A world without a face

Between my three-year-old son, my day job as an assistant professor at the university, my evening job as a software developer, and my night shift writing my Ph.D. dissertation, life was... full. Overflowing, really. I didn’t have much time for existential questions, just enough for caffeine and deadlines.

Each morning, I’d drink my strong, necessary coffee and flip through the Capital newspaper. One day, an ad caught my eye:
“Nokia is looking for software engineers specialized in distributed systems and object-oriented programming. Interviews in Bucharest in March.”

I read it once. Then again.
I was writing my Ph.D. on distributed systems.
I was teaching object-oriented programming during the day.
I was coding in C++ at night.

I turned to my husband and said, joking, “Hey—these guys are literally looking for me.”

He barely glanced at the paper before replying, “You need to apply. Immediately.”

I laughed. It was a joke.
But he was dead serious.

--

October 1st, just ten days after I turned thirty, I stood in the Helsinki airport, waiting for my luggage.

The belt was moving slowly. Empty.
I’ve always liked airports, the movement, the soft hum of voices, the sense of transition. But something felt... strange. Off.

I looked around. People were standing nearby, talking. But I couldn’t hear anything. Not a word. Just silence.

For a moment, I panicked.
Were they whispering? Was something wrong with my hearing? Was I having a stroke?

And then I understood.

This was Finland.
The place I was moving to. A country I knew almost nothing about. A world of silence. A world I didn’t yet recognize.

Life, with all its noise and warmth and familiarity, was behind me.
Now, I would have to learn how to hear differently.
I would have to learn how to listen to silence.

Will I ever find home?

The phone rings. It’s face down on the table, screen hidden.

We’re having lunch on a terrace in Crete. Petteri booked the trip to celebrate my new job. A few weeks ago, my company announced it was shutting down its Finnish branch. Thousands of employees laid off. And yet, somehow, I landed a new role in just two weeks - a VP position at a tech company. It felt surreal. We were lucky. I was lucky.

“Don’t you want to see who it is?” Petteri asks, nodding toward the phone.

I reach over and flip it. My heart skips.

It’s my former manager.

I excuse myself from the table and step away from the clatter of silverware and the sound of waves. I answer. They want to offer me a job at the U.S. headquarters. It would mean relocating by the end of the summer.

When I return, Petteri looks up from his plate. “You said what?”

“I said I’d think about it.”

“You’ll think about it?” His voice tightens. “You already have a great job waiting for you back home. You don’t need another one.”

“I know.”

“And your kids? Mihai is starting college in the fall. Antonia’s about to finish middle school. You really think she’ll want to move away from her friends?”

“I know.”

“You love your life. You’re happy. Aren’t you?” He leans forward. “You can’t seriously be considering this. Let’s just enjoy the rest of this trip. When we’re home, you call them and say thank you, but no.”

He’s right. Of course he’s right. I should have said no right away. There’s no version of this that makes sense. It must be pride. Or ego. Or the thrill of being wanted. Why else didn’t I decline?

We should be celebrating. Ordering champagne. Toasting to the way things worked out.

But instead, I hear myself say, “I don’t feel at home in Finland.”

The words surprise me. Him too.

“What are you talking about? You still think of Romania as your home? And even if you do, how is moving to the U.S. any closer?”

He pauses.

“And what about us?”

I don’t have an answer.

I can’t just shut the door on this offer. Not yet. I don’t know if I’ll take it. Maybe Antonia won’t want to leave. Maybe Mihai’s college plans won’t work out from that far away. Maybe this new job won’t be the right fit after all. Maybe I don’t want to start over again.

So many maybes.

So many fears.

The only thing I’m sure of is this: Finland doesn’t feel like home.
And Romania... Romania isn’t home anymore either.

So maybe the question isn’t why I would move.
Maybe it’s—why not?

Solo travel and the book

When I turned 49, I decided to give myself a gift: a solo trip to Hawaii.

By then, I had worn many titles—divorced woman, single mom, head of household. I was used to being “solo” at home. I’d traveled the world alone for work, sat in countless departure lounges with a laptop and an agenda. I liked the freedom. I had taken plenty of vacations with just the kids, discovering new cities, navigating foreign countries—me and two little passports in tow. I never felt out of place without a man beside me.

