Fundraising by Cristina Castronovi

To return is to strengthen bonds, to want sincere good, to feel genuine joy.

The situation certainly puts us on high alert, yet we spend most of our time not thinking about drone or missile explosions but simply enjoying the happiness around us.

In Mykolaïv the sound of alarms is always there; the fear, the pain, the weariness of a war that seems to have no imminent end can be felt just by looking people in the eye.

Then all it takes is a walk, an ice cream with our friends, a chat, a fun dance lesson, and everything seems easier.

In Kherson , on the other hand, drones now strike in every part of the city.

Attention is high. People are fleeing and there are fewer and fewer of them.

Our friends, most of them 18- to 26-year-olds, are there.

They have decided to rebuild not only what is being bombed, but also their lives -- theirs, ours!

While we are together on the street, at home or in the Dom Kultury, the sound of explosions is the perennial background.

Yet we almost forget that we are at war because we give ourselves lightness: we organize dinners, soccer games and painting workshops for children.

One day I thought about the possibility that a drone might hit me and I thought that, in any case, I was and am heartily happy.

We are not unconscious, we made a choice: to stay with them, not out of pity but out of concrete good, to be genuine presence, out of spontaneous happiness.

Since I have been here I have felt that I am at peace, paradoxically where there is war.

It is a feeling that transcends rationality and is rooted in a person's deepest identity. The closer death is, the more life is felt!

They are true witnesses of a humanity that repudiates war and lives, always and everywhere.

Contribute with me to support Operation Dove's Peace presence in Ukraine. Thank you, thank you, thank you!