One area where I felt I failed entirely is people relationships. I feel acutely that I didn’t do enough to keep my relationships and to reach out to people.  I neglected many of my friends, and I deeply regret it, because I need them, and I feel how much I miss them.

I was constantly in situations where I did not have an extra five minutes to message “how are you doing,” and I did not know what to do about it.

I am unhappy with pretty much everything in this area, and my most important goal for 2026 is to figure out how to change it.

On Saturday, I participated in the program, which was called “Mindfulness in Nature at Leone Beach. The person who led this program was guiding us through the process. We stayed on the lake shore, looking forward at the lake, then looking up close. Then we closed our eyes, listened, and were instructed to think about an experience when we felt “at home” in nature.

There were several other activities, and also, what we thought about, what each of us heard and saw, and which memories came to mind.

At the very end of the program, the Mindfulness Teacher asked each of us to say one or two words that would summarize our feelings of that day. Almost everyone said something about “the end,” meaning that fall is associated with the end of life. And I said: a new beginning.

And it’s not only because fall in nature is strongly associated with mushroom picking, and later with harvesting the wild flowers’ seeds, and then sowing in new places. There is something more fundamental: fall was always a new beginning for me. Everything good started in the fall.

To start, all of my relationships started in the fall, and although not all of my dates were great, it was always the beginning of a new and exciting chapter. My children were born in the fall (well, Vlad and Anna were supposed to :)), and it was in October that I came to the US. And even though I met Boris in the spring, our relationship started at the end of September.

So, that’s for October! My luckiest month ever!

Boris turned seventy-five on Thursday, and that was the first time ever that he allowed me to wish him a happy birthday on the social media. And from what I can tell, he liked the result 🙂

I wrote this post three months ago, and meant to write a follow-up since then. I am not dismissing the importance of “magical moments” in our lives; they are important for happiness. And I agree that they can be very “uneventful.” For example, one of my most treasured memories is a moment when Boris was waiting for me outside the Orchestra Hall in Saint Petersburg, and when he saw me (it was still time when his vision was good enough to recognize me from a distance), his facial expression and body language were such that an older lady standing by him waiting for her party smiled. Or the one when we walked down the street in Moscow, and a man walking in the opposite direction said loudly: Look how much she loves you! I also understand that anybody would be happy with a surprise gift or a lovely message but I do not understand why these things might be more important than everything else, and I understand even less why the absence of something might be “magical.”

I think that the best thing that happened in my life was that for the past thirty-six years, I was with one person, and we shared all aspects of our lives and no matter how many differences we had and still have, we are there for each other.

Boris says there must be some cultural and historical context for my mom’s beliefs, and I tend to agree with him. I remember that as a teen and young adult, I loved the concept of a “have to be a strong woman.” One of the “bard” songs that I loved ended with the following verse:

You paint the sky blue, and you paint the rocks grey,

and then you paint men always strong, and women for sure weak.

But the sky is blue only sometimes, and those that are gey are not rocks,

so you have to be strong while you long to be weak.

I mentioned in this blog multiple times that it was commonplace for a man to exhibit some grand gestures to win a woman’s heart, and it’s not cool to accept somebody’s courting until such grand gestures are made. “A woman should be treated with respect” included opening and holding the door, helping with getting in and out of the outdoor coat, pulling the chair, carrying anything heavier than a purse, and all other things that meant a woman was “treated like a princess.” At the same time, within the same mind frame, it was assumed that when you are married, you have to take care of all your husband’s needs; you cook and clean, wash and iron the clothes, and do most of the shopping. I want to reiterate that men didn’t refuse: we just never thought about asking for help, at least my married friends and I.

Possibly, it was something like, “You will never be treated like royalty after you are married, so make sure you are treated like this once in your life.” Or, it was a weird mixture of the pre-revolutionary upper-class and lower-class household patterns.
I am left with the question, why did we believe we were “treated with respect.” We were not; presuming you are weak and must be assisted is not a sign of respect. Why did we rush to get married? Why did we rush to divorce? Why was a display of something more important than having actual feelings or help

It took me years to understand how wrong I was and even more years to internalize these ideas. And now, I need to come to terms with the fact that my mom is forever frozen in that historical mindset and not try to change it. Honestly, it might be OK with my mom, but when I hear the same nonsense from people my age or younger, I don’t know how to comment!

Last weekend, when we talked with Lena about breaking the eating habits, she touched upon breaking away from other things we were taught froman early age. She told me: since I do not remember how early in my life, my grandmother used to tell me that when I have a family, I should attend to my husband’s needs first, then to kid’s needs, and then to my own. And I can second her – that was a universal idea.

In addition, even though we had the same access to higher education and theoretically the same access to jobs, all of us – all female I knew – regarded their love life being more important than professional career, more than anything, Marriage was definitely the first priority since our early teens, and none of us could ever possibly imagine a happy life without marriage. At the same time, most of us thought that a woman should follow her husband whever life moves him, and that sacrificing all our personal desires, for “what he needs” was in our books of “being a noble person.” We despised those women who “chose their comfort over sharing their husband’s hardships.” That’s why my extremely gifted friend, who for some reason, didn’t consider herself a “marriage material,” got married right before graduation and moved with her husband to Baikonur (where her first child died in birth). That’s why we had a had time understanding what was so heroic in the decision of the Decembrists’ wives to follow their husbands to Siberia.

Actually, I think that we just spend too much time on our personal life and relationships (and who woud’ve thought I would say that!). That was another thing we talked about with Lena, and she seconds me. The funniest part is that my current high professional status is in a strange way a result of me being focused on love and relationships too much in my earlier life – this triggered a long sequence of events which resulted in me being where I am.

Life is the strangest thing. And I am not free from stereotypes, although I try :). My kids are better 🙂