Early childhood: Ukraine
To begin with I was born in 1984 in Kiev, Ukraine. I was raised by my mother who was a governmental worker and grandmother who was a teacher of Ukrainian and Russian language and literature. My father was an alcoholic. I remember him since I was 2 years old very unclear but don’t remember him sober. He was always under the influence of alcohol or smoking cigarettes on the balcony. My parents divorced when I was 4 years old after my father was trying to rape me while being drunk. My mother was always very strict with me and was beating me on a daily basis for every small thing since I was 3-4 years old. Since age of 5, I started to live with my mother and grandmother. We moved to the new apartment at the same time as the collapse of the USSR. We lived in a very tiny apartment and were extremely poor. My father never helped us financially and almost never visited me since that time. When I became 21 year old, I changed my last name to my mother’s maiden name because I felt my father doesn’t deserve having his last name associated with me. My mom gave me a very strong education in specialized gymnasium with thorough studying of foreign languages. I was sent to the lyceum for children of political elite of Ukraine, where my group was specialized in Law. I was meant to be a lawyer since the age of 12. Also at the age of 12-13, I stopped calling my mother ‘mom’ or ‘ma’ or any other name. I don’t call her in any other way never since that time, she doesn’t have any name that I can call her. At the age of 15, after receiving numerous awards in the field of jurisprudence and human rights and after joining junior academy of Science in Ukraine; I was meant to enter the University but was declined because I was asked to pay a bribe of $20,000 and we didn’t have such money. It’s normal in the Ukraine to have a very corrupted educational system. So people pay bribes or to have very powerful connections in order to enter higher educational establishments there. But due to my excellent level of knowledge, I thought I could break through this system. It didn’t happen. That year at the age of 15, I almost had a nervous breakdown but didn’t have time for it, because I needed to find a solution to continue my education after high school. I realized that I don’t want to be a lawyer in the country of corruption and absence of law, so I found the only uncorrupted Academy in Kiev. I entered there only by level of my knowledge and preparation, without any bribes and any connections. I entered Department of Social Science and Technologies to become a Social Worker.
Teenage time and attitude toward religion: Ukraine
Since the age of 15, I felt that I don’t belong to that country as a state or political system. I don’t belong to a place with a middle-century attitude toward women and human rights. I don’t belong to that mentality, religion, religious beliefs, or traditions.
Speaking about religion: I’m Ukrainian born in the traditional Christian Orthodox environment. I always felt uncomfortable and fake in church doing all that traditional worship. I didn’t like a kind of scary feeling of prejudgment and bureaucracy in churches. I couldn’t understand the attitude of priests and why I needed to worship them as holy people. I knew they were the same human beings as me with families and problems just like me, so why should I pray through them and almost worship them as somebody holy. I felt we are all equal. I realized very early that I don’t need to go to church in order to talk to God. I can do that whenever I want to.
I understood that at the age of 7 when I healed myself for the first time by praying. I had a fever and I as at my grandmother’s house alone in the village. The nearest doctor was too far away, so I just used water and very intense praying. I asked to release me from fever because there was nobody around to help me out. I realized I’m alone there only with God and he’ll help me in any situation. I was so sure and I can be healed that it worked. In about 30 minutes, I didn’t have any temperature. I found it difficult to pray to Jesus and in general to pray to God through some other third party. Since that incident, I understood that I can pray directly to God and he’ll answer and react to my prayers.
When I was 10-11, I went with my Jewish girlfriend and her father to the synagogue for the first time. It was during Purim and is a very happy holiday. I felt an atmosphere of joy, unity, acceptance and support there; when a Rabbi opened a Torah and started to read in Hebrew, I knew the letter which he saw. I knew what exactly he was doing even though I was at the end of the crowd, standing behind all people behind all rows. I saw Hebrew text so clear, like I was standing there instead of him. I knew that he’s reading in Hebrew even though I never heard that language before. I felt like I’m flying in ecstasy with a higher joy of being there. I prayed directly to God and talked directly to him. Everybody was doing so and everybody knew that they were connected and heard directly to something up there. They were connected to the source of happiness. I felt for the first time that this is like a big family where everybody is accepted and no one is judged. People are happy praying to God and feeling a joy of life. When I came back home, I asked my mother to transfer me to the Jewish school because I want to study among Jewish children and to know what they know. My mother refused because she’s not Jewish so I wouldn’t be accepted there.
At the age of 14, I meditated for the first time in my life after I’ve heard in the school about this technique of relaxation and emptiness of mind. I tried it at home and I knew immediately what and how to do it. It was like not thinking about anything at all, imagining nothing but a total black air, space, or a nothingness. I understood that I’ve always done this before when my mother was beating me, screaming at me or my grandmother, and when she physically mocked her or when she had nervous breakdowns. All this happened on daily basis my entire life until I left home at the age of 17.