But somehow, I had never traveled alone for pleasure. Not once. Not just for me.

Until Hawaii.

Honolulu was beautiful. The hotel had a breezy terrace restaurant by the pool. That evening, I wore the turquoise dress I bought in Greece a few summers ago. It felt like a good-luck charm. I brought a book with me, though I wasn’t sure I’d read it.

The hostess greeted me.

“Table for how many, ma’am?”

“Just one,” I said, smiling.

She hesitated. “Just for one?”

“Yes, just for myself.”

“Okay… don’t worry, I’ll find you a good one.”

I wasn’t worried. Should I have been?

She led me to a lovely table tucked in the corner, with a view of the pool and the horizon where the sun would soon set. She pulled out my chair with care.

“Here you go,” she said gently. “We’ll take good care of you.”

Her kindness was warm, but there was something else in it—a tone I couldn’t quite place. Was it pity? Concern? Or was I just reading too much into it?

A few minutes later, the waitress arrived—closer to my age this time.

“Would you like a cocktail, or maybe a glass of wine to start?”

Now this felt normal.

“A glass of Pinot Gris, please.”

The restaurant was still quiet. A few couples, some families. The air was soft, warm with the scent of the ocean. I leaned back in my chair, soaking it all in. I hadn’t even opened my book yet.

The wine came quickly.

“Here you go, ma’am,” the waitress said, setting it down with a smile.

I smiled back.

“Are you all right?” she asked. “Is there anything we can do to make you more comfortable?”

I blinked. “I’m fine, thank you. I’d like to order, actually.”

But the feeling lingered—like something unspoken was hovering just beneath the surface.

Later, when she brought the food, she touched my shoulder lightly. “If you need anything at all, just let me know. I’ll be checking on you often.”

I thanked her again. “Really, I’m fine. It’s a lovely evening, and everything looks delicious.”

As she walked away, I finally opened my book. I caught her glancing back. She saw the book, smiled, and nodded—as if I’d passed some sort of unspoken test.

By the end of the trip, I’d figured it out: a single woman, of my age, dining alone in Hawaii? It was unusual. But the book made me socially acceptable. The book meant I had purpose. I wasn’t waiting for someone. I wasn’t sad. I was reading.

Back in Seattle, I went out to dinner at a little Italian place near home. I didn’t bring a book. No one cared.

Thank God.

How to remove obstacles with a newspaper

The Cornfield Place

When I was in kindergarten, my mother would read to me every evening before bed. I loved listening to the stories, but more than anything, I wanted to be able to read them myself. Sometimes I didn’t like the ones she picked. Other times, I’d fall in love with a story and want to hear it every single night, but she’d get tired of it and say, “No more, not again.”

I wanted the power to choose the stories. To reread the ones I loved for days, even weeks. I asked my mother to teach me to read. She was a teacher, after all. But she said, “You’ll learn in school. There’s no need to do it before.”

One early spring afternoon, when I was about four years old, I took a blank sheet of paper and laid it over a page from the newspaper. Slowly, I copied every letter I could see. Line by line, I filled that blank page. It took a very long time. Maybe an hour, maybe many - time moves differently when you're four - but I remember it felt endless.

When I finished, I brought the paper to my mom and said proudly, “Look, I can write! Will you teach me to read now?”

She got angry.

To this day, I don’t know why. Maybe she was tired, maybe startled. She looked at the page and said, “This isn’t writing! It’s just scribbles. Rubbish. Don’t waste your time pretending. You’ll learn properly when school starts.”

Her words stung. I started to cry.

“I just want to read, Mom. You didn’t want to help me, so I tried by myself. This is all I could do. Why are you mad?”

She softened then, her voice quieter.

“You’re not going to give up, are you?”

Tears still in my eyes, I shook my head. “I can’t wait. I need to read now.”

And so - she taught me.

By summer, when we went to visit my grandparents, I could already read short stories. It still took me a long time to get through a single one, but the joy of making it to the end on my own was unlike anything I’d felt before.

