A place a woman can come to and say: “I don’t know what to do.”

I was born in Russia. At 15, I moved to Israel without my parents. I served in the Israeli army, where I rose to the officer rank of captain. There I worked with wounded soldiers and with the families of the fallen. Today I am a women’s psychologist and a mother of two, but above all — a woman who herself has not always known how to cope with her own life.

My second immigration, this time to the United States, was very hard for me. My life has included divorce, the loss of people close to me, and perhaps the hardest thing of all — a period when I lost myself. I know that feeling very well: being desperately lonely even when there are people around. You seem to keep living, doing things, caring for someone, but inside you no longer understand who you are now, what you want, or where to go next. There were moments in my life when I truly had to put myself back together piece by piece.

And that is probably why I believe so deeply in women’s strength. I believe that we do not need to be fixed. Even when it seems to you that something is wrong with you — you are okay. Sometimes the circumstances we find ourselves in make us lose our footing, start doubting ourselves and stop understanding how to live on. But that footing never disappears. It is still inside you. Sometimes you just need someone next to you to lean on until you feel it again yourself.

That is exactly the kind of place I want SHE CLUB to be. A place where a woman can be next to another woman — without having to become strong first. Woman to woman — a home.

I was born in Russia and now live in Florida. I am a tax professional and accountant, a mother, and a woman who once also started her life in America almost from scratch. A new country, a family, children and a completely different life, in which much of what used to feel familiar and obvious has to be learned all over again.

I know very well what it is like not to fully understand what comes next. When you have no ready plan and no certainty that everything will work out — only today, and the next step that must be taken anyway. That is exactly how we built our own path here. In some places I made mistakes, in others I was afraid, sometimes I had to figure everything out on my own. And I did not always know where it would all lead in the end.

That is probably why I feel so close to women who are also starting over right now — after immigration, after changes in life, or simply at the moment when the old no longer works and what the new will look like is not yet clear.

Today I am one of the people behind SHE CLUB Foundation. And for me this is not only about the foundation. It is about the chance to be next to another woman at the moment when she is afraid to take the first step, or simply does not know where to begin. Because I truly believe: we do not have to know the whole path in advance. Sometimes taking the first step is enough. And sometimes, for that, you simply need someone beside you.

I was born in Russia and now live in Alabama, on the Gulf Coast. I am a paralegal, I study in law school, and I am a mother — a woman who at one point had to start her life practically from zero. My life has included abuse and divorce. I was left without money, with a one-year-old son in my arms, with absolutely no understanding of how I would live on.

I remember that state very well — when you are scared not figuratively, but completely and truly. When you are responsible not only for yourself: there is a small child beside you, and you have neither financial ground under your feet nor any understanding of what tomorrow will bring. I went through poverty, started over, worked, made mistakes, studied and gradually built the life I have today.

I don’t much like listing my achievements. What matters to me far more is to say to a woman who is at a similar point right now: I know how scary it can be for you. Once, people like me could be called “a lonely divorcée with baggage.” Today I own several companies, I study in law school and I keep building my life further. Not because I am someone special. And certainly not because everything came easily to me. Simply because the point where you are today is not yet your whole life.

That is probably why SHE CLUB Foundation, for me, is a chance to be next to a woman exactly when she cannot yet see where to go next. If my experience, my knowledge or simply my presence can help someone walk even part of this path a little more easily — then none of it was in vain.