Episode Transcript
Femininity is powerful in all its forms, exceptional women, rare girls must be appreciated in every
way for their perspectives, actions, thoughts, and their unique ways of being. Such rare
girls are inspiring. And this is what this podcast is all about. Hello, my name is Aziz
and my guest today is Melania Sherepanina. Melania is originally from Kiev, but currently
lives in Michigan in the United States. Melania is finishing her high school in America and
planning to study political science or philosophy. She loves writing, working out, and going
out with friends. Melania, how are you today? Hello, thank you. I'm good. Thank you for
inviting me. I'm happy you're good. And I'm really curious about you. So I'll begin with
this. You in the US in a new high school, did you find it easy or difficult to make
new friends? How different is it to make new friends in Ukraine compared to Michigan? Yes.
So when I first moved to the US, I experienced kind of cultural shock because mentality is
very different from how it is in Ukraine and how people communicate with each other in
Ukrainian school, for example. And in America, it's very different. People are more friendly
and open at first, like they would smile at you or compliment you, even if they don't
know you, which was kind of weird to me at first, because people in Ukraine don't usually
do this kind of stuff. But what was harder for me here is to actually get close to a
person because all of my close, real friends, they all are from Ukraine. They all are in
Kiev right now. I have friends here, but it's harder to get closer to a person here than
in Ukraine. This is how it was for me personally. Thank you. I understand. And I'm happy that
and that makes me think to know even more about you. Your friends in Kiev, in Ukraine,
if they could describe who you are, your personality, how would they describe you? What would they
say about you? I think they would describe me as very loyal, friendly, fun, and also
a type of person who would be always there for them because there are a lot of people
I know in my life or just people I'm talking to, but there is only a few of them who are
my actual close friends. And those few people, I will always be there for them and they know
it. I will always try to support them as much as I can and engage with their lives and listen
to their problems and everything. Thank you. That's so interesting. And you spoke about
how people can be, in the beginning, very open and compliment you in the US. Did you
have any comments or experiences with the typical thing that many Eastern European girls
have, which is the resting poker face or bitch face where they look like they might be in
a bad mood even if they're happy? Like people, did they say, oh my God, that girl looks angry
even if you're not? Or are you smiling in the US and trying to be positive and have
a more good vibes in your mental health even after the difficult times? Yes, it's actually
funny because it's true maybe about people in Eastern Europe. They don't smile as much
as Americans to strangers and I'm also not very used to this. If I'm just somewhere in
school or in public place or if I'm talking to people I don't know, I would not usually
smile at them because this is not something I'm used to. And I actually had a couple of
situations when my American friends or people I knew, they would ask me, am I sad or did
something happen? But I was just in normal, regular mood. It's just not, I'm not used
to be so like overly nice as Americans are. And I also think it's a little bit fake. So
I would smile or show my like emotions when this is actually the way I feel. I understand.
Therefore, also to ask you more, because two of the future things that you will love to
study is political science and philosophy, which is usually the kind of person who studies
that, likes to think a lot, to understand things deeply, to understand the psychology
of other people. Does this describe you? Are you someone who's always observing, trying
to understand and make your own theories, et cetera? Or why philosophy and why political
science? Yes, thank you. So philosophy is something
I'm interested in because I like to think about different topics. And also I'm the kind
of person who really feels other people. Like I often can feel the energy of other people.
And especially lately with the war and everything that is happening, I am thinking about a lot
of different things. And politics is something that cannot be separated from our everyday
life, at least for me right now. And I want to learn more about this specific topic, to
be more educated about this and to be able to engage in different conversations, especially
about war in Ukraine right now. Thank you. And you spoke about being an empath
and being able to feel the energy of people. When growing up, did you struggle with that?
That sometimes if people are in a bad mood, they give you their negative vibes. You can
feel them deeply and it's uncomfortable. Or you think, what did I do? Why did I make them
angry? Even if you didn't, because you can feel it. Or is it more of a superpower that
when you feel it, you know what to do to give people a better mood or to help them in some
way? Yes, I definitely can feel people's energy
to this day. For example, if someone is in a bad mood, as you said, I really can feel
this vibe on myself and I can start feeling bad too. But I try not to put it on myself.
And if it's, for example, someone close to me or someone I love, I will try to talk to
them or try to help them. But overall, yeah, even if it's not a very close friend and they
are going through something, I would usually feel this vibe and their energy, this negative
energy on myself. Thank you. And how do you take care of your
mental health there far away from Ukraine? Are you doing a lot of sports to feel good?
Are you writing to express your emotions like with a journal or in any other way? Tell me
more about how you keep yourself sane when this time in Ukraine's history is insane.