When I found a story I loved, I’d slip away to the cornfield near my grandparents’ house with the book in hand. There, tucked between tall green stalks, I would read the same tale over and over until I heard my grandmother’s voice calling me to dinner.

To this day, when I find a book I love, I still look for that cornfield place, the quiet corner of the world where the pages come alive and nothing else matters.

What is lost will be found

"Pieces of Me" 
You don't know this new me; I put back my pieces differently. 

The first time I lost something important, I was too young to understand what “losing” meant. I was five, standing in the yard, watching a rubber ball bounce away from me as the other children chased after it. I stayed behind, knowing I wouldn’t catch it even if I tried. The moment stuck—not because of the ball, but because of the feeling. The quiet realization that some things would always be just out of reach.

The first time I found something, I was about nine, sitting at my desk, staring at a sheet of math problems. Numbers made sense in a way the world didn’t. I could rearrange them, solve them, feel certain that my answers were right. That certainty felt like power. The quiet realization that there were things I could do—not just attempt, but succeed at.

Life, I’ve learned, is a constant exchange between those two moments.

Losing, finding, losing again.

When I left Romania, I lost my home. Not just the place, but the sense of belonging that came with it. Finland was cold, not just the winter, but the unfamiliarity. For years, I carried a homesickness that wouldn’t quite fade. Then, slowly, it did. I built a life. I grew to love the silence, the stillness, the way the sun lingered past midnight in summer. Then I moved again. A second uprooting. But this time, I understood something I hadn’t before - home isn’t only geography. It’s something you carry with you. Romania is home. Finland is home. And now, Seattle, with its rain, is home too.

Writing was something I lost without realizing it. As a child, I filled notebooks with words convinced I would grow up to be a writer. But math made sense, and computer engineering became the practical choice. I told myself I would write alongside my career. Then life happened. Children were raised, responsibilities multiplied, and the stories I meant to write never left my head. The words shrank into grocery lists and meeting notes. Then, years later, I picked up a paintbrush. And somehow, something returned. Creativity in color.

What I’ve come to understand is that losing is not the end. It’s just the pause before rediscovery. Confidence fades and resurfaces. Dreams shift and return in new forms. Home is redefined. Passions go dormant and rekindle. Nothing is ever truly lost forever. But neither is anything kept forever. Life is a constant push and pull. The key is knowing that when something slips away, it can—and will—return, sometimes in ways we never expected.

Sometimes, the true art of following our dreams lies in knowing when to set them free

New Challenge for the New Year

I'm taking on a new challenge for the new year.  "A year of writing to uncover the authentic self" course.

I’ll allow myself not only to write but to be vulnerable and share with you, my writing journey.

Wish me luck 😊

The happy dance

 

“I looked at Antonia and I saw that she is beautiful,” my son said one quiet afternoon.

He was five years old. His sister, Antonia, had been born just a few weeks earlier.

In the months that followed, he became fiercely protective of her. He worried that the flies might hurt her while she slept outside. He scolded the neighbor kids when they were playing too loudly in the yard, afraid they’d wake her up. He grew visibly frustrated whenever she cried, irritated by my apparent inability to soothe her.

“Is she hungry, Mom? I think she’s hungry. Maybe she wants something better than milk? Can we please give her something else to eat?”

Honestly, it wasn’t a surprise. He had already started worrying about her when she was still inside me. One evening, while watching cartoons, he suddenly turned to me with a flash of inspiration:

“Mom, you should eat the TV! The baby is all alone in your belly and probably so bored! If you eat the TV, she could at least watch cartoons!”

And then came the turning point.

Antonia learned to stand. She would grab onto the furniture and bounce her little body up and down, making joyful sounds - her own version of dancing.

That summer day, Mihai was in his happy place: playing Crash Bandicoot on the PlayStation, entirely absorbed, lost to the world. Reality outside the game no longer existed.

Then Antonia crawled to the TV, pulled herself up, and started dancing, her wobbly body blocking the entire screen.

And just like that, the devoted big brother phase ended.

