On your day of independence, my beautiful Finland, my heart always returns to you.

It returns with pride, but also with tenderness. Because freedom is never just a word when you know what it cost. It is never only celebration when so much was endured for it. Your independence was paid for in courage, in sacrifice, in separation, in fear, and in the quiet endurance of ordinary people who carried far more than should ever have been asked of them.

On a day like this, I find myself thinking of my father.

He is an elderly man now, gentle and deeply loved, but when I look at him, I cannot help but think of the little boy he once was. His very first memory was the bombing of Helsinki when he was just four years old, at the beginning of the war. I cannot hear that without feeling something break inside me. A child’s first memory should be something soft, something safe, something held in the warmth of family. But his first memory was of war. Noise. Fear. Uncertainty. The world already shaken.

Later, he was sent away to school to live with his grandparents, on the opposite side of the country, so very far from his parents. Even writing those words, I can feel the ache of it. He was only a boy, and yet he had to live with that enormous separation, that distance, that uprooting from all that was familiar and dear. However loving his grandparents may have been, and loving they were, it was not home. He was far from his mother and father, far from the comfort of their nearness, far from the life that should have been his. There is something unbearably sad in imagining a child carrying that kind of longing.

And then my thoughts turn to my grandfathers, who stood to defend the land they loved.

How do you ever fully measure what that generation gave? Their courage was not loud. It was steady, stubborn, and unyielding. They did what had to be done because love of country, love of family, and love of freedom demanded it of them. But war leaves its mark, even on the strong. Some wounds were visible, but others were carried in silence. In the stories told only in fragments. In the heaviness that lingered. In all that was never fully spoken, yet somehow still passed down.

That is why this day reaches so deeply into me.

Because when I think of Finland’s independence, I do not think only of history. I think of people. I think of fathers and grandfathers. I think of childhoods interrupted. I think of families pulled apart by circumstances beyond their control. I think of fear arriving far too early, and of children learning too soon that the world was not always safe.

And yet, through all of that, Finland remains so achingly beautiful.

Your forests. Your lakes. Your silence. Your strength. There is a beauty in you that feels almost sacred to me, because it was not untouched by suffering. It was deepened by it. Yours is the beauty of resilience. Of endurance. Of a people who bent but did not break. Of a nation held together by fierce love and quiet courage.

Perhaps that is why my love for you feels the way it does. You are not only the land of my birth. You are part of my inheritance. Part of my family story. Part of what lives in my heart no matter where I am in the world. You are there in memory, in longing, in sorrow, in pride, and in love.

So on this day, I honour you.

I honour my father, and the little four-year-old boy whose first memory was war.
I honour the child who was sent so far away from his parents, carrying a longing no child should have to carry.
I honour my grandfathers, who stood their ground and gave what was needed.
And I honour the generation who endured so much so that Finland could remain free.

My beautiful Finland, your independence was never won cheaply.
It lives in the sorrow of separation.
It lives in the bravery of those who defended you.
It lives in the memories carried by those who were only children when war reached into their lives.

And perhaps that is why this day always moves me so deeply.
Because it is not only the story of a nation.
It is the story of my family too.

It is the story of a little boy in Helsinki, only four years old, whose first memory was the sound of bombs.
It is the story of that same boy being sent across the country, far from his parents, carrying fear and longing in his small heart.
It is the story of men who fought, families who endured, and a homeland loved enough to be defended at great cost.

And when I think of all that, my beautiful Finland, I feel both the sorrow and the pride rising together.

You were paid for dearly.
You were loved fiercely.
And you will forever remain in my heart.