“Darling, I’m alive!” is operating in Zaporizhzhia. It’s a charitable project of psychological support, created for women who lost their husbands in the war. For this purpose, group confidential sessions with a psychologist, physical activities and art therapy exercises are conducted with the women. We talked about how the project works, its main features and activities with the organizer Yaryna Herashchenko.

Due to the full-scale invasion, many Ukrainian men and women urgently need psychological help, in particular, in connection with the loss of loved ones. Mykhailo Podoliak, a senior adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky, stated in December 2023 that official estimates of the number of dead Ukrainian servicemen “range from 10,000 … to 13,000.” That is why the relatives of the fallen servicemen are among those who require psychological help the most.

Yaryna is convinced: “Our main goal is to support women on the way to healing, on the way to understanding themselves in a new reality. We also strive to help them finding the value they lost with the loss of their spouse. Unfortunately, these women lost the value of life, so our goal is to put them on the path of understanding the value of their lives.”

“The project helped me a lot, precisely because I talked about the loss, my emotions, and feelings. The project made me realize that I have the right to live and be happy. Since I did not have the opportunity to say goodbye to Artem’s body, the project somehow helped me to let Artem’s soul go, to accept that he was gone. Currently, I am doing more with myself, trying to regain the moral and physical condition. The project definitely made me believe in myself as a woman, so I do not rule out the fact that I will be able to build a relationship. Of course, the pain of loss has not left me completely, but it has decreased, it is perceived less acutely,” – says one of the participants, Maria.