Proxy with Yowei Shaw

Episode: "Yaroslava Can't Go Home"
Release Date: October 21, 2025

Main Theme & Purpose

This episode dives into the emotional reality of displacement due to political violence and war. Host Yowei Shaw recreates, in podcast form, a version of “camp” hosted by Dignity Beyond Borders—a program bringing together youth from conflict zones to process grief, heal, and connect. Ukrainian-born Yaroslava (“Yara”) and Soraya from Palestine meet for the first time in a guided, deeply honest conversation about guilt, longing, cultural adjustments, friendship, and the meaning of “home” when you can’t return.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Camp’s Purpose and Philosophy

• [05:10-08:22] Yowei introduces Dignity Beyond Borders, where young people affected by political violence find connection, healing, and perspective across divides.
  • Monica (camp co-founder): "There is no hierarchy of loss." (06:53)
  • The camp creates "seeds of peace" for participants to take home.
• Monica relates how openness at camp changes how you perceive everyone around you:
  • “When your heart is open like that, you view everybody so differently.” (07:46)

Introduction of Participants

• [08:22-12:47]
  • Yara, 19, from Ukraine: Displaced by Russian invasion, now in NYC; studies digital marketing; passionate about floral design.
  • Soraya, 26, from the West Bank, Palestine: Human rights graduate, filmmaker and musician, now living in Maryland.
  • Revel in small talk about baking, favorite flowers, and the ways their families have shaped them:
    • Yara’s grandmother owned a flower shop in Ukraine: “I think it's just because I grew up in flower industry, now I can make it myself.” (11:38)

Guilt, Displacement, and Complex Identity

• [13:06–15:59]
  • Yara shares the split reality of being grateful to be safe, yet guilty for not suffering alongside her country:
    • “I feel guilty about being here and not staying back in my country. I was always asking myself one question, why am I feeling guilty?” (13:06)
  • Soraya describes the fractured pull between self-preservation and cultural responsibility:
    • “In our cultures, home and people, your community, your society comes first. And being able to choose yourself is kind of like a big no-no.” (14:52)

What is Choice?

• [15:21–15:59]
  • Yara: Emphasizes her lack of agency—she was forced out, not choosing to leave.
  • Soraya: Even choices feel predetermined or imposed.

Isolation, Community, and Rebuilding Connections

• [16:21–18:37]
  • Yara contrasts the tight-knit Ukrainian community to American individualism and describes loneliness and surface-level connections.
  • Notable realness about American high school expectations vs reality:
    • “I was dreaming about it also. But when I was waking up at 4am to catch up the bus at 5, I was like, no, it is not my dream. Not my dream anymore.” (17:40)
    • Finds first American friend who helps her feel seen:
      • “He was the first person that was really interested in me.” (17:56)

Being Seen Only Through Trauma or Refugee Lens

• [18:37–21:01]
  • Both women resent being reduced to refugees or victims:
    • Soraya: “Don't talk to me as a cry for help. It's not helping anybody.” (18:37)
    • Yara’s host family in Louisiana: “I'm a human. ... I wanna be whole human, not just refugee.” (19:44)
  • Soraya: “There's power in identifying as a refugee, but only when it comes from you, not from other people identifying you.” (20:12)

Maintaining Bonds and Long-Distance Connections

• [24:15–29:38]
  • Yara’s daily phone calls with her grandmother in Crimea always return to flowers:
    • “We are always talking about flowers. Always. Did they drink water today? How beautiful this rose is...” (24:46)
  • Both women keep up connections back home—Yara through flowers and her grandma, Soraya via art, film, and stories.
  • Soraya’s visit back to Palestine:
    • “It just felt like an old T-shirt that you really, really like ... but it just feels two sizes smaller now.” (28:09)
  • Both grapple with the harsh realization: places and relationships change, and returning isn’t necessarily restorative.

Navigating New and Old Friendships

• [29:59–36:27]
  • Soraya: When you live separate lives, “you can listen to them, you can be there for them,” but not always relate.
  • Yara feels unable to share her bright spots with friends in Ukraine, not wanting to “rub it in” when their situations are dire:
    • “I don't want to tell how great it is... because I know he is now in Ukraine and things are not really going well.” (35:27)

What is Home Now?

