The Life That's Chosen Me - From Russia With Love

Making personal sacrifices for your partner's career is one thing, creating a home in several countries while at the same time caring for a severely disabled child is another. We caught up with Rachelle Rosolofo-Czerwinski to talk about her new memoir, The Life That's Chosen Me - From Russia With Love.

 

TRANSCRIPT

 

The Life That’s Chosen Me – From Russia With Love

 

00:07

It's time again for DDA's Encouraging Abilities podcast. I am your host, DDA Communications Manager, Evan Kelly. Joining me today is Rochelle Rosa I'm hoping I'm saying that correctly. You do. That's a difficult one. Now Rochelle has an amazing story to tell, which she has brought to life in a new memoir called The Life That's Chosen Me From Russia With Love. It is available on Amazon and it's a very well written and fairly quick read if you're interested in picking it up.

 

00:37

travel writing, part diving into the culture and language of other countries, part learning to do that with a family of four where one child has a severe developmental disabilities. Rochelle was born in Madagascar, raised in France, and then married a German Canadian who worked high up with the United Nations, and it's a job that took her husband, Chris, to East and West Africa, Italy, China, Egypt, and then over to Russia.

 

01:02

To me it sounds like an amazing life, but of course there are hardships and difficulties along the way because it's not just about traveling freely, it's uprooting, it's making big changes, it's moving for a partner's profession, it's creating homes, even learning new languages, all with a child who needs extra care. Rochelle and her family, which includes her two sons Mike and Nicholas, now reside in Vancouver and we're of course happy to have them back here. So thank you for joining me today, Rochelle. Thank you, Ivan, for having me.

 

01:31

Now, it's clear you've led a very interesting life. Before we talk about disabilities, not everyone can do what you did. That's getting up and moving for a spouse whose job has changed, especially with an entire family. How difficult was that for you? To tell the truth, at the beginning, it was not. I just took it in stride, you know, and here I am, a new bride, and my job was to follow my husband.

 

01:58

I just thought when I came from Madagascar that we would settle in Canada. So little did I know that six months after settling down in Vancouver, my husband announced that we go into Africa. And from there, you know, after Africa it was Italy, and as you mentioned, then after Italy it was China, and then Egypt, and finally Russia. And I think in Russia I started feeling a little tired.

 

02:26

Globetrotting, I guess, as it were. Yeah. That must have been, like I said, it's not just traveling freely without kids when you're young or something like that. It's literally recreating home wherever you are. I mean, is that a difficult thing for you to do, or do you just take that on as a challenge?

 

02:47

I took that on as a challenge, but as time went by, it became more and more difficult. Like you're losing your friends and you have to look for new schools and create new homes. And of course, you know, with a child with special needs, and our son Nicholas had severe, significant special needs, it became harder to find therapies for him.

 

03:11

physiotherapies and speech therapies and this and that. So it's difficult enough if you stay in the same city like Vancouver, but imagine if you have to move country and not just country, but continent because actually change continent each time. Yeah. Well, exactly. And obviously there's some cultural things we can dive into as well, but you also mentioned that you've learned multiple languages. How many languages can you sp