About me
I write about small shifts: a choice made in passing, an old habit loosening, a meaning that appears without warning. Like finding the steps of a staircase beneath fresh snow.
My full first name in Russian, Nadezhda, means "Hope."
Born above the Arctic Circle, I learned early to appreciate warmth: in weather, in words, and in people.
Some gifts announce themselves quietly. Mine arrived when I was ten.
My mother's workplace ran a contest: employees' children competing for the best gift for moms on International Women's Day.
Drawing for me was out of the question. Handicrafts never obeyed me. I sat there, empty-handed, and then a sentence arrived. Another followed. I wrote the poem on a card in minutes. The next day, Mom came home with a bag of candies — first place. Something quiet but reliable had announced itself.
At fifteen, my language teacher told me to build a career around my gift with words. I politely declined. I had other plans. Life had plans for me, too. My son arrived when I was eighteen.
Words waited while life moved on. For more than twenty years, I built an international career with global companies and visited more than fifty countries.
Expecting my daughter twenty-two years later, I published a poetry book. A few poems found their place in the Golden Stanza international almanac for Russian-speaking poets.
Inspiration, it turned out, was everywhere — including on the walls of ancient caves in Southern Russia, where the play of light and shadow gave me the characters for my collection of modern fables.
Presenting my poetry book
Business taught me to ask one question about every investment: what does it return? One day I found myself asking the same question about parenting.
Parenting: Return on Intention is my first book in English: the story of raising two very different children, building relationships that outlast childhood, and learning that the greatest return comes not from fixing people, but from meeting them where they are.
How the Parenting: Return on Intention began
I had wanted to write this book for years. I'd even started a few times. But the moment insecurity whispered, Who needs this? Do you even have anything to say? I'd stop.
Then one weekend in May 2025, I joined a random webinar about calling: why we hear it, why we ignore it. The speaker offered an analogy that stuck in my mind. He said that we're like restaurant guests who place an order, then change their minds two minutes later, then again three minutes after that, and wonder furiously why nothing arrives. If you want something, let it cook instead of sending mixed orders. It seems my order never made it out of the kitchen.
The very next day, a thunderstorm knocked out the power. No lights, no noise, just stillness and silence. Then a little nudge, soft but unmistakable, pressed into my mind: Start now.
So, I did. I lit every candle I found in the house, opened my laptop, and typed without second-guessing. The stories marched out as if they had been waiting behind a gate for years.
Sometimes the light goes out, so you can finally see differently.