That’s all Maksym needed to hear. Just one person asking, one person staying to listen to the answer.
Maksym is a Ukrainian cameraman from Kyiv who moved to San Francisco in late 2021 for work. He thought Ukraine would be safe. He was operating the camera during a TV interview I participated in about creating collaboration where others see division, and approached me afterward – something he said he rarely does with guests. Our discussion about difficult conversations resonated with him.
His mind flashed to February 24th, 2022. He woke up at 5 AM San Francisco time to news that had broken overnight: Russia had invaded Ukraine.
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His first call was to his mother in Kyiv. Instead of her voice, he heard air raid sirens through the phone.
At work, where he was one of the few Eastern Europeans on the team, colleagues debated “how long Ukraine could hold out” while he sat silent. It felt like watching people discuss his family as chess pieces. People around him either avoided the topic entirely or expressed strong opinions about the war, but no one ever looked him in the eye and asked how he felt.
Every evening he checked his phone, terrified that someone close to him might not answer the next time. He was afraid to watch the news, but more afraid not to watch.
He found the same awkward distance in his local community. People would chat about Ukraine in generalities but never once turned to him and said, “Maksym, how are you holding up?”
“It was like I was carrying this huge weight that nobody else wanted to even look at,” he told me. “Just one person asking me how I was doing would have meant the world.”
The silence amplified his loneliness. Many colleagues probably didn’t know how to start the conversation or feared saying the wrong thing. Cultural norms discouraged personal conversations about war. The result? Maksym felt invisible in a world that pretended his pain didn’t exist.
When I asked if he’d share more about his experience, he spoke with frankness that took my breath away. He described anger, sorrow, betrayal, and hope: “Maybe this time, we’ll talk about it. Maybe this time, we’ll face it together.”
This story anchors a chapter in my upcoming book Loving Conflict: Creating Collaboration Where Others See Division about building connection across divides. A single question can break through silence and invite connection – the difference between someone feeling invisible or cared for.
#ukraine #ListeningSkills #Collaboration #WritingCommunit