Help our Ukrainian Family Build a Safe Future

“This fundraiser was created on behalf of a hardworking local family that are faced with circumstances outside their control. The words below were written by Liudmyla (Mila) Shelest and share their experiences since February 2022. All funds raised will 100% go directly to the family.”

Our Life

1. Life Before the War

Today, our family consists of five people. When we left Ukraine, I was 37, my husband was 28, our oldest daughter was 13, our son was 3, and our youngest daughter was only 5 months old.

Before February 24, 2022, we lived like an ordinary middle-income family. Our town had everything we needed.

I am an accountant by profession, with more than 10 years of experience, and I also worked for more than five years with legal documents as an assistant. I earned two university degrees in Ukraine: Economics, specializing in Accounting and Auditing, and Law. I also had a small business providing cleaning and home organization services.

My husband has always been interested in technology. He learned how to repair and upgrade computers, build websites, and work with online advertising. He also worked in several high-end restaurant kitchens. During my last difficult pregnancy, he found work close to home so he could be near me and the children.

Our oldest daughter was in seventh grade. She had friends, hobbies, and a normal childhood. She was active, kind, curious, and loved spending time outside with her friends.

Our son was supposed to start kindergarten in the fall of 2022. He was a cheerful, curious little boy who loved attention. Because my pregnancy had been so difficult, he was temporarily staying with his grandparents in their village, about two hours away.

Then February 24, 2022, came.

2. Life During the War

This was the most emotionally difficult period of our lives.

That terrifying morning, I was feeding our five-month-old daughter. My husband and oldest daughter were sleeping, while our son was with his grandparents.

Then we heard an explosion.

Then another. And another.

Planes were flying over our home and bombs were falling. At first, I tried to convince myself it was a military exercise because there was a military base and airfield near our town. But my husband, who had served in the military, told me these were real missiles and real explosions.

My daughter was crying. My entire body was shaking. We stood together in the hallway between the walls, holding each other and crying, wondering where we could go and whether we would survive.

The air-raid sirens did not stop. There was fear, chaos, and panic everywhere.

What hurt most was that our family was separated. Our little son was two hours away, and we did not know who was safe or who would survive.

Then came an explosion at an oil depot near us, the destruction of a military base, damaged homes and roads, burned cars, nighttime snipers, curfews, and shortages of gasoline, food, diapers, and medicine.

We knew we had to get our son and find somewhere safe.

We learned that fathers of three or more children could potentially leave Ukraine. After verifying the information, we decided to try.

We went to get our son that should have taken two hours, took all day to get there. We put headphones on him and played cartoons so he would not see what was happening around us. Finally, our family was together again.

His grandparents refused to leave their home. They are still there today. Thank God, they are alive. Our next goal was to escape Ukraine.

We spent the night at the station in Kyiv with only water, baby food, cookies, diapers, and a small blanket. Thousands of people were trying to escape.

We barely managed to board an overcrowded train and eventually reached Kyiv. There, another enormous line waited for evacuation trains. It looked like we might have to wait three or four days.

I was sitting in a room for families with babies, feeding my daughter and crying, asking

God to help us.

And He did.

God sent us one angel, then another, and then another. Different people helped us at different moments when we needed it most.

With our tiny baby in my arms, we somehow managed to get onto a train to Poland March 2022 without waiting several more days. We felt that we had been saved.

In Poland, a wonderful family welcomed all five of us into their home. We will always be grateful for their kindness and warmth.

We initially tried to apply for U.S. tourist visas from Poland, but after about a month, we realized it would not work at that time.

So we went to Ireland April 2022, hoping to rebuild our lives there. But our family struggled there.

Still, we did not give up.

We stayed for about four months and changed housing three times. We found work, kind people helped us get our first car, our oldest daughter started school, and our son started kindergarten.

When the United States launched a special program for Ukrainians, my husband did not believe it would work for us. I kept saying, “We have to try. We cannot give up.”

Once again, an angel appeared in our lives and helped us. I am deeply grateful to him, his family, his friends, and everyone who helped us then and continues to support us today.

It is incredibly difficult to lose your home, leave the people you love, have almost nothing, and start your entire life again in another country with three children while not even knowing the language.

But being safe is better than living somewhere where you do not know whether you and your children will wake up the next morning.

3. Life in the United States

We moved to the United States, August 2022 under the Uniting for Ukraine (U4U) program created by the U.S government for Ukrainians displaced by the war. Life in the United States has been challenging, but it is calmer and safer than what we experienced before coming here.

After almost four years, I can say that obtaining legal status in the United States is neither easy nor fast. It is also very expensive, especially for a family of five.

Finding professional work without being fluent in English is extremely difficult. Basic jobs are easier to find, but they usually do not pay very much.

There are kind and decent people here. We call them our “angels.” There are also opportunities to learn, grow, work, and build a better future.

Our oldest daughter now speaks English fluently. For almost two years, she barely spoke, but eventually something changed. She began speaking, made friends, joined school activities, and became more confident.

The war, moving from country to country, and losing the stability of her childhood left a mark on her that I fear can never be completely erased. But she is alive, healthy, beautiful, successful, loved, and most importantly, safe.

Our son also struggled with language after everything he experienced. He mixed different languages together, and for a while people could barely understand him. But he never gave up. Today, at seven years old, he speaks English fluently. He has many friends, is active and happy, and is loved.

Our youngest daughter is now four. She learned English easily and speaks mainly English. She loves playing with other children, drawing, and dancing.

My husband completed college education in automation engineering technology in 2025, but has not yet been able to find work in his field. He continues searching.

During these almost four years, we have had to learn how to live again: find work, learn English, understand a completely different system, raise our children, and build a new life from zero.

We still do not have the stability we had before the war. We are still dealing with immigration documents, work, language barriers, and uncertainty about our future.

But our children have an ordinary childhood again.

They go to school, make friends, play, laugh, and make plans for their futures.

They do not wake up to the sound of explosions.

For me, that is the most important thing.

We lost our home, our familiar life, the ability to live close to our loved ones, and the feeling of knowing what tomorrow would bring.

But we kept the most important things, our family and our hope.

Along this journey, many people became our “angels.” Some gave us a roof over our heads. Some helped with food or clothing. Some helped us continue our journey. Others were simply there when we felt we had no strength left.

Maybe our lives will never be exactly what they were before February 24, 2022.

But we continue moving forward. Slowly. Sometimes with great difficulty. Sometimes taking only tiny steps.

As long as our children are with us and safe, we have a reason to keep fighting for our future.

And our story is not over yet.

What We Are Raising Money For

Right now, our main goal is to continue living and working legally in the United States and preserve the safety and stability for our children that we have fought so hard to find. Present day, I am 41 and my husband is 32. Our oldest is now 17, and a senior in high school, our son is 7 and in second grade, and our youngest daughter is 4, starting kindergarten.

We are raising money to pay for our family’s immigration applications, necessary documents, and required government filing fees.

For a family of five, these costs are a significant financial burden. Some applications must be filed and paid for separately for each family member, making the total more than we can comfortably manage on our own.

For us, this is about much more than paperwork.

It is about the opportunity to continue building our lives here, to work, to give our children a safe home, and to keep moving forward after everything our family has been through.

We will be deeply grateful to everyone who can help us through this next step. Even a small contribution can make a meaningful difference for our family.

Thank you to everyone who has supported us along the way and to everyone who continues to support us today.

Because of you, we continue to believe that our story can have a happy continuation.