Yeah, this is a very good question, because keeping yourself sane is definitely very hard
right now. And since the beginning of the war, I actually I was in Kiev this summer.
So I spent this summer in Kiev and I was able to see my family and friends. But since when
war started, I was in Michigan. And it has been very hard for me since the beginning
as for all Ukrainians, of course. What I do to try to stay somehow sane is I go to the
gym and I try to work out a lot to take my mind off things. Also, I do like writing and
I recently wrote five different essays regarding Ukraine for my English class. And when I express
my emotions on the paper, it kind of helps me. I try to meditate also. Yeah, but I really
feel that I am not okay right now. And it's okay to not be okay, because the things that
are happening, you can't be okay with them. And all Ukrainians right now, they need some
kind of psychological help or a therapist. And I really feel that I need this too, but
I don't have the opportunity to get therapy at the moment. So I try to do at least something
to somehow keep myself in a better condition. But yeah, it has been very hard. But I'm trying
to cope somehow.
I really hope and I wish for you that you can cope and overcome and get stronger and
refill yourself with good vibes and task you. You speak English very well. I love how articulate
you are. And in my experience as someone who has lived in Ukraine and in Kiev, although
people study it at school, maybe they don't have much practice or the educational system
in English is not so promoting this language to similar degrees to other places. What did
you do to develop your English speaking? Or did you go to the U.S.? It was difficult.
You didn't understand much, but through perseverance and difficulties, you improved and learned
and got to a much higher level.
Yes, what helped me to learn English, it's still not perfect, but it's pretty decent.
What helped me to learn English to this level is being in English speaking environment,
also watching movies in English, reading books in English. But of course, if you just study
English as a subject in school, you would not speak as freely. To speak English freely,
you definitely need to live in an English speaking environment. And I wasn't speaking
English like this until I moved to the U.S. because I was learning English in my Ukrainian
school. I started learning English in fifth grade and I was also going to additional courses
to improve my English, but I still was not able to speak it freely. So yeah, what helped
me is being in English speaking environment, having friends that speak English. And if
you are not consistently with people who speak this language, you will not speak freely and
it's okay. But some tips that I can give to improve English is read in English. That's
very important. Also watch films and even maybe try to set your social media in English,
like watch TikTok in English or Instagram. TikTok, watching TikTok in English also kind
of helped me. So yeah.
Thank you. And as a writer, how do you find your inspiration or even as an empath? Are
you someone who loves walks in nature and that fills you with inspiration to create
something and express your emotions? Or is it the pain and the war that turns tragedy
into creativity? Or is it working out when you do work out, you feel that endorphin rush
afterwards and that makes you want to write more, to express more, to be creative?
Yeah, recently what has been my inspiration for writing is war and all of this pain, which
I try to transform into creativity. This is what has been my most inspiration recently,
but overall I liked writing since I was little child and I could find my inspiration pretty
much anywhere. When I was little, I would come up with like different scenarios in my
head and come up with plot and characters and just write different stories. But sometimes
I would find inspiration from some people that I met in my life or some situations that
I had in my life. For example, I can meet some new people in certain period of my life
and they are so cool and they are so nice. They can inspire me to write about this certain
period of my life. Honestly, it can be pretty much anything, but recently all I can write
about is only war. And yeah, this has been my, I can't say inspiration, but it's mostly,
it's the only thing that is on my mind all the time. So most of my writings are about
this right now.
Thank you. And yes, I will ask you about the war, but first you spoke about people. I'll
ask two questions. One, when you create stories with characters, are you using that in order
to analyze people, to understand the psychology of human beings? So that's one. And secondly,
what makes people cool for you? Is it that they do some things they're passionate about?
Is it that they have an energy you can feel that is special and good and positive and
you love that? Or are there some characteristics or traits that make them your kind of person?
So two, one, do you use stories and characters in order to understand people in general better?
Is this something that you do? And what makes people attractive or cool for you? Is it energetic
or kinds of traits or they wear cool clothes or they do adventures or something like that?
Okay. For the first question, not always necessarily I write about people to analyze them or understand
them better. Usually it's just because they inspire me in some way or teach me something
new or show like open some new qualities in me that I have not discovered before. But
I don't think I usually try to analyze them on purpose. And for the second question, what
makes them cool? It can be pretty much anything. I don't have any specific characteristics,
but usually it's lifestyle, their way of thinking, how they perceive life, how they deal with
problems, how they talk, how they communicate, just their vibe in general. And if I feel
like this person is very, I don't know, open-minded and interesting and we have a lot in common
and they can elevate me in some way, teach me something new and we can spend interesting
time together. This person can inspire me and I can maybe write about them or they can
inspire me to write about something else or write about this specific period of my life
when I met them. Thank you. And I noticed you mentioned they
open new qualities in yourself that you didn't even know you had. Can you explain that? Because
some people might think, how can you have qualities you didn't know you have? Or some
people will think, how do they open new qualities? What does that mean? How does that happen?
