Quiet

I've been absent.

As some of you may have noticed (or perhaps not, lol), I have been absent here. I don’t have any good excuses, really. Nothing big happened. It wasn’t simply laziness on my part, although surely that too played a role. I reached a point earlier this summer when I felt like I genuinely didn’t have anything of any value to say, so I stopped writing, hoping that inspiration would eventually come. I cannot say that it has, but the grey cloud, for lack of a better term, has passed. I think I can attribute the grey cloud to several factors, most of them personal. So my apologies in advance if today’s post is a little different from my usual.

In April a friend of mine offered to give me a GLP-1 pen she had lying around. Microdose with it, she said, you will feel great and the weight will come off. It sounded appealing, although to be fair, before April, I had done a pretty decent job on my own of figuring out mid-life weight maintenance by adjusting my diet and being more aware of my food choices. In my case, this meant eliminating gluten, for the most part, and trying to watch sugar consumption. I would make exceptions for holidays and celebrations. It wasn’t a magic pill, but it helped. The pen appeared in my fridge, and I started to use it, tiny doses, after my 50th birthday in April.

It was really interesting in that you really do immediately lose the hunger sensation. The problem, though, at least in my case, is you are left with this feeling which is something akin to morning sickness, feeling slightly naueseous, and when you feel like that, the only thing you want to eat is bread. I kept up with the microdosing for a few months, and I did feel slightly slimmer and as if I was eating less, but my choices were certainly not as healthy as they were before I started using the GLP-1.

In my case, it took me a few months to realize what I was actually feeling. Alongside a reduced interest in food, I experienced a reduced interest in nearly everything that brings simple pleasure in life. I didn’t really want that glass of wine, I didn’t really want to make any social plans, and suddenly, that motivation, that makes you sort of go through the motions of life in the hope that trying new things will also be rewarding, it was gone. Gradually, over time, I didn’t feel like doing anything. It was so subtle that it took me months to pinpoint the feeling. At first I figured it was just stress. But I recently stopped using the GLP-1, ahead of going on holiday, the logic being, I want to be able to enjoy what I eat and drink while I am there, and within a week, not only did my hunger cues come back (with roaring force), but also I suddenly felt like I might be ready to take a few risks and start a few new projects or at least get off my couch without the feeling that everything is just a collosal waste of time.

So here I am, weeks later, finally mustering up the desire to open the computer and put some words to screen, telling myself that it is ok and everyone needs a break every now and then. Although in my case, I really have no actual excuse for needing a break. I just lost the desire to do the things that usually in the past had brought me joy. So for now, I will leave the rest of the injection pen in the fridge, and will try to manage my diet the old-fashioned way, and the hunger pains I will take as a sign of being alive and my body reminding me that food is also fuel, not just an annoyance to be muted. I think many of us, especially women, especially of a certain age, are just super sensitive to any kind of medication or hormones, and perhaps I am just in the minority, and it is ok that I learned this through experimentation.

The other thing I have been dealing with recently is the transition of your kids becoming adults and no longer needing you in the same way. For me, much of motherhood was micromanaging daily life so my kids could achieve their goals and I could make their home life as comfortable as I thought necessary. This summer, I watched my second child graduate high school (after a very challenging year health-wise, and thankfully, she pulled it all off, passed her exams, and the celebration was a genuine sense of relief for all involved), sent my oldest back to the U.S. for. a summer job in New York, living alone, another step towards adulthood beyond a college campus, and put my youngest, BY HERSELF, on two large airplanes, first to Abu Dhabi, then to Seoul, where she is now living with a Korean host family and studying Korean for a month. She is 15. I nearly had a heart attack saying goodbye and watching her plane, refreshing flightradar etc every half an hour. She sounds happier than I have ever heard her, and is navigating daily life in a totally new culture just fine without me. My eldest is managing adult problems, like his first employer not paying him on time, for weeks, just fine without me. My middle child, while physically present, has already started a summer job and is also managing just fine without me. I even joined her this week to try and “help” fix a problem at the bank with her card, and reader, she didn’t need me. I was simply in the way.

All of this is a big adjustment. You define yourself for two decades as the person raising little humans into big humans and then one day the only thing they need from you is a copy of your credit card and to know where their passport is. You send text messages, keeping track of the time difference (one is seven hours ahead, the other six hours behind). You know you should be happy they are managing so well, and remember when you were 16 and you went away for a whole summer, and there was no WhatsApp and your mom couldn’t track your flight online (side note — I do know understand why a Valium prescription suddenly appeared back in the day, upon my dad’s encouragement, so my mom could have pills to stop her from ‘worrying so much’).

