CHAGRIN FALLS, Ohio — A family basement being used as a bomb shelter in Kharkiv, Ukraine sits right over the border with Russia.
While currently 5,000 miles away, it's where Marina Didenko calls home despite currently living in Northeast Ohio.
"We had to not only just leave everything behind, just everything. Our families, our friends, house, work and to start from zero or even sometimes from minus," Didenko said.
Marina left Kharkiv with her 11-year-old son.
They had to leave her husband, other family members and their dog behind because of space restrictions and Ukrainian law.
The evacuation train was stuffed and sat four people to one seat, making a normally 12-hour journey a 38-hour marathon.
Marina says there was an unexplainable feeling in the air that kept even the youngest babies from crying.
The train cut the lights at night to avoid detection from the Russian soldiers.
"I knew many people who decided to stay there only because they knew their family would be ruined and they preferred to die really right there rather than to go and leave them alone with their tragedy," she recalls.
Their next stop was Poland as Marina and her son insisted on only wearing his father's black Jordan hoodie to remember him. They relied on the kindness of strangers to be fed and housed.
Three months later, they arrived in America.
Marina tries to keep the terror of what she experienced behind her, looking forward for her child.
"Shrapnel, yeah, it went through our windows our roof," she adds. "That's when we had no time to get dressed as we heard it really started falling right over us."
Marina wants Americans to remember that even though the war has been going on for six months, it's just as, if not more devastating for people in Ukraine as it was before the shock wore off from day one.
"Just imagine tomorrow you find out that's it, the war started, where will you go, what will you do, what will you do with your families?" she asks.
Marina still intentionally tries to look forward and not back on the past six months, but did have a message for other women considering fleeing Ukraine still. She says it's hard, but she and other women who have fled are here to help and so is everyone they met along the way.
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