Can you dive a bit deeper into this? One example that I can think about is, for
example, maybe you met a new person and they are very hardworking and they always have
their plan and they like to study, they go to the library and they have an exact plan
what they need to get done today and they have goals for their life and they can inspire
you to try to look at your life the similar way, to also set some goals or to start setting
small goals for every day and working more and before you met this person you might even
not thought about yourself in this way or you just had a different lifestyle and you
perceived yourself differently but this person might open some new qualities in you and you
might start analyzing your life more, maybe thinking that, oh, I can also try to live
this way or I can also improve my life somehow. Thank you. I love how well you communicate,
how effective of a communicator you are and therefore I'll ask you about the war. You
wrote some essays, so it's two things. One, how was that February 24th for you? I think
you mentioned you were in Michigan. How did you hear about the war? How did you feel?
What did you worry about? And secondly, what were the topics of the essays you wrote? What
kinds of things do you want to communicate to the world about this invasion and full-scale
war that started February 24th? Okay, first question about February 24th. Yes, I was in
Michigan with my mom at the moment, so thankfully I had the privilege to be safe but the rest
of my family and all of my friends, they were in Kyiv. Most of them were in Kyiv, some of
them were in other cities of Ukraine and they were not safe and I remember this exact moment.
It was five in the morning in Kyiv and for me it was evening. I was texting with my best
friend who's in Kyiv and she texted me that she hears sirens and she thinks she hears
explosions and something like this and I told my mom that, oh mom, my best friend texted
me this, do you think something is happening? Like, do you think something is going on?
And my mom was like, no, I don't think so, I think she's just overreacting or she's just
panicking. But then after like around 20 minutes or something, my mom said, my mom came to
my room and she said, yeah, it started and we called all of our relatives. My mom called
her husband, I called also my dad, my stepmom, all of my grandparents, everyone who were
in Kyiv and also all of my friends and we were talking and they were all of course panicking
and in shock, didn't know what to do. It was a horrible, horrible evening and horrible
condition and going to school the next day, I didn't go to school the next day because
I was just laying in my room and crying and I didn't know what to do at all, how to help
because I felt so helpless in this situation. But I had to continue to go to school, I could
not stop going to school and it was very hard because most of Americans, they still don't
get it, they don't understand this, they don't understand this war, they don't understand
this feeling when your country is being attacked, when your people are being attacked, they
don't know how it feels. And I was not able after February 24th, I was not able to continue
having fun or going out or living as before with my American friends because my life changed
upside down so I was not able to do this anymore. Yeah, it was very hard and it still is but
thankfully I was able to visit Kiev this summer and I was able to see everyone so it was kind
of a relief for me to see my loved ones. Okay, yes, so one of the topics I wrote for my English
class, the topics of essays that I wrote for my English class recently, one of them was
my experience of coming back to wartime Kiev. I described my recent memories and my recent
experience of coming back to Kiev this summer, how it changed, how war changed the way people
live there right now and how different it is now from the way it was when I was living
there before the war and when I was growing up there and I described all of this in like
in a lot of details. Then the other one essay that I wrote was about a language, about Ukrainian
language and it was called My Language as a Resistance to Russian Colonialism. I wrote
about how I am a Ukrainian speaker and how it was growing up in mostly Russian speaking
Kiev and how language right now is a very important topic and a lot of previously Russian
speaking Ukrainians are switching to Ukrainian language and how it kind of is a gesture of
resistance to this Russian aggression. Also the other and also the other essay I wrote
is about why Western pacifist feminism is harmful to Ukrainian women because a lot of
Western feminists are against arming Ukraine and I tried to explain why this is wrong and
why I as a Ukrainian feminist this is harmful to me because not arming Ukraine means giving
up and let Russian soldiers occupy all of the cities which means more dead civilians
and more horrible things that we saw in occupied territories. So I tried to explain why this
tactic doesn't work here and why we need more weapons.
Thank you. I can really feel how difficult the experience is and was for you and all
I can say is Slava Ukraini.
Hello, I am Slava.
Thank you so much, Melania, for this experience, for participating in this project. I wish
you success. I wish you mental health. I wish victory to Ukraine and I wish you good vibes.
