07/07/2026
Tigerlily: The Walls That Built Me
I was not raised by a mother or a father.
I was raised by walls.
Old walls. Cold walls. Blue-painted hallways that stretched farther than any child should have to walk alone. Their paint peeled with age, but they stood long enough to watch hundreds of children come and go. They watched us cry. They watched us grow. They watched us survive.
Those walls built me.
Before there was an orphanage, there was a little girl in Russia who knew hunger before she knew comfort.
There were days when food was scarce. Days when alcohol was easier to find than love. My parents fought battles I was too young to understand, and like so many children trapped inside addiction’s shadow, I learned early that adults didn’t always protect you.
Sometimes they couldn’t.
Sometimes they wouldn’t.
The memories blur together now—empty cupboards, cold rooms, uncertainty—but the feeling never leaves. It settles deep inside your bones. A child begins believing that tomorrow is never promised, and security becomes something other people have.
Eventually, those roads led me to the orphanage.
People hear the word orphanage and imagine sadness.
They’re right.
But they miss everything else.
Every morning, I walked those long hallways to breakfast.
At lunch, I walked them again.
Dinner came, and once more my feet followed the same worn floors.
Day after day.
Year after year.
Those hallways became my map of childhood.
I can still picture them.
The echo of shoes against the tile.
The smell of cooked soup drifting through the building.
The fluorescent lights buzzing overhead.
The sound of children laughing one minute and crying the next.
Those walls hold secrets no one else knows.
They remember the tears I hid because I didn’t want anyone to see me breaking.
They remember nights when I cried into my pillow, wondering if someone, somewhere, was thinking about me.
They remember birthdays that came and went.
Christmases.
Holidays.
The days when another child left with a family while the rest of us stood at the windows pretending it didn’t hurt.
Loneliness has a sound.
It echoes down long hallways.
Yet those same walls also hold something beautiful.
They remember the teachers.
Not every adult failed us.
Some became our mothers for eight hours a day.
Some smiled when we needed hope.
Some hugged children who had forgotten what affection felt like.
Some celebrated our victories as though we were their own.
I don’t remember every lesson they taught.
I remember how they made us feel.
Seen.
Safe.
Worth something.
Then there were the children.
The ones in these photographs.
We weren’t just roommates.
We were siblings by circumstance.
We shared clothes.
Shared stories.
Shared birthdays.
Shared grief.
When one child cried, another sat beside them.
When someone laughed, the room became lighter.
We built families out of strangers because none of us could wait for someone else to build one for us.
We invented traditions.
Inside jokes.
Dreams.
We learned to celebrate tiny victories because they were often all we had.
Those friendships kept us alive in ways no one outside those walls could fully understand.
Together, we established who we were.
Because no one else was going to do it for us.
The orphanage didn’t simply shelter children.
It forged survivors.
Looking back at these photographs, I don’t just see children.
I see resilience wearing oversized sweaters.
I see courage hiding behind shy smiles.
I see kids trying their hardest to look happy because sometimes smiling was an act of hope.
I recognize the little girl with the dark hair.
She had no idea where life would take her.
She didn’t know she would someday cross an ocean.
She didn’t know she would learn another language.
She didn’t know she would become a wife.
A mother.
A caregiver.
A photographer who freezes moments in time because she understands how quickly they disappear.
She didn’t know that one day she’d spend her life making other people feel seen because she remembered exactly what it felt like to feel invisible.
People often ask if I hate those years.
I don’t.
I grieve them.
There’s a difference.
I wish no child had to know that kind of loneliness.
I wish no child had to wonder where their next meal was coming from or whether anyone loved them.
But I also know this:
Those walls did not only imprison my childhood.
They shaped my character.
They taught me compassion before comfort.
Strength before security.
Empathy before ease.
I learned to recognize pain in other people because I had lived with my own.
When I meet someone who’s struggling, I don’t see weakness.
I see a story.
Because every hallway hides one.
Every scar has a beginning.
Every smile has survived something.
The orphanage gave me memories I would never choose for another child, but it also gave me something no one can take away.
It taught me how to survive.
It taught me how to love people who feel forgotten.
It taught me that family is sometimes created, not inherited.
And maybe that’s why I hold people so tightly now.
Maybe that’s why I feed everyone who comes into my home.
Maybe that’s why I clean, nurture, photograph, advocate, and try so hard to make others feel welcome.
I’m still that little girl walking those blue hallways.
The difference is this:
Today, when I walk through a doorway, I carry light with me.
The walls that raised me were built from concrete.
The life I’ve built since is made from something stronger—
Hope.
And every photograph from those years reminds me that even in the hardest places, children can still laugh, friendships can still bloom, and a little girl named Tigerlily could grow beyond the walls that once defined her without ever forgetting the people who walked those halls beside her.
