Note to Self: Homeless Single Mum to Six-Figure Income

By Tatiana Sharposhnikova

In October 1993, a young Russian woman embarked on a new chapter in an unfamiliar land - England. Little did she know that this journey would forever alter the course of her life. In a candid and compelling narrative, she recounts her naive beginnings, her unexpected love story with an Englishman, and the s

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tatiana Sharposhnikova
• Release date: Sep 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9781739530709

Book preview

PROLOGUE

When I came to England in October 1993, I was no more than a very naïve, unsuspecting Russian girl. I had no experience of the West, less still of a down-at-heel English seaside town in Kent, my unlikely destination in the UK. Not only could I not have imagined coming to England a few years before, I had never wanted to. As a child, I lived a sheltered life, adored by my father, and was a goody-two-shoes at school, a pretty ordinary teenager with few worries. Luck was also on my side when I set up a small business in Moscow, a convenience shop, which brought me a steady income. Meeting an English man and moving to the UK was certainly not on my agenda. And yet, I met my husband, an English man, and quickly forgot that life before him ever existed. Everything about him fascinated me – he was, in my eyes, this perfect English gentleman, full of knowledge and stories and experiences that were from a world I knew nothing about, a world that was full of colour, excitement, and opportunities. Though my English was very limited, and his Russian was non-existent, somehow, we never stopped talking whenever we met. Sure enough, soon we were living together in a rented flat in the centre of Moscow.

From the start in Moscow and for the following years of our lives together in the UK, I accepted everything he said and did without question. I saw him as my best friend, my confidant, my husband, my everything, especially during my first years in the UK, when I was dealing with overwhelming feelings of homesickness and isolation living in the country I neither knew nor understood. Six years into our lives in the UK, I was now a wife and a mum to our five-year-old son. I was also a university student studying international law, the first to do so in my family.

For this reason, the shock of what was to happen was immeasurable. I did not expect it, and nor was I prepared for it. I suspected nothing and was completely blindsided, ambushed by what life had in store for me. One sunny afternoon at the end of August 2000, my husband went on a business trip to Eastern Europe for a week and just disappeared. Days were followed by weeks, with nothing, not a word, no information – he had vanished without a trace. A couple of months later, I would get the news about what had happened to him from a total stranger, but it provided little comfort. Overnight, my life changed forever. From a quiet, suburban family life, I was to become a homeless, single mum with no means to live. The next few years would become a challenge and the fight of my life – my battle for survival.

Mine is a story of betrayal and abandonment, dark loneliness, the physical and emotional struggles of a young woman fighting for survival in a foreign country, the never-ending guilt of a working single parent, years of poverty, personal grief and emotional trauma.

Mine is also a story of hope and finding the strength to carry on in the darkest moments when it feels like the world is on your shoulders and there is no one to tell you that it will be OK. Through adversities and despair, I have never lost faith because in my heart, I have always known that I could use the determination my parents instilled in me to survive and improve my lot, and I have known the compassion of a few people along the way.

Ultimately, it is not a country or government that makes the difference between success and despair. It is we who determine and decide what happens next in our lives. Though we may not be able to choose the actions of others, we have the power to define our responses to what happens to us in life and to the events by which we have no control. Moving to England from Russia was