She went to Poland to help Ukrainian children, but she found her own daughters there. And she became their mum. But the journey to becoming a family was not an easy one. 

In the first days of the full-scale war, a music teacher from Kharkiv Kateryna Kapustenko joined the evacuation effort. Dozens of trips, an overcrowded railway station, and an extraordinary story involving the interception of a weapons smuggling operation during one of those journeys were ahead of her. Later, she went to Poland, where she worked with Ukrainian children evacuated from Odesa residential care institutions. 

It was there that Kateryna met two little sisters from the children’s shelter in Odesa Region and almost immediately felt in her heart that they were her daughters. One day, little Ksiusha asked her: “Will you be my mum?” At the time, Kateryna had no choice but to leave the question unanswered, because adopting a child during the war, as an IDP and without a home of her own, seemed impossible. 

The sisters began being prepared to return to Ukraine, where they were to live with another foster family. There was never any question of that family adopting them permanently. It seemed as though the system had already decided everything for them. But when Kateryna heard the news, she realised: if these were her children, she had to go after them to Odesa and fight for them. 

Court proceedings and the bureaucratic process surrounding adoption usually take far too long, especially during wartime. Children are often forced to remain in shelters for years while waiting for a court decision. 

However Kateryna managed to overcome the system and adopt the girls in just six months. Staff from as many as six different social services, as the case was passed from one authority to another, were genuinely astonished, admitting that such speed was truly extraordinary. 

Through her story, Kateryna hopes to inspire those who are still hesitant and to prove by her own example that there is no need to be afraid of adopting children, especially teenagers, because every child dreams of having a real family.