• [37:14–40:37]
  • Yara: “Now for me, I think it's just where my mom is ... because she's always with me.” (37:14)
  • Soraya: Home is not a place, but “the people that I'm, like, either friends with or ... my family.” (37:34)
  • Everyday actions and hobbies become threads connecting them to home (for Yara, floral arrangement; for Soraya, playing the guitar and the kinds of songs she plays).
    • Soraya: "All of the songs I play are from 2020... this is what I do. This is the songs that I play, and I would like to play them over and over again." (38:24)

Subtler Ways Home Follows You

• Soraya shares how even mundane things (like noticing airplanes) carry complicated meanings, as she brings her West Bank experiences with her:
  • "It was the first time I've ever noticed that this airplane is not my enemy... but it's something that I carried with me." (38:24)
  • Yara realizes floral work is a form of carrying home:
    • “That's right. Yeah. Because flowers... I just started to do it and I forget everything. ... I'm connected with my grandma just because of the flowers.” (40:37)

Settling and Small Markers of Belonging

• [41:22–42:57]
  • Yara: Doesn’t feel a dramatic turning point, just that “it goes, like I’m on my way.”
  • Soraya: For her, feeling settled meant not needing GPS, recognizing people in her new city.
    • "As soon as I, like, started that journey of, like, discovering myself... this sort of, like, made it close to... the place that I now call, quote, unquote, home." (42:05)

Closing Reflections

• Both acknowledge how much they resonated, the unexpected comfort in shared experience, and small acts of carrying home in their daily lives.
  • “You really opened my eyes about flowers. So, yeah. Thank you.” (Yara, 43:14)

Notable Quotes

• “There is no hierarchy of loss.”
  – Monica Mia McNamara, Camp Facilitator (06:53)
• “When your heart is open like that, you view everybody so differently.”
  – Monica Mia McNamara (07:46)
• “I feel guilty about being here and not staying back in my country. I was always asking myself one question, why am I feeling guilty?”
  – Yara (13:06)
• “In our cultures, home and people, your community, your society comes first. And being able to choose yourself is kind of like a big no-no.”
  – Soraya (14:52)
• “Don't talk to me as a cry for help. It's not helping anybody.”
  – Soraya (18:37)
• “I wanna be whole human, not just refugee.”
  – Yara (19:44)
• “There's power in identifying as a refugee, but only when it comes from you, not from other people identifying you.”
  – Soraya (20:12)
• "It just felt like an old T-shirt that you really, really like ... but it just feels two sizes smaller now."
  – Soraya (28:09)
• "Now for me, I think it's just where my mom is ... because she's always with me."
  – Yara (37:14)
• "Home is ... the people that I'm, like, either friends with or ... my family."
  – Soraya (37:34)

Key Segments & Timestamps

• [05:10] Introduction to Dignity Beyond Borders and the philosophy of camp
• [08:22] Yara’s story: displacement and arriving in America
• [11:17] Introductions: Yara and Soraya share backgrounds
• [13:06–15:59] Navigating guilt about leaving home
• [16:21–18:37] Forming and losing community in a new country
• [18:37–21:01] Resentment at being defined solely by trauma
• [24:46–28:09] Missing family and how daily rituals bridge the distance
• [29:38–36:27] Long-distance friendships and sharing less of your new life
• [37:14–40:37] Redefining “home” and carrying it in everyday acts
• [41:22–42:57] Markers of feeling settled; recognizing yourself in your new place

Tone and Takeaways

Proxy’s signature is deeply empathetic and personal, filled with moments of raw honesty, bittersweet laughter, and recognition of complexity in diaspora life. The episode rejects simplistic or voyeuristic frames of trauma, instead empowering its guests to speak with nuance, pride, and humor about displacement. Their warmth for one another is tangible, making their “proxy” connection an antidote to isolation.

Memorable Moment

Soraya jokes about becoming Americanized, to which Yara laughs and promises flowers when they meet—offering a glimpse of hope and solidarity.

Further Resources

• Visit Dignity Beyond Borders to learn about the camp and support their work.
• Follow Yaroslava on Instagram.
• Check out Soraya’s thesis film about freedom of movement in the West Bank on Vimeo.

A moving exploration of loss, adaptation, and connection among young diaspora: a must-listen for anyone considering the afterlife of “going somewhere safer.”