At war, there is the violence of the battlefield, where soldiers die, settlements are razed to the ground, and civilians are killed by missals or executed. But violence is also when thousands are forced to run for their lives with only a bag full of belongings when the country far from the frontlines is living in darkness, without electricity and heating through freezing winter when people are threatened, kept in basements without food, water, or even fresh air. And then, there is the violence damaging the human soul, psychological wounds, and torture, less visible than those done by a bullet.

I never thought that I would one day be covering conflict. Like many women I met in the last few years, I didn't believe that I was strong and resilient enough to find the courage needed for valuable reporting from a country at war. This changed when a full-scale invasion started in Ukraine, right at the border of my homeland, Poland. From the beginning, I was more interested in what was happening behind the frontlines than on the battlefields. How do people keep their lives together, how they protect their children, take care of the elderly, how they find beauty in the new reality when everything around them is falling apart, and the lingering fear of death coming from the skies is omnipresent?

In Ukraine, war and its aftermath coexist. While soldiers are dying daily on the frontlines, the rest of the country is already rebuilding to compensate for the losses.