Valuable lesson from my father

My father died alone at the Lahti City hospital in Finland one night in 2009. He had been at the hospital for a couple of weeks due to pneumonia. His body had already been moved to the “Chapel”, when I arrived from Denmark to the hospital ward where he had stayed. I asked a Russian …

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Under the rainbow

My daughter’s father fell in love with a man 20 years younger than he. I sighed of relief, even though I was annoyed. That explains so much, I thought. I had asked him to move away from me and the children a year earlier because I felt like I was choking. We had been arguing …

Time to meet after 40 years

Yesterday I travelled to Jyväskylä, a 3-4 hours drive from Helsinki in Finland. Originally my plan was to run a 2-day storytelling workshop for immigrants and asylum-seekers at the multicultural center, Gloria.  However, the timing was not right, and the workshop did not take place. Instead I had a chance to get an insight into …

Suomi means Finland in Finnish

In my mother tongue, Finnish, we give other countries Finnish names. France is Ranska, Deutschland (Germany) is Saksa, Россия (Russia) is Venäjä and the United States is Yhdysvallat. People in many other countries call my original country Finland, even though we in Finland call it Suomi. Nobody knows for sure why. Suomi-Finland celebrates 100 years …