We wish you a wonderful weekend. Let it be more unexpected and friendly meetings and new opportunities, and let problems and worries disappear. Continuing our Good Friday tradition, we publish kind stories about how important love is in our lives. 

"My friend Rita is a medical examiner. She's 42. She has long, thin fingers and second dan in Aikido and also has no fair of death. Rita has a husband nine years younger. He's the lead architect for a very reputable construction firm and is very handsome, and bakes the most delicious cakes I've ever eaten. And he writes children's stories for his one-year-old twins. He puts them to bed when Rita's at work. And he gets them up at night because Rita's tired.

Another friend of mine, Olya, is a psychologist in the Ministry of Emergency Situations. She was in Beslan. Her first husband, a military surgeon, died 12 years ago. Last year she married a cameraman who had filmed a report on one of the rescue operations. At first, they were just friends, but then my friend had an accident, and he nursed her back to health for six months. He took time off work so he wouldn't have to go on business trips. He worked part-time shooting weddings. The friend, despite doctors' prognoses, got back on her feet. Olya's son calls him father. And he is proud that the boy went to the Olympiad in Physics in Stockholm. 

Masha is a professor of philosophy. She married a man with no higher education. But he builds her a house, cooks her dinners, adores her children and forbids noise in the house because Maria Anatolievna is preparing for lectures. Masha is obsessed with her scientific career and plans to leave for a year for an internship in China. The husband is obsessed with Masha. He does not know who Hegel is and hasn’t read existentialists. But he does know what size Masha's feet are and remembers to change the summer tyres to winter ones on her car. And Masha's husband also has a real business producing woodworking machines. He is not an oligarch but a millionaire.

When they start telling me what an ideal woman should be like, to be loved and called to marry, I laugh very loudly. Because it's not the perfect ones who are loved, it's the ones who fit, with all their cracks and dents. Every pot will find its lid.

 So don't be afraid to live the life you want and be who you want to be. That's all I wanted to say to you today. Hugs."

Elena Pasternak