Independent life: Israel, Thailand, Italy, France, USA
My first real boyfriend was from Israel. He was praying every morning, putting up something on his head and arm and he had a book always next to our bed. When I touched the book once, he screamed at me and said that I’m not aloud to touch it. The book is too complicated and too holy. He was the first person who explained to me about studying the Kabala and Torah. He told me about the danger of not being prepared to approach this kind of deep studying. My boyfriend took me for the first time in my life outside of Ukraine abroad to Thailand. I saw real Buddhas for the first time. There was worshipping of Buddha everywhere and it was such a peaceful environment. Although I didn’t understand why they worshipped the statues of Buddha, but not a God Himself.
I wanted to learn Hebrew so I can talk with my boyfriend in his language and go to Israel. At the age of 18, I started to learn Hebrew and started my conversion process to Judaism so I could marry him. My boyfriend said he can marry only a Jewish girl in order for his children to be Jewish and for his parents to have Jewish grandchildren. It was my trigger for doing my first real step into something I felt since childhood. It was a feeling of going back to on the road to the source. I knew I want to study God, but it was not about religion for me. I felt it was my way of communicating with God or some Higher Power above us. So at age 18, I started to study Judaism with a Rabbi every week with other women. I became a part of Jewish community. I felt that I reunited with something bigger than myself. I felt a strong connection to the source of knowledge and that I was studying not Judaism as religion, but studying God.
I made my first trip to Israel. I felt a like I didn’t fit in because I didn’t know Hebrew well enough. His friends were always talking in Hebrew and I felt disconnected. When I started to explore Israel, I felt that Russian is the second language there because so many Russian and Ukrainian Jews live there. I started to feel at home, like it was my real homeland. It was warm and welcoming, with a beautiful, warm sunny climate, unlike grey Ukraine. I fell in love with Israel, the culture and family values. After six months, I stopped my conversion process when I broke up with my boyfriend.
I left the Ukraine at the age of 19. I went to Moscow and than Milan to make a career as a model. I was traveling all around the Europe at that time: Russia, Italy, France, Austria, Finland, Spain, Germany. My boyfriend from Moscow was studying Tibetan culture, Samadhi state of mind, esotericism and all kinds of spirituality. I became involved in studying of the human mind with all its possibilities. I understand now that everyone has by default a different level of development.
At the age of 21, I bought my first book about Kabala but didn’t understand anything. It was too complicated for me, especially when I heard an audio lesson by a Kabbalist Rabbi from New York. He was saying that all we see around us is all illusion, a reflection of our inner world and state of mind. For example, when you look at the table it actually doesn’t exist and is unreal. It’s all is a lower dimension of the world, etc. I couldn’t get it. What does it mean it’s not real, if I see it with my eyes? Anyway, that time I was busy surviving and not thinking about higher energies and higher worlds. I was traveling non-stop and try to make a living until the age of 23. In 2007 and in Paris, I met my now ex-boyfriend, Gennadiy. We were together until December 2013. He was that trigger that led to my NDE. He was the person who actually killed me from a distance by his words, high level of emotional, moral, physical violence and pressure.
Beginning of the end
Before 2007, I was constantly searching. I couldn’t find my path in life, or my soulmate. I was constantly feeling very lonely and unhappy, going back and forth to the Ukraine and Europe. I was trying to figure out what is my path in life: fashion or business.
In 2007, I started to be involved in business with my girlfriend. We flew to Paris to attend a business conference, instead of her father who couldn’t make this trip. We met Gennadiy and his his friend Boris. Boris had just moved to Israel and became a citizen. I thought I’ve met a man with whom I can create a family. We flew to Mexico for a holiday and than to Miami for the New Year of 2008. There I noticed first signs of aggressive-impulsive behavior but the general picture was so nice and beautiful. I enjoyed the nice trips, fancy restaurants, expensive presents, and shopping. I literally got comfortable and for the first time in my life, I felt covered and protected. I felt like I didn’t need to hustle anymore but could sit back and enjoy life, being a beautiful girl next to a successful man. We started to live together in 2008.
I started to notice again, the signs of something wild and aggressive, like the way he talked to his ex-wife on the phone. He was screaming and shouting, calling her a stupid bi#$% just because she wanted to get a winter coat for herself. I discovered that he was married before and had a daughter. His daughter was constantly calling him every weekend. He rarely picked up the phone. He quarreled with her often saying that she was the same, stupid as her mother.
