I'm back

It’s not easy to come back here after such a long pause. So while I’m thinking about how to do it better, I’ll just start.

2026 started fast: I was full of plans and had already begun working on them, when one unexpected phone call threw me completely off track. At the end of January, my dad passed away. I was hit by a kind of pain I had never experienced before.

I immediately bought tickets back home, to Bashkortostan, and within a day and a half I put everything on hold — both ongoing and newly started processes, paused the shop and closed all financial matters. I knew I hadn’t been to my parents’ home for far too long (7 years), so I couldn’t just come for a weekend, especially with the journey taking almost a full day. So 5 weeks felt like enough time to go through the acute grief with my family and take care of everything that needed to be done there.

My wife stayed in Hamburg with our cat, and I should say that all of this affected her as well, and I don’t know how I would have managed without her daily support.

Feb 2026. Me, with Mount Toratau and a close friend behind the camera, whose support also means a lot to me

If you have ever emigrated to a completely different country and stayed away from your original environment for several years, you probably know how difficult it can be to return. Especially when something happens that many people living far from their families quietly fear — the loss of someone close.

I arrived on dad's birthday — he had passed away 3 days before turning 67. Being there and dealing with everything related to him, it was incredibly hard to hold in my mind that I have a life of my own on the other side of the world, with work I love and my own family. It suddenly became difficult to think about myself at all; against the background of death, everything felt unimportant. But every day, in conversations with my mom and my brother, we kept repeating the same thing: life has to be lived, life is stronger. We cannot “die” along with those we lose. And little by little, these words began to feel real, something we could live by.

Mom and dad in Georgia where we met last May

It has been a month since I returned to Hamburg. While I was with my family, it was somehow easier to move through the loss. In the first week after coming back to Germany, I felt a kind of detachment, as if I had once again become both physically and emotionally distant from what had happened. But all this time I can literally feel grief at work: uneven, sometimes unexpected, shifting from pain and longing to a strange, almost inappropriate sense of joy for life and a heightened vitality in the broadest sense. I'm still returning to my work, slowly and with effort, because a lot inside me has changed over those 5 weeks. I can see what is falling away, what is no longer needed, while the things I’ve been waiting for seem to come too slowly.

Feb 2026. Mom picks ripe Meyer lemons from the tree dad grew in my brother and I's room for over 20 years

The only foundation that remains, thankfully, is that I continue to create and want to create. For example, I would like to strengthen my basic skills in animation and I’ve started learning scriptwriting. As for embroidery: at the beginning of winter, I made a plan to approach shops in Hamburg and across northern Germany, where I wanted to place my embroidered pieces for sale, and in some places sell them myself — I was ready to move into offline, and there were already first agreements. But now I’m no longer sure that this is my path.

And while I’m listening to myself and moving through the intensity of everything that is happening, I want to remind you that my online shop is open. If you would like to support me, this is a good time. You can buy hand embroidery there — each piece is one of a kind, made by me, with meaning and care. You can choose a ready piece or also commission embroidery or animation for your project.

If you have questions or suggestions, feel free to reach out through the contact form here — I’ll gladly respond as soon as I can. Thank you in advance.

P.S. On my parents’ computer, I came across my dad’s CV. He had been retired, but the CV was still there. At the very end there was a line: Attitude to work — “Fear in the eyes, action in the hands.” There’s no exact equivalent proverb in English, but it’s something like: feel the fear, but do it anyway. And that’s how I live my life too.