Coming out of this long, painful, exhausting, humiliating and alienating week, I have realized something.

None of my ancestors have had a privilege of living in a world favourable to their thriving. Every single one of my female ancestors have at some point made the vow to survive.

My great-grandmother on my mother’s side must have made this vow when she was deported with her family, with her young children from her land all the way to the Far East of russia. She must have made this vow when her youngest daughter was born in that cold, foreign and unwelcoming land, where they lived in trenches and huts. She made this vow when they made their way back – two years of travel by foot, by train, by horse-pulled carriage back to the place of their ancestors.

My grandmother on my father’s side must have made this vow when she, the only child who survived the genocidal famine, moved from the village to the capital. She must have made this vow when she traded her dreams of being a singer for a low-skilled job that allowed her to feed her family.

My grandmother on my mother’s side must have made this vow when she was forcibly transported to the nazi germany to work on the rope factory, then on the farm as a de-facto slave. She must have made this vow when she raised her daughter (daughters?), while trying to shield him from their abusive alcoholic father.

My mother must have made this vow when she lost her mother at the age of 16 to cancer. She must have made this vow when she traded her dreams to go to university for a job that allowed her to feed herself. She must have made this vow when my father had his accident at the age of 37 and she had to scramble between low-paying, precarious and degrading jobs to keep me fed, clothed and at school.

None of my ancestors have had a privilege to realize their dreams. Their survival was their triumph.

I am the first of my family to have made it to university, to three universities, as if I had to do one for each of them. I am the first to be able to choose the career I want. I am the first to be able to move freely in the world, to go and to live in a different country without boundaries, limitations and humiliation. I am the first to have privilege to speak freely and without fear, even the first to speak the language I want. I AM my ancestors’ dream, the one they never even imagined possible. All their love, all their courage, all this survival in just one woman’s body.

I, too, may not have the luxury to live and grow in the systems that were made for my thriving. I may not always feel that I can breathe freely, that I can say what I want to say, to be understood, to be accepted unconditionally. But just like them, I make a vow to survive. I will survive for my ancestors, I will survive for my daughter, I will survive for my kin connected to me by choice if not by blood. I am living in the world that is reaping at all the seams, I am raising my children through the snowless winters and summers hot and pungent with wildfires, I am nurturing my friendship in the systems that punish authenticity. I am surviving. This is what women do, everywhere, all the time.

I will build the walls that I need to build to protect myself. I will only speak my truth to those who I can truly trust. I will divert my attention to the spaces and relationships that make me bloom. I will not offer more that I can give, will no longer rob myself of time, rest, joy and fulfilment to change the systems I cannot change. These systems are probably doomed, one way or another, and it is sad to think that we are probably doomed with them.

But for now, I will give my love and attention to the ones who need and deserve it: children, parents, gardens, ancestors, books, friends, birds, forest, strangers who are kin. I will detach myself things that hurt me: office politics, social media, being right, going an extra mile, bringing authenticity where it isn’t wanted. From now on I will put my survival first. Because my survival is not just mine, it is not selfish, it is tending to my ancestors dreams, it is giving my children the childhood they need, it is protecting my wild overgrown garden. My ancestors have survived and so will I.