Than I realized that I’m living an empty life. I have tasty food, restaurants, a car, nice clothes. It was an expensive life but it’s all empty if it doesn’t make sense of my living. I felt as a leaf, blowing in the wind in an unknown direction. I didn’t know why I was waking up in the morning. I started to have a food disorder, bulimia. I was feeling very badly and could stay at home for days without going outside. I stopped to communicating with friends. I became a very closed person. I quit modeling when I met with Gennadiy, so I couldn’t fly to Milan again for work. I realized I’m slowly dying with my bulimia disorder. Food became my only friend and my only joy.
Than I realized that I want to go back to work. I found for myself at a movie audition, which I had passed. From there, I had a video shooting for the first time in my life. I felt like I was flying while acting in front of camera. I felt joy and happiness again. Then I went to the Cannes film festival where my work friend introduced me to his long time client, and on of his wife’s best friends Sharon Stone. She saw talent in me, which I was not sure 100% that I really had. She gave me few contacts in Hollywood and advised me to go there as soon as possible to study film-acting and to leave the Ukraine because it was not a country for me. I believed her because she is a world-famous actress. She said something I’ve always known. There’s a reason why I’m here on this planet and this reason is not in Ukraine. As long as I’m staying in my zone of sponsored comfort, the more distant I become from my real self and my life bliss.
I went to study in Hollywood. Gennadiy came there to watch me but he was like a fish out of water. He was complaining that he’s too old to start a life there and that I don’t have any chance of success there because of the stiff competition. Even I knew his complaining was not related to me. I knew I’d find my way there. He was putting me down by his attitude. So I came back to Ukraine. I decided to go back to work in fashion because that’s what I knew the best.
In 2010, I left to Italy to work during a fashion week. After that, I went to the Ukraine and then to New York. I thought I’ll not come back to Gennadiy after that trip because I felt that the U.S. is the country for me. I felt free, unlimited, and accepted there for the first time in my life. I felt I don’t need to pretend I can be myself. I started to do great here, but when I went back to Ukraine. I was planning to leave him but I suddenly realized that I want a family and loneliness is again eating me from inside. I’m not getting any younger, and I felt I need to fit in some standards of life and woman position in society This dilemma caused me to doubt my desire to build career. I gave up I went back to Gennadiy. I pregnant. I felt that I want this baby. I knew it was a boy immediately, that I want to call him David, and to live in the U.S. with him. I decided no matter what happened with Gennadiy, that I would give a birth to this child and be a single mom if needed. I decided to give birth in Israel. I didn’t care that I’ve being there alone a lot of time. I gave birth alone. I actually gave my last name to the baby David because the father was not present during birth and I was not married, so no father was registered. After I gave birth and Gennadiy came to see baby, I felt that there’s no family with him. There’s me and David from now on. I organized Brit Mila on the 7th day on my own. I was running around everywhere on the third day after I gave birth, managing paperwork and organization of the process.
His mother, who lives in New York with much younger boyfriend, was trying to be involved by saying what I should do in life, and how I should name the baby with a typical Ukrainian name. She was judging my every decision. I felt that I needed freedom. I have a baby and I’m ready to start building my new life out of the Ukraine. But reality was different.
Gennadiy forced us to go back to Ukraine, where I felt emptiness and lack of life again,. It was the same grey sky, same nice bags and shoes, but nothing else. Being a shadow of a man, cooking breakfasts and dinners, that was what was expected of me. I tried to speak about work but was called ridiculous. I was trying to explain what I feel; that I have a volcano of energy inside of myself and a willingness to create and achieve. But Gennadiy kept putting me down by saying that ‘You have a baby now. Your life is done.’ I realized I can’t travel to do modeling because I have David now. I don’t love Gennadiy who became a cold, aggressive man. So I remember my childhood and started to pray every day asking for God to forgive me for refusing to see my bliss and the talent I have, for living in a fear from being alone, being poor and not having that rich luxury around, and for not trusting. I was asking for God to give me a second chance in life.
God heard me and gave me second chance in 2012 . I was given the gift of singing and songwriting. I started to make a solo music project. I was guided through each step. I clearly knew where it came from, why, and I just fearlessly trusted everything even beyond logic. I was looking with my heart, not with my eyes. I felt I found my way in life and my bliss. My first music video broke through YouTube charts and led me to NY, where I performed in May 2013. I knew that this is the place where I want to come with David, to teach him a different life of freedom and happiness, love and acceptance. When I told Gennadiy that I want to leave and I want to live with David in the U.S., he started to frighten me. He said that he’ll take the baby from me and than he’ll pay for Ukrainian services to take my motherhood rights. He promised to take baby from me if I’ll leave him. He said that the most I can do is to live in a rented apartment somewhere close to him. He would minimally pay for the baby’s needs, but only enough money for food and this would be my life until David turned age 18. I realized that the whole system of corruption in Ukraine is letting men like Gennadiy treat women like this. There’s no law to protect women, so he could abuse me. There is corruption, so he’ll leave me without financial support even knowing I was not working since childbirth and was living a family life taking care of his business, baby, and household. He had promised to take care of me and this is what I got, nothing except food.
