Yes, Svet is originally from Russia.
We met when my dog Layla died in 2015 and I had rainbow hair.
A man who we had known online had invited a few of us together for happy hour to get me out of the house for what may had been the first time since losing my girl.
Her being a sweet and shy accountant (though with a secret wild streak), others often tease about how opposite we are and show confusion about how we could be friends. Among other similarities and bonds they couldn’t see was that we had lost one of the women in our small and close group of friends when she jumped off the Golden Gate bridge in 2017. She had been the heart and one who pulled us all together yet Svetlana and I had managed to find a way to continue it on after she was gone. It was actually when we finally got close

Brigit and Aaron are two of the first people I met my first time at Burning Man. Brigit is a nanny and semi mountain hippie with a love of the wilderness and great ability to throw a fantastic wvent while Aaron is a sweet and quirky NASA engineer who grumbles but is happy to get pulled into the burner and hippie ways.
They are OGs of my burner family and, despite our 18 year age Gap, some of the first people who I ever felt I could relate to in many of my outside of the box ways.
They host me to live with them sometimes in the redwoods of the Santa Cruz mountains. I love them and they help me to not feel alone in ways that I had for most of my life.

JerseyJ was a nurse practitioner who had the full-blown Jersey Italian thing going and I loved it. She was loyal, loving, generous and nurturing in a way that was special and hard to find.
We knew each other through the boating world. Something I was a part of because of the boat I lived on and and because her ex-boyfriend owned one.
We were close for a time but her social, dating and partying choices (and the way they effected my own) became too much of a problem. As did her burning the relationship with my roommate and the repetitive lecturing and essentially telling me that my problems were BS and that she wasn’t going to deal with them after all she went through at work. Understandable to a certain level but she had put me through the ringer not so long before that with the things she had me do when losing it during her recent breakup with the boat dude. I guess you could say that I was her rebound.
I played more than my part as well. Of course. Relationships and being a pain in the ass are never one-sided. Especially when being a strong woman who likes other strong women.

Kate and Nik are two of three sisters I’ve known since high school and are the two closest people I’ve ever had in my life and the most support I’ve ever had.
I started hanging with Kati when one of my high school besties introduced us and the three of us would hang. We got close when I would later visit her at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical School in Arizona. She was a pilot at Skywest and is currently a stay at home mom to two little girls with new aeronautical endeavors in the works.
Nik was a year younger and my sister knew her better than I. She dated a guy I hung out with a lot and we became close when both moving to San Diego around the same time in 2000. Her to become an animal trainer at Sea World, which she did. A senior dolphin trainer. She is now a stay at home mom to two little boys.

They have a younger sister Debbie (AKA) Doozer who is a doctor and lives in a different state. Dooz is more of her own person, which I love her for, and someone I also consider a part of my family.

These women are some of the best people I have ever known and probably the most important people I’ve ever had in my life. I’ve thought of them as angels, at least my Angela, for the close to two decades we’ve become close enough to consider each other family.

Wendy is my sister. We are 18 months apart and fought like cats and dogs until somewhere on our mid to late thirties.
While I am the oldest, others almost always think she is. Where I am the bohemian free spirit and hot mess of the family, she is mainstream and had taken over as the head of our family.
I’m 5’10”, she’s 5’8″. I’m a blond and she has curly red hair. Our brother is brunette. An oddly common combo in our family.
While our brother Sean and I both moved to San Diego in 99/00, the rest of our family came in 2017 when our mother, Theresa, retired as a pedi-ICU nurse at Stanford.