Wisdom From The Heart

1990. It is October in Moscow. The Soviet Union is changing, and the borders to the West, which had seemed almost unreachable for so long, are beginning to open.

For my parents, that meant one thing: there was finally a possibility to leave.

Freedom had never felt so close.

I was born and raised in Moscow until the age of seven, when my parents decided to leave behind the cold and rigid structures of the Soviet Union. The suitcases were packed, the savings were withdrawn, and a journey towards Western Europe began.

There was no fixed plan. No carefully mapped-out future. There was only one goal: to find a place where we could build a better life.

We left with very little in terms of money or material possessions. What we mainly packed was courage, hope, and the willingness to step into the unknown.

Our first destination was Spain. But Spain wasn’t the place where we could settle. From there, we continued to France, but again, there seemed to be no real possibility of building the future my parents were searching for.

And then came Belgium.

By then, our financial resources to continue travelling had run out. And by coincidence — if you believe in such a thing (I don’t really 😉) — Belgium became the country where we were welcomed and where our journey finally stopped.

That first year was intense.

We lived in several different places, including a Red Cross refugee centre. I changed schools repeatedly, barely spoke the language, and knew absolutely nothing about the Western school system.

I felt like the odd one out. A lost little sheep from Eastern Europe, desperately wanting to belong while being painfully aware that I was different from everyone else in the classroom.

That is where loneliness first began to introduce itself to me.

The language, mentality, customs, culture, structures, ways of living, even the way people interacted with one another — everything required adjustment, both emotionally and mentally.

And as a sensitive child, those years left a deep imprint on me. The feeling of having less — culturally, materially, and somehow even as a person — settled somewhere inside my system.

Primary school eventually became a safe and familiar world. I did well, had many friends and finally felt at home.

But after moving to the big city, secondary school became a completely different experience.

I never really found my place there.

The school system was largely focused on memorising information, while creativity — the very thing that made me feel alive — had little space. Slowly, I became even more disconnected from who I was inside.

My grades dropped. My attention disappeared. My motivation followed.

Eventually, I became exhausted with school altogether.

I left without the piece of paper that society uses as proof that you are “good enough”.

And that absence followed me for much longer than I realised.

For a large part of my life, my childhood and my experience at school became the measuring stick I unconsciously used to determine my value in society.

No diploma.
Not enough knowledge.
Not accomplished enough.
Not quite belonging.

Somewhere along the way, I had turned those things into evidence of who I was.

Until this year.

This year something changed.

At 43, I can finally look back at my life through different eyes.

I no longer see a life lacking the right qualifications. I see a life filled with experiences that are entirely my own. Nobody has walked exactly the road I have walked.

I see the places I have lived, the cultures I have experienced, the challenges I have moved through, the beautiful people who crossed my path, the people who helped me, and the people I have been able to help through my own talents, intuition and simply by being who I am.

And I understand now that my value was never dependent on a stamp of approval from society.

Not having that stamp doesn’t take anything away from the woman I am today.

And it certainly doesn’t take anything away from the child I once was.

Our sense of worth becomes coloured by the beliefs we develop about ourselves.

Growing up, I never really received the emotional and mental support that encouraged me to discover who I was without having to adapt myself to fit somewhere.

So, like children do, I filled in the blanks myself.

I looked at what was happening around me and decided where my place must be.

Children need to feel loved, supported, accepted and understood. Their sense of self is partly shaped through the adults who guide them through life.

And when those adults were never taught how to offer that themselves, patterns are passed down from one generation to another.

Until someone decides they end here.

For me, this is that year.

I am breaking with the beliefs built around lack.

Lack of money.
Lack of love.
Lack of worth.
Lack of confidence.
Not being good enough.
Not being accepted.

And I am replacing them with the understanding that my life has made me incredibly rich in experience.

I will no longer place myself beneath other people.

I am taking my place in this world.

For years, not having an official piece of paper telling the world what I was capable of kept me small. It made me afraid to fully show myself.

Shame had its hands around me for a very long time.

But this is where it ends.

I draw.
I paint.
I write.
I channel.
I speak.
I think.
I share.
I live.

And I no longer abandon myself while doing any of it.

I accept the unusual, colourful soul and human being that I am.

I may not have graduated with the official piece of paper society taught me to value so much, but I did graduate from the school of life.

Because life itself is a school.

We learn by living. By falling and getting back up. By loving, losing, trying, failing, discovering, changing, creating and experiencing. Every single one of us is enrolled in it, and every life comes with lessons no classroom could ever teach.

At 43, I can finally look at everything I have lived through and recognise that as an education too.

I have earned my diploma from the school of life.

And who I am today gets to shine as the result.

I wanted to share this because all of us carry insecurities, doubts, thoughts and beliefs that can place us inside boxes far too small for who we actually are.

Sometimes it takes courage to look at ourselves differently.

And sometimes it takes even more courage to say out loud:

Maybe I was never less than anyone else.
Maybe I was never missing something that made me worthy.
Maybe I have always been enough.

Even if I learned otherwise.

And perhaps this is exactly why I love drawing people’s Soul Portraits so much.

To me, they are a translation of the light that shines so brightly within someone, but which we sometimes fail to see or recognise in ourselves.

Through my drawings, I get to say:

I see you.

I see the colours.
I see the uniqueness.
I see the soul underneath everything you learned you were supposed to be.

You are welcome to take a look through my gallery at all the beautiful souls I have already had the honour of translating onto paper, each in their own unique and colourful way.

And maybe, while looking at them, remember something about yourself too.

You shine as well.

Even when you can’t see it yet.

With love,
Dana

P.S: I generated this photo of my present self with my little child self. I think it is a very sweet photo. 😍