My inner world protested. I knew I need to trust and break through this system so I went back to Los Angeles. I found a place where I could live with David. I found a pre-school and nanny for him. I came back to the Ukraine to pick him up in February 2014 when the war started with Russia. I knew it’s time for me and David to be united and to start our new life in the country of freedom and law. Gennadiy started to follow me, threatening to kill me and to take baby from me if I’ll not come back to Ukraine. He said that he’ll find me, take the baby from me, and then make sure I commit suicide. He treated me like a personal belonging, a bag which was lost and should be returned. I felt he’ll never let me live normally. From the other side David was so happy in California. We travelled all over Legoland, Disney, beaches, ocean, weather, amusements, and parks. All was perfect.
In March 2014, Gennadiy blocked all my credit cards and left me and David with $134 on the account. He was sure that I would come back to the Ukraine from financial and emotional pressure. He also made a fake campaign in Facebook and social network about a lost child, saying that he doesn’t know where David is, etc. He knew David was with me in Los Angeles. He was pushing me in every possible way to return. Power, ego, money, and threats. That was his language.
We survived. I found a job, continued my music project, and was raising David. It was hard but do-able and we were happy by having each other. Then on Halloween, David was in preschool preparing for a Halloween baby party. Nine people knocked on our door saying that I have a court hearing for child abduction in 3 hours and need to come with David to the court. We did so. I was in shock. This is after Gennadiy’s visited us few months before when he knew where we lived where David was going to school, playing soccer, drawing, walking, and living. Is that child abduction? I couldn’t believe what was happening behind my back. Gennadiy was using his money instead of paying child support. He was spending hundreds, even thousands, on attorneys ruled by his ego and cruel desire to destroy me, my dreams and entire life. He was going to destroy a life with David and eventually David’s life with his mother, me. His attorney used the Hague convention, international law about child abduction cases. I found an attorney two days before the court hearing. We had almost 0 chances to stay together. I lost the case and David was taken from my hands in the corridor of court in downtown Los Angeles. The scene was like in a drama movie. David was crying and shouting, ‘Mummy!’ Gennadiy’s female attorney had a standard teddy bear toy with a red ribbon. She was shouting, ‘Just grab the baby now. He’ll forget her very soon.’ That was the last time I saw David.
NDE trigger
I walked out of the court feeling dead. I felt I lost my baby and now I wanted to die. I called my friend, who told me to drive to Marina del Rey to visit him and stay by the ocean for some time. I don’t remember the next few weeks. I do remember I was crying all the time. I was shouting in an empty apartment, not eating, and mostly staying indoors. I couldn’t return to my apartment where we lived with David so my girlfriends took care of it. They gave everything away and left me only David’s drawing and little crafts he made with his small child hands in preschool. For few months, I was not able to function. I lost a lot of weight and had a heavy depression. My friend was constantly trying to bring me back to life. He encouraged rekindling my passion for music. So I started to work on my music project again. I had a music video. Camera unreleased was a video about unconditional love and equal attitude to everybody and everything around us.
I found a way to appeal the court hearing in the U.S. I found a lawyer who was not afraid of a powerful and rich man in the Ukraine. He would help me to fight against Gennadiy in the corrupted courts of Ukraine to bring my child back. I was not aloud to see or talk to David, even by Skype. My mother, who lives almost on the same street with David, is not allowed to see David as well. David was completely blocked from me and was told that I left him. While being in the U.S., I applied for green card since I exceeded my tourist visa. I’m not able to travel outside the U.S. to get a chance to see David or to appear with him in the same county or city. Even if I’d fly to Ukraine, Gennadiy has a plan of attack. His goal is to make me suicide and to destroy me completely. My attempts to talked to David by Skype failed every time I tried to call. Gennadiy didn’t pick up Skype or was showing his face only saying if I want to talk to David, I can talk. But he would turn the camera to the wall. I could only hear how David was walking around. Gennadiy was saying that David forgot me and hates me; he doesn’t need a mother; he doesn’t need me because he’ll find another mother for him. His words and emotional pressure brought the level of my depression to the highest point. I was existing like a plant. A plant without a sun, a woman with a taken child away.
