Fear Comes When the Day Ends: Alina’s Story, for Whom Nighttime Became a Challenge
Alina loves to draw. People and animals, houses filled with tiny details, flowers and trees. She colors her drawings in bright shades, and when she invents new stories, lets her imagination wander, and escapes into her own world, it becomes easier for her to cope with the everyday realities. In those moments, Alina relaxes and seems to forget, if only for a while, everything happening around her.
But there were times when she did not want even to pick up a pencil, because fear had filled her whole inner world. Psychologists at the Voices of Children Foundation have helped Alina cope with that fear.
Alina is 10 years old. She is in fifth grade, loves going for walks, and spending time with her friends. She found them after moving to Lviv, a new city she adapted to surprisingly quickly. She moved there with her parents and older brother in the summer of 2025.
Alina’s family is from the Donetsk region. Long before 2022, war had already forced them to relocate, so they knew what it meant to leave home and start everything from scratch. Later, they lived in Pavlohrad, and after Russia’s full-scale invasion began, they left the city several times, but kept returning again and again, trying to adjust to life under constant shelling.
“Our house in Pavlohrad stood between a railway and a factory. Since 2022, those sites have been constantly under attack. Everything flew right over our home. At first only at night, but gradually the strikes became more and more intense,”
Up to fifty Shahed drones a night. Ballistic missiles. Explosions. Sometimes the house shook so violently it seemed the walls would not hold. Windows were blown out by shockwaves, and when they remained intact, they would fly open from the impact. Alina often had no time to hide, usually waking up to explosions before the air raid siren even sounded. There were no shelters nearby, so she and her mother would wait in the living room, trying to shield themselves from broken glass and debris.
With every attack, Alina’s fear only grew, and her body responded too: she felt physically unwell, nausea rising.
“I was anxious, and Alina picked up on it. We had an acute stress reaction, anxiety felt like it was tightening from the inside. Alina was confused and frightened. As soon as night came, my daughter was terrified to fall asleep. We could not endure it anymore, so we decided to move. As a family from the Donetsk region, we had known since 2014 what displacement and losing home meant, so we were internally prepared for it. We had long understood there would be no return to the way things were,”
For a new life, the family chose Lviv. Both Alina and her older brother quickly settled into new communities. Alina missed friends from her previous school, but soon made new ones here. It seemed life was beginning to improve.
But the first weeks in Lviv also passed under the sound of sirens, and the family started going to shelters. One day, a Shahed drone began falling right between their building and the shelter nearby. Her mother recalls that moment shattered the last hope that there might still be some place truly safe.
It became a trigger for both mother and daughter. Fear returned. During the day, Alina could laugh with friends and live an ordinary child’s life, but in the evenings she seemed to freeze. She was still afraid to go to sleep, hid under the blanket, and struggled for a long time to calm down.
Then in autumn, Alina began suffering from severe headaches. Doctors diagnosed an anxiety disorder. On their advice, the family turned to psychologists at the Voices of Children Foundation.
After several sessions, psychologist Alla taught Alina simple but important practices to use when anxiety begins creeping in: grounding, focusing on the body, on objects, on sensations. Naming things around her. Touching a cold wall. Feeling the floor beneath her feet. Slowing her breathing.
“Alina goes to psychologist Alla and says she feels good with her, because she has such energy. Before, I could only help my child with hugs, massage, and words. Now she has tools. She calms herself and says, ‘Mom, it’s passed.’ And she falls asleep,”
Sometimes Alina still feels anxious at bedtime, because the path to calm is not over yet. But she no longer hides under the blanket or lets anxiety take hold of her completely. She is learning that fear can be managed. She knows she can move through it, and then it eases. She has a psychologist with whom she feels, as she says, “good and calm,” and adults who do not leave her alone with her anxiety.
And now she draws again.
Like many children of her age, Alina does not always feel comfortable being photographed or sharing pictures of herself publicly. But she was happy to reveal another part of herself — her drawings. That is what she agreed to share. They hold so much of her imagination, her emotions, and her light.
Author: Kateryna Bessarabova
Alina receives professional support and a chance to recover from traumatic experiences at the Lviv center of the Voices of Children Foundation. The center operates thanks to the support of Kormotech LLC.
If you or your child needs support, contact our centers across Ukraine or call our psychological support helpline at 0 800 210 106.
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Author: Kateryna Bessarabova