Jill Biden: What Ukrainian mothers taught me about this war

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

(CNN)You cannot go into a war zone and not come away unchanged. You don't have to see the sorrow with your eyes because you can feel it with your heart.

The thing about grief is that it veils one's face. It's like a haze has descended. The tears of the mothers stay permanently on the edges of their eyes, as if they can barely contain their sadness. They grasp their children's hands or touch their hair as if they can't bear to lose the physical connection. They wear brave faces, but their emotion is portrayed in the slope of their shoulders, the nervousness in their bodies.

Something is missing -- laughter, a common language among women.

The Ukrainian mothers at the Romanian and Slovak schools I visited told me about the horrors of the bombs that fell night after night as they sought to find refuge during their journey westward. Many had to live days without food and sunlight, harbored in basements underground.

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https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/11/opinions/jill-biden-ukraine-mothers-war-lesson/index.html

[Skittles]

1. that first sentence....

I was walking through a department store with my mum when she grabbed my hand in a panic and said, WE HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE.....outside I asked, her, jeez, what's going on? It was the smell of rubber in the shoe department.....it reminded her of having to wear a gas mask during air raids in England as a child....she had asthma and sometimes choked. This was FIFTY YEARS after the war had ended. This kind of trauma, it never leaves you.