“What’s the first thing you remember?”
That’s the question Pippa Seichrist asked her newly adopted 13-year-old son from Ukraine in the memoir My Life Before. She wondered if the boy would understand her question – or speak enough English to answer.
The boy’s response was so remarkable she wrote it down. The memory he shared was, at the same time, naive, worldly, and shocking.
Pippa, who lives full-time on the Plateau with her husband Ron, would go on to capture that memory – and many others – in a book that documents their family’s extraordinary journey.
Together, the Seichrists restored Satolah Creek Farm, an early 20th-century homestead along Highway 28, south of Highlands.
Over the years, they’ve transformed it into a community gathering place and working farm, offering seasonal events, wedding celebrations, and stays for those looking to unplug and reconnect.
Co-authored by Pippa and her son Andry, My Life Before tells the story of how a mother and son – separated by language, culture, and thirteen years of very different life experiences – built a family through listening, trust, and deliberate love.
The memoir is told in alternating perspectives: his memories, revealing and unsentimental, paired with her reflections on what it means to parent a child shaped by a past she didn’t witness but chose to honor.
The book’s beginning is as compelling as its content. When Andry responded to that first question with an account that ended with the devastating observation: “In Ukraine, there is no hope—and that’s why everyone drinks,”
Pippa, moved by his storytelling, began transcribing his memories. What started as simple conversations grew into award-winning stories, and ultimately – after 17 years of recording and listening – this powerful memoir.
Andry and Pippa Seichrist
But the family’s journey started even earlier when Pippa and her husband Ron decided to adopt. They brought home six-year-old Olya from Ukraine. When she learned English, she told them she had two brothers. Within six months they found Dima, who had been adopted by a family in Spain. It took five years to find and adopt her oldest brother, Andry, who was living in an orphanage in Bucha, a different part of Ukraine.
As Pippa describes it, the book is about curiosity – the fierce, determined questioning of a parent asking: Who is my child? What is important to him? What shaped him? And how do I become the best parent I can to this remarkable boy?
What unfolded was the story of a child who had endured so much, yet retained a striking perspective, deep storytelling instincts, and a guarded but generous spirit. Through listening, he grew to trust her – and together, they all became a family.
Andry’s recollections of his childhood in post-Soviet Ukraine are candid and textured. He describes roaming the countryside freely, surviving on instinct in a village where the collapse of the collective farm brought poverty, alcoholism, and instability. Yet he insists his childhood wasn’t bleak – it was simply unstructured, with moments of joy and kindness mixed in.
“There were great parts of my childhood,” he says. “But also hunger and no supervision.”
Bringing him home was only the beginning. At first, Andry called them “Olya’s mom” and “Olya’s dad.” When Pippa gently suggested he could call them Mom and Dad, he replied, “How can you be my mom? You just met me.” Her response:
“Because I decided to be.” He looked at her, smiled sideways, and said, “Okay, Mom.”
Now grown, Andry owns Grass Stone Wood, a thriving landscaping company serving clients across the Highlands-Cashiers Plateau. His work, like his story, is rooted in observation, patience, and care.
With war casting its shadow across Ukraine again, My Life Before resonates even more deeply.
Some of Andry’s friends have lost their lives defending their country; others are still fighting.
Now Andry helps his former orphanage friends who remain in Ukraine – purchasing military equipment for those fighting and supporting families affected by the war – because, as he simply puts it, “I help them because I can.”
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