Hello, my name is Nastiya and I am the daughter of a “Russian mail order bride.”
Maybe you have some ideas about Russian mail order brides. Well, I would like to tell you a little about me and my mother so you can understand what our life has been like since my mother met her true love online.
Sometimes life can change in one moment. You’re not expecting it, you’re just living your normal life. You are in one world, and then suddenly you are thrown sharply into another that is unfamiliar to you.
That is exactly what happened to me when my mother became a “Russian mail order bride.”
(Though I must tell you I really hate that term! My mother was not sent through the mail like a package. And it’s not like she had no control over who she married or what country she was sent to! Through a Russian dating agency she met the man of her dreams, and I think she was very lucky to do so.)
Okay, so back to my story. Before my mother, Yuliya, became a “Russian mail order bride,” she and I lived in Belarus, in the city of Grodno. But then she joined a Russian dating agency and met Alain. Now she and I live in Canada with our new family: Alain, her husband, and his son Charles.
When Mum was preparing my travel documents, I still did not fully realize what was about to happen. When my mother became a “Russian mail order bride,” I knew that if she met someone from a different country and wanted to move there that it would bring a lot of changes to our life. But these changes were not as terrible as I thought.
Oops, mom is calling me to dinner so I have to go now. But I will write more tomorrow about what it is like to be the daughter of a “Russian mail order bride!”
