Stories from the Field

Sharon recounts the breakthrough moment when she realized that lowering her language-learning expectations was the key to actually communicating in her new country.

When Sharon's family evacuated Kyiv, she left behind a beloved pair of rain boots. Replacing them became an unexpected metaphor for learning to thrive after displacement.

Three years after evacuating Ukraine, Sharon wrestles with a painful paradox: you can't recover from trauma while the source of that trauma is still ongoing.

After years of displacement-induced numbness, Sharon notices the crimson maple trees of Budapest for the first time — and realizes how much grief had taken from her ability to see beauty.

After three years of grief following displacement from Ukraine, Sharon discovers that offering her suffering as worship unlocks the joy she thought the war had permanently taken.

During a visit to Ukraine, Sharon and her family endure a night of air-raid sirens and missile strikes that hit six cities — including a children's hospital — leaving her without words.

While sorting through boxes from their Kyiv apartment, Sharon finds pre-dated school absence notes from February 2022 and grapples with what displacement has done to her children.

After completing the second draft of her memoir, Sharon confronts an uncomfortable truth: displacement has brought unexpected blessings alongside the loss.

An airport advertisement poses a deceptively simple question — is home where you're from or where you're going? — and Sharon traces her answer across two decades and two displacements.

Sitting in a Budapest coffee house, feeling settled for the first time, Sharon is blindsided by a wave of longing — and discovers it points to something beyond Ukraine.