Episode Transcript
Hello, my name is Aziz and I'm the son of a divorce mother. She is really my superhero. That's why it's important for me to support women to share their uniqueness, their personalities, perspectives, and emotions about life. Too many women in this world feel alone. They worry about the judgment of others and they struggle with their mental health, but when they listen to the Rare Girls podcast where empowered women share their voices and tell their stories, many women will feel inspired to live a life of freedom and to overcome all insecurities. They will feel it is a safe space to find their confidence, to remember their unique beauty and to feel their self-worth. And they will connect with a sisterhood of rare girls who encourage their success and support their dreams. That's what this podcast is all about. My guest today is Christina Leschuk. Christina is a 21 years old studying to become a physical therapist and also working as a rehabilitation specialist. Christina was born in the city of Rivne, Ukraine. She played beach volleyball professionally for seven years and achieved high results. Later on, studying at the university, she moved to Lviv. In her free time from work and studying, she improves her English and Korean languages because she likes to listen to K-pop and to watch Korean drama. Christina likes to plan her time. She loves to travel and whenever possible, she visits different countries and gets to know their culture. No matter the situation, Christina tries to be optimistic and to enjoy life. Christina, how are you today? Hello, I'm fine. Thank you so much for the invitation and I will try today to fully express what I think and what I feel. And how are you? I feel blessed. I feel very, very positive. Happy to talk to you and looking forward to know more. So I'll begin with this usual first nice question, which is, "Christina, if your friends and the people who know you best could describe your personality, what would they say about you?" Well, I asked my neighbor how she would describe me. So she said that I'm a very interesting person, cheerful and intelligent, and sometimes very shy about my achievements. She also said that I am always open to new things and to new experience. And I was told also that I am so honest and responsible. And my friends know that if I say something, I will definitely do it. Thank you. I love that. I have so many questions. I will begin with your positive, optimistic part. You're cheerful. Well, there are many women nowadays who struggle with their mental health and with their overthinking and anxiety. So what do you do in order to take care of your mental health? Are you born a positive girl or did you do some things to be cheerful? I am more a positive girl, but now I am like a mental health is very important. So I am now going to a psychologist and it really helps me a lot. So sometimes we may not even noticed how, for example, childhood psychological trauma affects us now. So yeah, like to avoid negative consequences, we need to figure out problems with our mental health for sure. I agree with that. And you said that people say you are responsible. Well, it's a difference in life to go from being with your family in Rivne to going to Lviv where you have to do everything on your own. How was that adaptation to the student life and to a new city where you're not very near to your family? Maybe because I was a professional sports girl. I can say that from 14 years old, I was in different competitions in different cities. So I wasn't at home sometimes at least like two weeks because of the competitions. This is very serious. I used to be in different stressful situations. So that's why to change my habitat, to change the city of living, it's not so hard for me. So I used to change something to get a new experience. I understand and it makes me think of Korea and K-pop and Korean drama. Well, it's a big change and a different culture to Ukraine. What interested you in Korean drama and K-pop? Is it something about the culture? Is it about the people and how they look and the aesthetic? Is it the rhythm? is that maybe you grew up with some girlfriends who love the same, so you feel like you are a small club of cool girls? Or what about the Korean culture and K-pop and K-drama that you love very much? Yeah, that's true about like a K-pop family. It's a place where people can share their different emotions and we can share like and discuss K-dramas and listen together K-pop and it's because of like my love to this culture I met like a lot of new friends and I had different like hobbies like learning Korean as well, like going to the dance studio to learn some K-pop dances. And it's so cool. And it's like motivates me to do different things. So I really feel that it's like helps me a lot to express myself. Thank you. You spoke about dance and you are a beach volleyball sports woman and you are studying at the same time physical therapy. Let's begin with that one. Why did you choose physical therapy? Why do you do very habitation as work right now? What do you love about it and made you decide to choose this topic? Yeah, due to the fact that I was involved in sports for seven years, I saw a lot of injuries and my shoulder was injured. And I know that sports is not only good achievements, is a big work on your body and on your rehab. So I learned there is a professional of physical therapist. I was interested in this profession because it's like a combination of medicine and the elements of sports. I mean like treatment with the help of physical exercises. Then I began to learn more about this major and after school I joined to university. That's great. And usually women who do a lot of very stressful high-level sports and like you said, If you do something, you finish it till the end. There are many women who struggle with perfectionism, where they worry about making mistakes or disappointing their family or people thinking that they're not a perfect girl, so they don't try as much. And so they find it so difficult emotionally to finish. How do you deal with that? Are you a perfectionist? And how do you keep yourself responsible and finishing? Although at the same time, there could be doubts that, "Oh, if I make a mistake, then maybe people will not like me or will think that I'm not good enough." People always want to be better and more perfect, but we all know that we don't have the perfect one. one is when we see a person who achieved something, we don't know like the background of this person. Maybe when we're talking about professional sport, I was trained for five years to win like second place of Ukrainian championship. But like the five years I cried a lot, I trained a lot, I had different injuries. So it's not always something perfect. We just like we should to accept this fact that