Some women get flowers, others get rifles

The women of Ukraine deserve to be remembered today and always

THEY TELL US TO CELEBRATE WOMEN TODAY. But how do you celebrate when you’re fighting to survive?

In Ukraine, this is the unfortunate reality for millions of women.

On this day three years ago, while the world was posting flowers for this occasion, Olena was burying her husband. The war had just started days earlier.

She should have been celebrating that day. She should be celebrating today. Instead, she’s in a trench, gripping a rifle.

It's International Women’s Day again, but Olena doesn’t have time to celebrate. She is too busy fighting for survival.

For the survival of her nation. For her survival.

She was a mother. A teacher. A nurse. A daughter. A wife. Then the war came. Now she carries a gun. Now she patches wounds on the front lines. Now she sleeps in trenches, not in the home she once built with love.

She didn’t ask for war. She didn’t ask for sacrifice. But she had no choice.

Stories of women like Olena are everywhere in this country. On the battlefields. In hospitals, with hands covered in blood, trying to save those who still have a chance. In occupied towns, where speaking the wrong word can mean never coming home. In exile, trying to hold together what little is left of their families.

And some, like my wife Luba, had to leave against their will.

I have not seen her for three years. She wanted to stay, to stand her ground, but war doesn’t care about our choices. It forced her to flee, to take our child to safety, to become a refugee, a single parent overnight. While I fight for Ukraine, she fights to keep life going, to raise our child without me, to hold on to a piece of normalcy when nothing is normal anymore.

She didn’t ask for this. None of them did.

And yet, on this International Women’s Day, the world barely speaks their names.

Not Olena, who watched her husband die in a missile strike. The next day, she enlisted in the army.

Not Iryna, who was captured, tortured, and left for dead. She survived. Now, she fights so no one else will endure what she did.

Not Svitlana, who teaches children in a basement-turned-classroom, refusing to let war steal their future.

Not Oksana, who carries a child that was forced upon her. Every day, she must choose to love what war gave her.

Not my Luba, who keeps going even when everything tells her to break.

The world must remember these women today.

War doesn’t care if you are a mother, a daughter, a child. It takes everything just the same. It doesn’t spare you because you are a woman. It doesn’t pause so you can grieve. It doesn’t let you wake up from the nightmare.

And yet, even in war, there is love. There is resilience.

Our journey has flowers and thorns because we know that making mistakes is human. But wanting to be better for someone is love. That makes all the difference.

It’s what keeps Luba moving forward, even when the weight of our reality should break her. It’s what keeps these women fighting, even when the world moves on.

They have lost their homes. Their families. Their freedom. Some lost their lives. Others lost everything but breath. And still, they fight.

True strength isn’t chosen. It’s what’s left when there is no other option.

One day, people will move on. They always do.

One day, these women’s names will fade from headlines. Their suffering will become footnotes in someone else’s history.

But not yet.

Not today.

Because as long as someone still remembers them, still speaks their names, still carries their stories, they are not gone.

And silence will never be an option.

🌻

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📖 The Divine Comedian: Ukraine’s Journey Through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise is more than a book: it's my attempt to capture Ukraine’s unbreakable spirit in our darkest and brightest moments. If you want to see this war through the eyes of those who refuse to surrender, I invite you to read it. Download it for free in PDF and Kindle formats: