About

My name is Milana Nelson. My friends and family also know me as Galya Petrichenko.

I was raised in Russia, in the Ural region. I remember the stinging cold winters and the short summers. The weather was not as lavish as in Florida or Hawaii, but as a child I was happy. I loved every season in Russia — the long winter sleigh rides, the snow, and walking through the ice towns during New Year celebrations.

I came to the United States to reconcile with my American family and to fulfill the blessing of my beloved grandmother.

I was not a writer at first. In America, I was a loving mother and wife to my now-missing husband. I met him in 1989, at the edge of great historical change, when Russia itself was heartbroken and splitting into many parts. In the middle of that uncertainty, I found love. I was seventeen, and he was thirty. We fell in love almost instantly, as young hearts sometimes do.

After many years of long-distance romance and longing for one another, we married on Christmas Eve, 2005. Our American Dream felt very close when, in 2010, we decided to move to Washington State. But that move became the beginning of the disaster that eventually shaped me into a writer.

First, he was gone — missing. Instead of the life I expected with my husband and children, there were strangers, confusion, fear, sickness, and danger. I was ill and could not fully understand what was happening. I believe I was harmed, poisoned, and nearly killed. I believe there were people seriously opposed to our family, and my children and I felt that hostility with every cell of our bodies.

Life became a nightmare. Stories about human trafficking, abuse, and family destruction — stories that once seemed almost unbelievable to me — became painfully close to my everyday reality. I was pushed out of my own home, left without safety, and separated from my children. Every time I tried to reach toward their cries, I faced more punishment instead of help. My children were placed with people who did not love me and did not protect our sacred right to remain connected as mother and children.

This is how I began to write.

I wrote not only to reach out, but also to preserve my intelligence, my identity, my sanity, and my nobility. The adversity tried to push me into a pit of horror, but I chose to rise as a witness for justice, peace, and love.

I kept learning. Little by little, wherever it was possible, I studied, read, wrote, translated, and worked to strengthen my mind. I did not have enough money for traditional education, and I did not have the stability of a home that would have allowed me to pursue scholarships or an ordinary academic path. Yet even in homelessness, hardship, and the misery of living overboard while everyone else seemed to be dancing on the ship, my writing was born.

Welcome to my website.

I am building it as my own small raft — a place of memory, writing, faith, and hope. I pray it will carry me toward the shore where I may one day meet my children again.

I hope they will come safely through their long journey back to me.

Soon.

Love shall find a way and guide them.