Brave Woman From Ukraine Deserves To Be Heard

This is Yulia Marushevska. She is filmed by Graham Mitchell in front of Maidan Square in Kyiv, captital of Ukraine. The video was posted on February 10th and went viral. Yulia is a warrior, risking her safety to contribute to the freedom of her people, the people of the Ukraine.

My mission in this life is to contribute to the awakening of the warrior heart that is in all of us. Most of us live quite cowardly most of the time. We rather feel safe than vulnerable. It is not nice to find out you are a big fat coward. When I had the realization myself I found it extremely painful and embarrassing because I always had felt identified with courage and risk. But when my own mask was revealed to me I could see how much fear I was hiding under a constructed self-image of coolness and courageousness. From that moment I chose realness over pretending.

In my case I sounds like I had a choice (although it didn’t feel that way). But sometimes something happens in life that is so unjust that the decision is made for you. You become courageous overnight. I don’t know Yulia but to me it feels that her Warrior spirit has taken over. Perhaps she had always been brave or perhaps it were the circumstances that pushed her through.

Nelson Mandela said: “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” When you watch Yulia and hear her voice you can hear she is terrified but determined and angry. It is hard not to feel touched and spoken to. And that’s when it becomes inconvenient. I invite you to watch the video and to mindful of the way your body and mind responds. Observe 2 moments especially: the moment when your heart opens and you want to reach out and the moment when it closes and you go back to business as usual. 

I find it interesting to run into 3 different types of female courage. It started last week with Anne Frank, this weekend it were the Dutch singers who made a video of them orgasming when singing and today it is Yulia who found me with her heartfelt message.

Any thoughts? Leave them in the comments.