earshot, and says: “Some of these women are my heroes.” At the end of my conversation with Liuda, I can understand why.  

The horror of war is not the first grim challenge Liuda faced in her life. Before losing her home, she lost her husband to cancer.  “He died aged 33 within three months. It was very fast and in that kind of situation, there is nothing you can do,” she said, her eyes bright with unshed tears. The tragedy taught Liuda a lesson: “In the cemetery there is nothing you can do, but alive, yes, you can. Life taught me that as long you are alive, it is not the end.”  

This conviction keeps Liuda going, together with the reality that her children need her. She continues: “When someone depends on you, you just can’t give up, that’s all. I am a single mom. I am really trying to be strong, there is no time to give up.” 

Liuda’s children attend school and she has found a job keeping accounts, “luckily online so I can spend time with my kids.” She oscillates between hope and frustration, mostly because she does not have a home to call her own anymore and does not know when she will have one.  

“My hopes? To unpack our suitcase. It’s really time to unpack,” she says. “We have been living without plans all this time, it’s hard to make any. My efforts seem hopeless without a home. I need to live now and want a place but I don’t know how to do it.”

She says wistfully that perhaps she might get government compensation if she had proof that the war destroyed her old home. She does not have this proof and has no intention of returning to the east to find it. “I have no relatives left where I came from, just people I know who refuse to leave. It is really close to the frontline.”

At least, Liuda derives consolation from not regretting her choice. “You don’t know if you are acting right and doing the right things for your family,” she says. “But I do feel we took the right decision because we couldn’t stay back.”

Liuda clearly remembers the day she decided they had to leave Pokrovsk. “I don’t know why we were standing in front of a window in our house that day but I was there with my sons,” she recalls, her eyes clouding over. “Suddenly we saw a rocket and then the explosion. The kids were so frightened.” Although Liuda had prepared the basement of her house as a bomb shelter, she saw it was no use. “In that moment, I saw I wouldn’t have enough time to take the children to the shelter because they were frozen with fear. Nobody could move.”

In Lviv, air alerts are common “but at least we have a few hours after we hear the alarm” and rocket attacks are relatively rare. “In Pokrovsk, when we heard the alarm, we would have just minutes and now it has become seconds, they tell me, or no alarm, even.”

Arriving in Lviv was a relief. “When we went for a walk, we saw another life, people walking around, in cafes, shopping, living their lives. At home, everyone was hiding, their windows closed and shuttered with wood. We couldn’t even switch on a light. It was so horrible.”

At first, the family’s accommodation in Lviv was “another horrible story,” in a crowded kindergarten classroom with 20 people. Then Liuda met Inga and “my way with JRS started.”

Throughout our conversation, even as she details her struggles, Liuda remains gracious, appreciative and anxious to clarify that she is not moaning. She says: “I am not complaining, I have gotten used to the situation, I am just describing.”

I get the sense that Liuda wants to give me as much information as she can. “My story is not enough to tell you how people suffer and not just because of the war. There are people here who suffer more than I do.” She lowers her voice and points to a neighbouring room, saying, “a 2-year-old is in hospital, and I don’t know how to help.”

Liuda leaves me with two things that she hopes for, “that this will never happen to you,” and that by sharing something of her story, she could help somebody else. She wants especially to inspire parents of children with disabilities.

Our encounter definitely leaves me moved by Liuda’s remarkable capacity to combine hope with realism and by the JRS team that keeps her hope alive. I read somewhere that “home is not a place, it’s a feeling.” The JRS House in Lviv seems to be a bit of both, a testimony to the JRS mission to accompany people uprooted from their homes.