It would take another ten, maybe fifteen years before he looked at her again as the little sister who needed care and protection, rather than the loud, needy intruder constantly interfering with his very important business of being a boy.

Mom and the happiness lesson

I’m reading “The Antidote. Happiness for people that can’t stand positive thinking”. 

Thought of my mom while reading it. 

My mom has a very particular philosophy of life. In a nutshell, it comes to three main points. 

    Duty comes before anything else. 

    It’s better to expect less so you are not disappointed. 

    People are not to be trusted until they prove themselves to be trustworthy.

Today, she gave me a lesson in happiness, and it surprised me. 

-       I think I found the right book for you, mom! The one that describes your life philosophy, you might like to read it.  

-     Hmm, are you implying that I don’t support positive thinking? I don’t support self-delusions! I consider it idiotic; it means to look at a donkey and say, “what a beautiful horse”!

-    Well, I still think you will like the book. For example, the author is saying that the rush after happiness is what makes us unhappy.

-    Nobody can be continually happy, and nobody can be continually unhappy.  All the religions are talking about a balance, one that you find through love, sacrifice and acceptance. Psychology, psychiatry, they are slippery. There is no such thing as soul dissection. The same outside conditions can build very different characters – serial criminals and saints can both be born out of similar trauma. The oldest drug in the world, alcohol, cannot solve this problem either – some drunks are sad, others are funny, or boring, or annoying, or aggressive. They are all trying the same thing, to escape their feelings, but there is no universal recipe on how to manage your feelings. Books and art are also a form of escaping from an imperfect world. Beauty is born out of suffering, but ugliness also is born out of suffering. The survivors are not the ones analyzing their feelings, but the doers. Like you."

---

It took a lifetime, but maybe I am finally starting to understand my mother, as she is finally starting to understand me.

A little bit wet

It is March in Finland.

I’m at work, in a meeting. My ten-year-old son is calling. It’s after school, and he should be at home, alone, probably bored. Or hungry. I hesitate for a moment, then decide to step out of the meeting and take the call.

“Mom, I’m a little bit wet.”

“Why? What happened? What do you mean you're wet?”

“Well, I went to the lake on our bikes with the boys. And I got a little wet.”

The lake is frozen. Almost.
It’s been sunny the past few days, and the ice is starting to thin near the shore, but the temperature is still mostly below zero. I’m not worried. Not yet.

“How wet is a little bit wet? What exactly did you do?”

“Well... I went into the lake. Just a little. I’m kind of wet and cold. And I don’t know what to do.”

Antti, one of his best friends, is with him. Antti’s house is just a few minutes’ walk from the lake.

“Go to Antti’s house. I’ll call his mom. I’ll be there soon.”

---

When Antti’s mom opens the door half an hour later, the look in her eyes tells me everything.

Something is very wrong.
She says, “He’s okay. He’s okay. Don’t be scared.”

Then I see him, standing by the fireplace, no clothes, wrapped in a blanket. His hair is wet.
Not a little bit wet.
He is soaked.

He had walked across the lake. The ice broke beneath him, and he fell in fully submerged. The other boys, either brave or unaware of the danger, crawled to the hole and pulled him out.

The avalanche of emotions is impossible to describe:
Gratitude. Terror. Anger. Relief. Horror. Joy. And gratitude again.
I can’t speak.

He looks afraid, not because of what happened, but because of me.
Because of what I might say. How I might react.

I hug him. I kiss him.
“It’s okay,” I whisper. “You’re safe. That’s all that matters. Let’s go home.”

---

Later that night, after we’ve both had time to recover, I finally ask,
“Do you understand how dangerous this was? Haven’t we talked about frozen lakes?”

He looks straight at me and says,
“I’m sorry, Mom. But… can you please make me a list of everything in the world that’s dangerous?”

I want to.
I want to make that list. I want to hand it to him, laminate it, post it on the fridge and make sure he never goes near danger again. Ever.

But in that moment, I realize, horrified, that the idea we can protect the people we love, keep them safe at all times, is just something we tell ourselves. A comforting illusion.
The truth is: we don’t have control.

