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To be honest I’ve been hesitant in writing anything about the ongoing heartbreak in the Ukraine. Each new day seems to bring more and more harrowing news and images. But like all of us their plight has been on my mind heart, and lips in prayer daily. I, like many of you, read and wept about the senseless bombing of the maternity hospital in the southeastern city of Mariupol last week.

I’ve been hesitant not because I didn’t want to or because we all know how the ‘thoughts and prayers’ euphemism has become just that – but because I am simply without words. How do you even voice such sadness and astonishment at the raw and stark images and stories taking place right now, as we speak, near us, not worlds away. You can’t. Or at least I can’t.

I prayed last night with my 11-year-old daughter for the people of Ukraine. I cannot even fathom being a mother right now over there with my babies. I could not even finish the prayer, I was overcome. But my daughter did, she hugged me and said amen for us.

I attached a few of the images I have seen recently – primarily of mothers and their babies. Because Next Step is a place of mother and babies too. And there is absolutely nothing more beautiful and at the same time more fragile than mothers and babies