When your country is invaded, how do you keep your family’s spirits up? In besieged Kharkiv, Ukraine, Natalie Slyusar focused on trying to give her son a regular 16th birthday – complete with a homemade chocolate cake. But baking’s a lot easier said than done while a war rages around you.

This beguilingly simple story reveals a lot about how we get ourselves and our loved ones through the hardest parts of life. Natalie recounts what it’s like for a family to cope with an invasion.

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