Lists aren’t the answer.

Angels are.

 Sanda / www.sandaberar.com

The distance of dreams

The distance between how I thought my life would be and how it came to be, I don't know to calculate it. 

I was born and lived my teenage years in communism. Money didn’t matter, friends did, and I believed it will always be the same. 

I am living across the ocean now in a country that made vows against communism. Money matter. Friends, I’ve lost plenty. 

I've dreamed of becoming a writer, of having just a little bit of talent for that. It turned out my mind was more tuned towards logic and math, rather than creativity. 

I became a software engineer and a teacher of algorithms. I am not teaching anymore. I can barely read a rudimentary code. But I paint. Creativity came later in life and in a very unexpected form. 

In my teens years I used to have a dream of myself living alone in a cozy little apartment downtown. Full of books, some paintings. I remember imagining how I would come back from work, dressed in a very elegant, usually black suit, high heels. Something similar to how a lawyer woman, partner at some big NY firm is dressed in Hollywood movies. 

I don’t think I have ever got to wear the elegant black suit with high heels at work. Jeans, t-shirt and sneakers have been my garderobe for work most of the days while working in software industry. I have enjoyed the comfort of it. 

There was no man and no kids in my teenage dreams. Only my cozy apartment in which I would relax in the evenings with a book and maybe a glass of martini. 

I have been married, twice, I've raised two kids and for many years I barely had any time to relax in the evenings, with or without the book. 

It has been a road with many unexpected turns, but I have finally got to my house, with all the books and the paintings. I am getting the itch of writing again. And it turns out, even in a world where money matter, friends matter even more. 

I am happy I didn’t choose the road I was planning to in my fantasy teenage world. I got the chance to learn how it feels to hold my babies, I got the chance to learn what complete love is. I got the chance to learn so much more than I have ever dreamed of. Sometimes following our dreams means limiting ourselves. 

Sanda / www.sandaberar.com

Sunrise in the forest

I always thought I am going to be a writer, if not now, at some point in my life. I never thought I am going to start painting. Life is full of surprises, they say. Some of the better ones come from inside us. 

When I'll get to be a writer, I thought, I am going to write about the light inside us and how we become alive. 

I started to paint, and my brushes want to tell the story of light in the forest and how the trees become alive.

Sanda / www.sandaberar.com 

 

The story of my life in clip stories

 

The 5s without breathing.

He is asleep in my arms. I know I should put him in his crib, but I so need to feel him close. It’s my son’s first night at home. I lean and lay him down in the crib and go to my bed. My eyes are closing when my son’s breath stops: one second, two seconds. I’m on my feet. Three seconds, four seconds. This panic is something I have never experienced before. Five seconds. He is breathing again. And in that very second I realize that I will forever worry for him. There is no going back.  

The airport

I am waiting for my luggage to arrive. The belt is moving slowly, empty. I like the airport’s buzz, hearing the people’s voices surrounding me, it’s lively. Then I notice something feels odd. There is no buzzing. I look around, all the people are still there. I do not understand what is happening, are they talking, and I can’t hear, am I having a stroke or something? And then I know. This is Finland, the country I am just moving in. Life with the sounds and all I knew before is gone. I’ll need to learn to listen to silence.

I want to be happy now

My five years old daughter, she is a stubborn little one.  “Why you are not buying us a dog now” She is at the kitchen table and looks particularly decisive tonight. “We have had this conversation; we are going to have a dog when you will be old enough to be responsible for him”. “I don’t want to live my whole life wishing for something to happen in the future. I want to be happy today.”  I gasp. She is going to be the one raising me, not the other way around. 

Jump

I am sitting on the beach terrace in Crete. Phone rings, it’s from work. I can barely hear; reception is so bad. I am considering saying ‘sorry, let’s talk soon when I am in Finland’.  Instead, I move away from the terrace. I hear now. The Finnish branch is closing. We are being shut down. I have been offered a job at the headquarters in US. Can I consider moving to US?  I have been dreading a moment like this forever. Something comes around and I feel too scared to take a risk. Yes, I said. I can consider that.