Thursday 25 August 2011

Treasure Your Heritage…


My journey of discovery begins…
I am very proud to be Ukrainian. As a 2ndgeneration, Ukrainian Canadian who lost my mother’s native tongue, I am still very proud to be Ukrainian. I treasure my rich heritage and roots. The experience of having a strong, faith based culture gives me hope and strength to learn the traditions which my grandparents worked so hard to bring from Ukraine and preserve in Canada. They sought out a new land. It must have been exciting for them and terrifying too. Arriving in a foreign country with little money or necessities unlike this present generation, was an enormous sacrifice.

Treasure your heritage. It makes you the person you are today. Our ancestors worked hard, played hard and enjoyed their life to the fullest. We can learn a lot from them. The Ukrainian traditions are deep and embedded in our souls like our childhood memories.

During the summer of 2009, my three sisters, Margaret, Angie, Alene and I had the wonderful pleasure to visit Ukraine and see the origins of the Dubyk-Woznakowski family. We discovered relatives unknown, but faces very familiar-especially in the graveyards. The pictures on the tombstones resembled my sister, Alene. Yes, everything seemed familiar; the language is only one part that we lost. What was given to us, passed on from generation to generation was much bigger than the loss of any language. The sights, sounds and smells of our culture are alive. I discovered one can still be Ukrainian without knowing the language. Yet too, the sounds of the Ukrainian language are rooted in our memories, the spoken language heard from our mother. It does not seem foreign. My soul knows my Ukrainian roots, the traditions, the food, the music, the culture and dance.

The spirit of Ukraine is alive in me. I know who I am and where I belong. And if our dear mother, Sophie were alive today; she would be the first person on the plane to discover where her dear father and mother were born. She would experience the rush and pleasure we felt meeting lost relatives…. but not a lost culture. Treasure your heritage. It makes you the person you are today. Proud, Ukrainian and free to treasure your culture, deep engrained roots and traditions embedded in your soul.

Marion Mutala@2011


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