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Anastasia Sapukova

Contents

I stand against divorce!

Why do I stand for family, yet choose myself?

Anastasiya Sapukova

From the author

This book is an intimate journey through the clash between my deepest convictions and my yearning for an “ideal family”, and the life-altering choices that emerged from that collision. Within these pages, I reveal my most intimate experiences, my struggles, fears, lingering uncertainties, and the hard-won victories that followed. I share my story in the hope that it will encourage those enduring similar hardships to see that no matter how shattered life may feel, there is always a way to rise again.

This is not meant to encourage divorce, but to share openly why it matters to remain true to yourself and how, even after losing everything, you can find the strength to create a new beginning.

My heartfelt thanks to everyone who opens this book. I wrote these pages to remind you that you are never truly alone in your struggles and to show you that a full, authentic life is possible, as long as you have the courage to choose yourself.

Chapter 1. Manifesto: Why I stand for family, yet chose myself

I am the daughter of divorced parents. Four simple words, yet they carry the weight of pain, loneliness, and unfulfilled hopes.

Since childhood, I envied my classmates who had both a mom and a dad. I envied those whose family drawings always had two figures standing together, side by side. Who ran to their father after school, proudly waving their report card. Who whispered secrets into their mother’s ear while their father smiled behind the wheel.

I could only watch from the outside, I never had that.

I was like a fragile chick sheltered beneath the single wing of my mother, a woman who juggled two jobs and battled each day simply to keep us alive.

At dawn, she would rise at 5 a.m., braid my hair into tight plaits, and then vanish into the darkness, heading to the farm where the air reeked of milk and exhaustion. I would crawl back under the blankets, only to wake again in an empty house and get ready for school on my own. There were days I forgot my keys, days I forgot my backpack. And then there were days I wished I could forget myself.

I hold no blame for my mom.

She did everything in her power, hauling us through the storms of life, just as I now fight to pull myself through my own.

But a child’s emotions can never be hidden.

I promised myself: my children will have a different destiny. They will have a family, a whole one. A mother and a father. Love. Support. A childhood free from fear.

I’ve witnessed it with my own eyes.

I always had my godmother’s family as an example before my eyes. Ivan was strict but fair, and he worked to earn a living. Marina was busy in the kitchen, always greeting her husband with a smile. Two children were my cousins. They had everything I had dreamed of: a complete family, a sense of comfort, and holidays shared together.

All I had were tight braids in the morning, brief moments with my mother on rare weekends, and visits to her workplace, where I clung to every chance to be near her.

I carried a dream through my childhood. I promised myself that my children would have a different life. They would know a real family.

Yet, in the end, I was wrong.

Chapter 2: Childhood: a family broken, and a promise born

As a child, I was quite insecure.

I towered over most of my classmates, yet my height never brought me the confidence I longed for. They called me a rail, a lightning rod, and I hated my reflection in the mirror.

My teenage years left me overweight and riddled with insecurities. I never truly loved my body.

I held on to the belief that, when I grew up, I would fall in love with a man, and together we would create the family I had longed for all my childhood.

As time went on.

I wasn’t a popular girl in school or college. While I had relationships, none of them ever felt truly serious.

In every man I dated, I unconsciously searched for the fatherly love and support I had lacked as a child.

I dreamed of a family.

I always longed for a proper wedding.

A wedding with a veil, a white dress, and friends and family cheering “I love you!” as we left the registry office.

Simply dating never appealed to me. I matured quickly, and by 19, I already felt like an adult, something many people noticed.

I always dreamed of having a tall, handsome husband and two children.

Being an only child, I knew what loneliness was. I had no one to play with, no one to share secrets with. Even as a child, I promised myself: I will have two children.

The firstborn is always a boy, meant to protect his little sister, to be her anchor.

That is exactly what happened in my life.

By the time I turned 20, I thought I had it all figured out, how my family life would unfold.

Get married → have my first child → have my second child three years later → be a young mom.

Like my mom.

She gave birth to me at 20, and we’ve always been a bit like friends. She looked great, and every time she said, “This is my daughter,” people had a hard time believing it.

And that’s how I pictured my happy family life: a wedding, children, and a mortgage.

I didn’t understand the most important thing.

I didn’t know that marriage was only the beginning, that relationships demanded daily effort.

Being a wife isn’t just about dreaming, it’s also about confronting a reality no one ever prepared you for.

I didn’t know that.

And I had no role models to guide me.

Chapter 3: Dreams of marriage and the first steps in love

All I could do with my dream was wait for it to come true. Yet as the y