“It is important to learn to understand and listen to one another”

Lesia and Yurii, a married couple from Vinnytsia region — about their participation in a camp for veterans’ families within the Ukrainian-Polish project “Family at the Centre”.

Lesia and Yurii came to the retreat camp for veterans and their families within the “Family at the Centre” project from Illintsi district in Vinnytsia region. According to them, the meaningful and rich programme and the opportunity to rest against the backdrop of beautiful nature became a very timely and welcome chance to take a break, communicate with like-minded people, gain new impressions and reflect on what matters. Especially during individual and family sessions with psychotherapists, which are designed to help married couples understand their relationships and identify problems, if any exist. After all, relationships in a family often need support after a husband or wife returns home following a long stay in the combat zone. This is also the view of Nina Mochor, a professional psychotherapist and humanitarian expert at Caritas Poland, who came specially from Warsaw to Ukraine to take part in this retreat camp.

“Men talk about how hard it is to switch from a wartime state to a family way of life, to master themselves when the situation becomes unpredictable, how difficult it is to re-connect with loved ones and talk to each other. This is one of the biggest challenges for veterans after returning home,” she notes.

Lesia and Yurii, who have known each other for 14 years and have been together for 4 years, 2 of them officially married, say that during conversations with psychotherapists they heard and discovered a lot of new things.

Their impressions of the camp — in this video.

In addition to sessions with a psychologist, the programme of retreat camps within the “Family at the Centre” project includes, in particular, creative and recreational activities, walks, meaningful quest games and evenings by the campfire.

The project “Family at the Centre: improving the quality of and access to comprehensive psychological and rehabilitation assistance in 4 family support centres in Kharkiv, Zhytomyr, Odesa and Kamianets-Podilskyi in Ukraine” is implemented by Caritas-Spes Ukraine in cooperation with and with the support of Caritas Polska.

The project is co-financed by the Polish Development Cooperation Programme of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland.

This publication expresses solely the opinion of the author and cannot be regarded as the official position of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland.