Natalia Shudruk is still learning to navigate her altered destiny on the one-year anniversary of . Ten months after from her war-ravaged homeland to safety in Oregon, Shudruk remains in limbo as she takes on a new set of relatives who’ve fled Ukraine, where her husband, Andriy Serezentynov, also was born. Two months ago, just as she gave birth to her second child, the Washington County woman went through the familiar, stressful process to obtain tourist visas for Serezentynov’s mother and grandmother, who were living without water, electricity and heat in Kyiv. The couple, who live in Cedar Mill, form one node of an informal network welcoming relatives from Ukraine in the past 12 months. More than 276,000 Ukrainians have fled the country and have entered the United States since Feb. 24, 2022, . It’s unclear how many have come to Oregon, but a spokesperson for Lutheran Community Services Northwest said that, in the past year, the nonprofit has helped resettled nearly 160 Ukrainians in the Portland-Vancouver area, where a sizable community already exists. More than 20,000 Oregonians report Ukrainian ancestry, . And Oregon ranks third among U. S. states for the highest percentage of its population who report speaking Ukrainian at home. Shudruk is one of many in the Ukrainian diaspora who have taken family members into their homes — and felt the effects of war thousands of miles from the battlefields. “It’s having an effect on the mental health of everybody who cares about it,” Shudruk said. “I feel like I have survivor’s guilt because so many people are suffering and dying in Ukraine, and I think subconsciously I’m not taking care of myself. ” Last spring, Shudruk took on the role of a caretaker for her older sister’s now 10-year-old son and 8-year-old daughter as their older siblings, mother and father remained in Ukraine. Shudruk’s sister, Tetiana Tsisaruk, didn’t want to leave Ukraine without her husband, who had to stay in the country by law because he could be called to fight. Tsisaruk’s two teenage children also refused to leave home, and her two eldest sons were deployed by the military, Shudruk said. Shudruk’s mother, nephew and niece arrived in Portland last April, without knowing when they would be able to return to their home village in western Ukraine. Amid the chaos, it was the logistics of the day-to-day that most occupied Shudruk and her husband. And on Mother’s Day last year, Shudruk found out she was pregnant with her second child. “It was so hard being pregnant and suddenly having to take care of three kids overnight,” Shudruk said. “I tried to take them places, so I’d take them hiking around the gorge, but it’d be too much for me because I was so nauseous all the time. ” On top of all that, Shudruk was also searching for a new job teaching English as a second language so that she could access health insurance. To help her nephew and niece adjust, Shudruk said she enrolled them in a summer camp for a month. She also took them ice skating at the Lloyd Center regularly. Still, she said, “the kids would cry everyday. ” Weighing their physical safety against their emotional wellbeing, Shudruk decided they needed to return to Ukraine to be with their mother. Four months after arriving in Portland on a tourist visa, Shudruk’s mother, nephew and niece left Oregon to be with the rest of their family in Ukraine. They returned to the village near the Belarusian and Polish borders that Shudruk also once called home. “They missed their mom so much,” Shudruk said. “I didn’t know what to do. I wanted them to stay. ” Shudruk said the decision to let her nephew and niece go was not easy. Although her family’s home in western Ukraine is “somewhat safe because there’s no shelling,” she said the threat of war is constant. “Where they are is ‘safe-ish’ because there is nowhere safe right now in Ukraine,” Shudruk said. But Shudruk said she feels a tinge of failure that her nephew and niece wanted to go back home right away. Twelve months into Russia’s war in Ukraine, there are no real signs of a way out of the conflict. Shudruk’s main concern now is making sure her husband’s mother and grandmother can stay in Oregon. They arrived in the U. S. late last year. But shortly after her mother-in-law’s arrival on Dec. 9, Shudruk learned that U. S. officials had canceled her six-month tourist visa. Shudruk said her husband’s mother had overstayed a tourist visa in 2014, when she previously fled Ukraine for Oregon after Russia invaded and annexed her city in Crimea. The move surprised the family because Shudruk’s mother-in-law had visited the U. S. on three subsequent occasions. “And she never had any issues when she came back,” she said. “But this time, they’re saying there’s a problem… So we’re doing everything we can to have her stay here. ” Shudruk said her husband’s mother and grandmother would have to leave in May if the family can’t figure out how to change their status. “We’re doing everything we can to change my mother-in-law’s status, but it’s been really hard,” she said. “I’ve spent so many hours on the phone, and we’re stressed because everything takes so long and we might run out of time. ” — Kristine de Leon,.