One thing I have learned from all the Ukrainians I have met here in Vienna since the war in Ukraine began is how ordinary people can and do cope with extraordinary change. Normally I think of myself as someone who is particularly good in a crisis — but this isn’t a crisis. It is a fundamental shift. A new era. And it will probably take some time to get used to it, to define myself anew, and I know I should give myself some grace during the process, hence, when I really felt Iike I didn’t have anything to say, I just went quiet.

This summer in Europe, aside from the lovely distraction of the World Cup (those soccer games have been like balm for my soul, I cannot explain it, but I really have looked forward to them), we have been dealing with extreme heat and the culmination of years of governments ignoring problems (no air conditioning in many public spaces, including schools and hospitals). One weekend in June it was 40C in downtown Vienna (right around when Paris was absolutley melting, the first time). My only solution was to spend money I didn’t really have and go to Croatia for the weekend, where we could swim in the sea and be in A/C in a hotel. My youngest was still supposed to go to school on Monday, and it was only on Sunday at 8pm that the powers that be decided to quietly, rather unofficially, cancel a field trip which they had fully intended to take to visit the army (yes really) in 38C with no shade. The problem with cultures who did not grow up with extreme heat is they lack respect for it. In Arizona, in the 80s, if your A/C broke, you checked into a hotel, because living without A/C wasn’t an option. The rest of the week the kids melted in school, and even after it cooled down, the best politicians could come up with was well let’s cancel sports classes on hot days and written tests. They still haven’t even figured out how to legally have “heat days” off from school much like snow days in America. There is no proposal on the table to install universal A/C in schools or hospitals. It is really a disgrace. I have no other words for it. Ignoring it isn’t going to fix anything, and the vulnerable will suffer.

A few weeks ago I was asked to translate for a 90 year old Ukrainian man who is living in a pensioners’ home run by the city of Vienna (refugee housing, but not only for refugees). The only A/C in the buildling was on the ground floor in the common areas. The bedrooms themselves were sweltering. It was a very distburing experience. I left shocked and upset by what I had seen. A friend told me about a relative who was taken to hospital due to a health condition which deteriorated in the heat, and that hospital’s emergency room also didn’t have A/C. There is no excuse, and yet, at least in Austria, I doubt anything will really change. After all, the very well paid politicians surely all have their little covert A/C units in their homes and offices in the first district. Many North Americans do not understad that there are legal bans on installing the units in many places. Your neighbor can actually sue you for noise pollution and win, forcing you to remove your box. You cannot hang a box on a protected buildling. Ironically, eastern Europe is light years ahead in this regard because you will see boxes everywhere. I noticed them even in the old town of Dubrovnik that weekend, tucked under balconies and along side walls.

Beyond the heat, Vienna has also decided this summer will be the summer of repairing every single public transport line we have. I exagerrate, but not really. So suddenly trips which normally take 30 minutes now take an hour. I used to love to say how great it is that you do not need to own a car in Vienna, but frankly, this summer, I am biting my tongue. I got in a few days of driving on a short holiday to Montenegro (despite our misadventures last summer, it is my forever love, and I cannot stay away). The country is preparing to join the EU in 2028 (they even wrote so much on their planes), and frankly, I think they will manage. This year I heard so many English speakers, a lot less Russian, and it suddenly felt like the distance/gap between it and neighboring Croatia was not nearly as palbable as it had been in previous years. It was almost too civilized, I kept pinching myself, waiting for something to go terribly wrong. It did not. Everything was great. As we were leaving passport control, the officer handed our passports back to my daughter and I, and wishes us a good day in the local language, referring to us as “kittens”. I giggled. So not totally EU-compliant, yet.

The discourse out of Russia has been interesting in recent months. Ukraine has been prolificly targeting Russian refineries and energy sector targets, hitting cities deep inside Russia. This has resulted in a gasoline crisis, which the government can no longer hide from the population. Add on top of that growing fears about a new round of mobilization, and frustration with internet blockages and the like, and there appears to be a new wave of Russians preparing to leave their country. But unlike those who left in 2022, mainly because they were against Russia’s war in Ukraine and feared being drafted (often, both), those who are leaving now, or making plans to leave, are doing so because they have been inconvenienced by the new circumstances of living in a country which is actively at war. I watched Russians line up in Montenegro at the tiny airport, filling planes to Yerevan and Istanbul, taking connecting flights to get back to Russia, choosing Montenegro in part because so much of the rest of Europe is no longer accessible to them (Montenegro, unlike the Schengen zone, is still visa-free for Russians, but many except this to change in fall 2026). Even leaving Russia is far harder now than it was back in 2022.

