Somehow this special day has come and gone and nobody seems to have called out Olena Gnes.
Olena started out as a YouTube video creator with her channel called "What is Ukraine." Her early videos are about things like a summer vacation at the Black Sea.
Now, everything is different. She is living in the basement of an apartment building in Kyiv with her 3 kids while Face-timing with Anderson Cooper on CNN and Laura Ingraham on FOX and the BBC and other networks too.
She is juggling young children, one is an infant, her husband has been pulled into the Ukrainian battle, she can barely scrape together food and yet, she has become a media-goddess in order to tell the world the story of Ukraine today.
She is literally uniting American citizens who have not agreed about anything since the dawn of the Trump political era.
Her bravery, her toughness, her motherhood, her communication skills in the English language, her absolute refusal to use sentimentality while articulating her situation, her grasp of the value that she is creating for her country, her empathy for those who have left the city while explaining why she must stay... just all of it.
Olena has inspired me in a very powerful way that is both practical and deeply emotional. This is probably going to end with the building getting blasted to the ground and she will just be gone. But, one way or another, Ukraine is going to win this war. I deeply believe that because of watching Olena.