I finally had a interview for the green card and was hoping to get a travel permit to leave the U.S. to try to get my David back through the court in Ukraine. As a mother, I have an unbeatable by any corruption system right to spend 50% of the time with my child. I was ready for everything, even to go back to the country were I can be arrested or killed just to see and hug my son. The level of stress that week was so high that I was feeling very week. I also became vegetarian that week, ate very little and didn’t have appetite.
On April 1, 2015, I went to meet my girlfriend. I didn’t eat all day and had a piece of a raw fish and a glass of campaign. I didn’t drink any sip of alcohol for very long time and didn’t have animal product for quite long time as well. So I started to feel bad. Than she offered to take me to her friend’s house party. When we got there, I was very hungry and didn’t feel well. I was offered a chocolate candy. When I was eating the second candy, I was told that there are some mushrooms inside. I never tried anything like that before. My mind became blurred immediately.
I couldn’t distinguish objects around me and kept eating more candies, I had 3 or 4 of them. Then some guy offered me a powder in front of my nose. I inhaled it, then asked what it was. Somebody told me it was “K”, which I had no idea what was it. Then somebody told me that it’s a horse tranquilizer. It didn’t scared me because my mind was almost switched off, my senses were shut down already for few hours. I remember huge glasses of white wine which I was drinking one by one. I liked the feeling of absence of pain and any feelings. I was not myself. Veronika was not there; my mind was numbed. Afterwards, I saw the same guy who gave me a snort of K for the second time. It was the last drop.
I remember a moment when my body became cold. I felt a wave of cold feeling coming from my chest up. My nose became freezing and my head as well. Reality started to be divided very fast by layers and at this moment I left my body completely as I squeezed out from the upper part of my head. I flew to a different dimension. In a moment, everything calmed down. I felt so free. I felt no pain, nothing but happiness. I was above the building. In a second, I realized that I don’t feel my body at all. I’m without any form but I’m still me. I realized who I am and that I’m a part of the wholeness of the source. I felt David and my mom. I saw his heart and loneliness, which no one sees and knows. I felt how much he loves me and how he needs his mom. Then I felt my mother and how much she loves me. I felt Gennadiy and how he’ll be released when he knows that I’m dead. He’ll be sad but released and happy that he did all to end my life. Then I felt the sorrow of my mother, how she’ll be upset. I knew that she feels that I’m no longer alive at that moment and I clearly felt by child how he needs me how he needs his mom. That moment was a moment of freedom. I had freedom of choice to leave the pain and this life-drama or to stay. I clearly understood, it’s not my time to go; I’m coming back. The only thing I asked while being there in between and someone up there did it, I asked to open my eyes and start my heart beating without paramedics. I felt how much shame and panic will be around me if paramedics came. I knew they will not get there in time. I knew my body and my heart was shut down and I wasn’t breathing. I made it. I returned. I remember that I suddenly made a deep breath, the same as when going from deep water up to the surface again. I started to throw up immediately and all the people at the party where wondering who am was and who brought me there. I was throwing up for few hours. I couldn’t get warm until the morning and then I went to sleep.
The next day, I’ve started to attract a chain of coincidences connected with my life mission. I’ve met on a street in Venice, California, my future record producer. He later gave me an audio book of Anita Moorjani who was describing her NDE. In fact, she described my feelings one by one. It was all I felt while being out of my body. The only thing she didn’t mention was our reality. The only thing which is a bit scary for me now. I remember how our world literally disappeared. It was not melting, but I remember numbers. I realized that our 3D dimension world is like a programmed computer game, programmed with letters and numbers. It’s possible to program the computer and therefore, our world. I feel that a real world is inside if us, the outside is only a reflection of our world. Writing all this now, I realize it and this moment is scary. We think that we are here and now but up there, time and space DO NOT exist. Time and space are the illusion of this material world. This is what I couldn’t understand in Kabala. This Kabala is a science about a God. I question myself. Do I have a right to write about it, I feel I am a messenger but my message is through music. Should I write all this now and send it or not? Should I reveal secrets of programming to other people? The only thing I want the most and why I came back is to be with my child in this physical world. I want to raise and support him, to teach and be next to him in the country of freedom. I want to stand for what I believe and not to be afraid of living and raising my head up against power and ego of men who got use to playing without rules. Men who treat woman like a decoration, only a personal belonging without rights and unwilling to get justice. Everything in the Ukraine is for sale; the courts, police, and women. Human rights don’t have a value. This is all wrong and it needs to be changed. Someone needs to make that change.