So far, there have only been regional rumors of police rounding up young men and essentially forcing them to sign contracts to serve in the Russian army. Yesterday, I listened to a podcast in Russia which advised young men to actually lie and say they are HIV positive, for example, to avoid being forced to sign a contract. If you piece together drone attacks, gasoline shortages, VPN issues, lack of foreign travel, and an uncertain economic situation, it is no wonder that many Russians are now reconsidering their decisions to stay, even if in 2022 they concluded they didn’t need to leave, at least not yet. Mothers of boys are particularly vocal onine too about their own thought processes of needing to get their sons out of Russia before they turn 18.

I honestly do not know where all these Russians will go, because countries like Serbia and Montenegro are already quite “full”, Europe isn’t making it particularly easy to apply for visas, and other neighboring countries like Georgia and Armenia offer limited economic opportunities. Of the Russians I know personally who left in 2022, those who are doing the best are those who chose to fully integrate themselves, learn local languages, get local jobs, and accepted the fresh start for what it was — a new opportunity rather than a pause button after which they would go back to their old lives.

This summer in Ukraine has been particularly deadly, with Russia continuing to batter civilian targets. The news is grim, and it isn’t clear if there is any reprieve in sight. On an international level, Ukraine feels like a forgotten topic, as the world watches Iran, again, and the geriatric circus in Washington (very much Brezhnev-era vibes coming out of American politics these days). Today everyone is talking about Zelensky’s surprising firing of the young reformer who had only been running Ukraine’s defense ministry for six months, but by nearly all measures was doing a good job, especially in the areas of drones and the like. Many Ukrainians online are really upset about this, and see this as another example of Zelensky bending to internal political forces rather than making the decisions which would be best for Ukraine.

Here is also a very detailed, just published recap about the firings in Ukraine:

Fedorov down! Pigs in power.

I would love to share with you some book and film recommendations, but unfortunately during this phase when I could not motivate myself to write, I also could not really motivate myself to consume art, either. I cannot remember the last time I simply fried myself on a beach without a book, but that is what I have done so far this summer. Perhaps my brain just needed peace. Who knows. I do hope it comes to an end soon because I do feel lacking intellectually, as if my brain muscles might atrophy. Replacing them with good old fashioned mom anxiety, from thousands of miles away, doesn’t feel like an upgrade. A friend of mine recently suggested an antidepressant to which I replied no thanks, I need to feel my stress in order to be able to act upon it. Which is true, to a point. I don’t actually feel depressed, rather just disappointed that everywhere you look, things are going, well, not great. Even as recently in 2022 when we started Cards for Ukriane, I still believed in happy endings. I still thought Ukraine would manage to win. Now the only question seems to be when will the violence end, both for civilans and soldiers. Looking around at the world economy, I am not sure I would have made the same decision to have three kids like I did two decades ago. I worry about their futures.

But then sometimes, like when I am stuck in a line in an airport, I look around, and observe the young people who are going to be taking over, hopefully soon, from my generation. They are inspiring, optimistic, fast, and flexible. I literally cannot wait until they get a chance to do things better. In fact, that is one of the few things I really see in a positive light these days. I love talking to young people, to my kids’ friends and classmates, and I cannot wait until the gray hairs of my generation start to pass the batons. As for the white hairs, I keep telling myself, even the aging autocrats are human, and even modern medicine cannot keep them alive forever.

Thanks for reading, and for your patience, as I try to adjust to my brain rewiring itself via my stomach (who knew?!).

p.s. an update for you on V — we were together to see her oncologist last week and it was amazing to see how much better she is doing physically thanks to the chemo. She can walk now further without immediately getting tired and is no longer coughing all the time. So the medicine is clearly helping, thankfully. She is also applying for long-term disability payments, essentially like extended sick leave as she can no longer work due to the cancer treatment. This will likely take months to be approved but it is light at the end of the tunnel in terms of at least being able to pay her share of her rent.