we shouldn't compare our experience to the other experience because we don't know what other women had in their lives and maybe we have different experience so don't struggle themselves. Thank you. I love that answer. And you are a girl that loves to travel. That's one of the things that when you travel, you understand that the world and people have different experiences everywhere. But to you, what do you love about travel? Anything interesting about it? And you do still make plans for travel when possible? How is it for you? I do love to travel. It's one of my favorite things and when I have the opportunity to fly somewhere, I definitely will do it. I really like this feeling of freedom and this feeling of new feelings. I know that in a new country, I will see that I have never seen in Ukraine, for example, and dislike sharing different experiences is so motivating me to work, to study foreign languages and to be better every day to show a lot of new things. I understand. And before I will ask you about your story of the war, I want to know something. Because as a teenage girl, you spend most of your time in COVID without going to school, or you're at home, and then the war, it's not about going, you are studying online. Do you feel that that was a lot of time staying without making the friendship in the school and at university that maybe it affects social skills of some people and a younger generation of Ukrainians? Tell me more before I ask you about the story of the war. How was it? How did it change your personality and your ability for social skills? Did it make the younger generation more awkward? Because there were so many years where they stayed in social isolation and then afterwards, there was no going to university. It was all online. It was so hard. I remember that I was in university and it was like the first year when I joined University and it's like two years was from my first year to the third year. And I really understood. I really realized that to British should appreciate what we have that like, as a simple, simple conversation between two friends. It's not a fact on my social skills a lot because I like really love to sit in social medias. And so I noticed that more people had a very bad mood, because like we needed to stay at home, like for months. So it's a lot and we didn't have the opportunity to go for a party or to meet the friends. It's just like simple things, what we didn't appreciate before. But when it was a COVID, it was so horrible for me. I understand. And that's absolutely, absolutely a horrible experience. I know about that. And now I'm curious too, because you said you spend a lot of time on social media. There are many younger girls who, because of social media, they don't feel beautiful. They compare themselves to the life and the looks of other women, and that is very, very much depressing them. What is your experience with this? How do you keep your confidence with it? And what's your advice to those girls? My advice is will be try not to focus on like the appearance because it's like social medias, it's a lot of photoshop, it's a lot of fake and even when we see like a beautiful couple and beautiful relationships, it doesn't mean that in real life they have good feelings and they really have like love and like the same with with the appearance with the hair and skin and it's it's always fake so I really love that now people who want to change some rules in the social media are protesting to make people more real and not to make this perfect standard of something unreal like skin without any mustache or something like that because it's natural and we can make something with this. So yeah. I understand and I agree so much, Cristina. And how was, for you the experience of February 24th, the invasion, how did you hear about it? What did you feel? Did you believe it, not believe it? And how did your life change from that day until today? Tell me everything. First of all, we knew that war maybe started in a few months because from December, like in Kiev, in the capital of Ukraine, a lot of people are starting talking about this, that the war will start and you need to run from Ukraine because it's going to be dangerous. But I was in the Western point. It's not like near Russia, it's like near Poland. So it's a little bit more safe place, like a place of Ukraine. So I woke up in the 24th of February in Lviv alone without my roommate or without. I just woke up at 7 a.m. because of the siren and like the sound of siren. And it was so traumatic because when you have this feeling, you will start to worry about your future, about your life. And yeah, it's so, so traumatic. And like even now, today, we had at least two sirens and it's like it's every day. And this night I didn't sleep so good because we have like four hours of siren and rocket damage. So it's every day like this. I understand and I feel absolutely bad for the good people of Ukraine and all those horrible things that happened and for you and for every woman, because like you said, it makes you appreciate that life can end at any time. Some women maybe are feeling too much anxiety and worry. They're not living to their potential and going for their big dreams. They say, "Oh, I'll do it later. I'll do it later." Not realizing that life is... You never know what will happen later. What's your advice to those women and you as a sports girl? Is there anything you learned from sports or any other wisdom that can help them and help you live and go after your big aims and goals? sports helps me a lot in this situation and all my experience, I am so grateful that I have my parents are alive and my friends are alive because in Ukraine now we don't think more about our achievements, like we think more about our basic ones and needs. I'm so grateful that my parents are alive that I live in and now I, and like today I had like five hours of sleeping. It's so cool and that's why it's so hard like to plan something to, this is so traumatic to your like psychic because like you can't plan like your full day tomorrow because of this iron, because of the rocket damage, etc. So I really sometimes shocked how Ukrainian women are really brave and we have their brave to born with children during the war. This is so This is so hard because it's a little bit dangerous. And to stay here during the war, it's so hard. I agree 100%. I support you very, very much, Christina. I wish peace and that everyone in Ukraine will be positive, happy, safe, and prosperous. Thank you so much for participating in this podcast. Thank you for sharing your voice, sharing your life, your experiences. I wish you to keep going. I wish you success in your studies, in your work, and thank you again. - Thank you so much for the invitation. Thank you. 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