Aloha 👋🏻
Welcome to the On the Waves of Change newsletter. The place where quiet people find their voice.
She fled the war. With a five-year-old daughter, a suitcase and no ability to speak Czech.
Today's lines belong to Tetiana Novosel, a teacher of Czech for Ukrainians and founder of her own online language school.
In 2022 she left Ukraine for the Czech Republic. She had no financial cushion and nobody to take her by the hand. Her university degree meant nothing to anyone here. She started on a factory production line - in a uniform with a number on it. Today, four years later, she speaks fluent Czech, runs her own business and has written a book about Czech for Ukrainian speakers.
And the whole time, one single sentence kept her going: This is not forever.
What keeps you afloat when the hardest day arrives?
Tetiana knows the answer very well. And that is not the only thing we talk about together. I believe it will give courage to anyone standing at a crossroads and unsure whether to step forward.
What came up in the conversation (and why it is worth a listen):
Sixteen hours standing, and her daughter in a stranger's arms
The journey to the Czech Republic was not an escape out of a film. It was a night at a railway station where nobody knew whether a train would come at all.
"You get on that train because it is your last chance. At eight o'clock everything closes. Either you leave, or you go back home, or you sleep at the station."
When the train finally arrived it was so full that Tetiana stood for sixteen hours straight. A stranger took her daughter onto her lap so the little girl could rest at least a little.
"At the time you are under so much stress that you do not even register it. You simply have to get through it."
A uniform with a number, and shoes that made her feet ache
After two months the only chance of work came along - on a factory production line. A teacher who had worked with children all her life was suddenly standing at an assembly line.
"We even had a number on our T-shirts. I felt like I was in prison."
And still she tells it with a smile. Right up until the moment she says why:
"I tell it lightly so that I do not cry."
"This is not forever."
How do you get up every single day for a job you cannot stand? Tetiana found a sentence she repeated over and over:
"I told myself: you have to bear it, Táňa, because you have no other option. But it will not always be like this. This is not forever."
It was not an empty phrase. It was an inner engine. A promise that this chapter would end one day - because she would find another way.
Her daughter's drawings on the locker door
Her five-year-old daughter took it hard that her mum was leaving for night shifts. So she kept drawing pictures for her. Tetiana stuck them on the door of her locker in the changing room.
"Every time I opened that locker after a shift, there was a drawing from my daughter. And I said to myself: right, I can do this."
A reminder of why she was doing all of it. Day after day.
Forty CVs and a headmaster with his feet on the desk
Tetiana wanted to go back to the work she loves - to education. She sent out more than forty CVs across the whole country. "Even if it is at the far end of the republic, as long as I can teach," as she puts it. And then came an interview she will never forget.
"He put his feet up on the desk, looked at me and said: You do know this is demanding work? That nobody here will support you? And for very little money."
He spent an hour talking her out of the job he was supposed to be hiring her for. Tetiana left and told herself one thing: not this way. But she did not give up.
"And what if it works out?"
When she was deciding whether to go into business for herself, that familiar voice in her head spoke up.
"The brain always rejects what is new and dangerous for us. It plays you the worst possible scenario. That is why most people do not go after what they want."
And then Tetiana says how she helps herself turn her mindset around:
"What if it turns out to be the best scenario? And what if it works out?"
"For me it is better to try and regret it. All right, it did not work out - but at least I tried and I have the experience."
What worst-case scenario is your head playing you right now? And how do you reset your own mind?
Nobody can take your inner support away from you
When I ask Tetiana what she would say to a woman who is today where she once was, she does not hesitate for a second:
"You have to find that inner support inside yourself. Do not look for it outside. Nobody will come and take you by the hand."
"It is a strength nobody will ever take from you. Even when I feel awful, I pick myself up and say: do it now. Then it will be better."
She learned to hug herself and pick herself up. And that skill is exactly what keeps her going to this day.
Be careful who you listen to
Tetiana used to hear that she would have to remarry, otherwise she would never manage in the Czech Republic as a woman with a child. That her Czech was bad. That she should not even try.
"When someone builds a wall in front of me, I lean into it and kick. You tell me it is not possible? I will prove to you that it is."
But she has also experienced how dangerous the wrong company can be:
"One person kept telling me I spoke badly. After about the fiftieth time, I started to take it as the truth."
When you hear every day that you will not manage, it becomes your reality. That is why Tetiana now chooses very carefully who she surrounds herself with - and is building her own community of people on the same wavelength.
Which voices are you listening to around you? Do they support you, or chip away at you a little every day?
What else comes up in the conversation?
- How, after only a year in the Czech Republic, she wrote a book about Czech for Ukrainians - and why it made the whole difficult journey make sense.
- What "good morning" means to Tetiana and why she has one even on the days when things are not going well.
- Why she treats life as a game and how she learned to listen to herself more than to her own head.
- The three words she builds on: cooperation, communication, integration.
Happy reading, happy listening - until next time. 👋🏻
Take good care.
Tetiana and Viki are waving at you.