Ted Audio Collective

I'm Elise Hugh, you're listening to Ted Talk's Daily.

Today we'll hear the words of a daughter, who has been separated from her father.

Dasha Navalny as dad is no ordinary man, however.

Her father is jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

And as she proves in her 2023 talk from the Ted Women stage, she refuses to stay silent

about the corruption in the Russian regime.

Her powerful resistance work is coming up after the break.

This week on Sunday, Alexei Navalny, politician, opposition leader, and my father will have been in prison for a thousand days, almost three years.

I miss him every single day.

I'm scared that my father won't be able to come to my graduation ceremony or walk me down the aisle at my wedding.

But if being my father's daughter has taught me anything, it is to never succumb to fear and sadness.

And I've experienced both fear and sadness.

One of the most fearful moments of my short yet eventful life was on August 20th, 2020.

That day, I woke up in my childhood bedroom in Moscow.

Like many of us do first thing in the morning, I rolled over to the bedside table and reached for my phone.

I looked at the screen and was surprised at how many notifications I had.

Twitter, Instagram, Telegram, you name it.

My feeling of confusion started to slowly turn into a sense of worry.

Alexei Navalny had suddenly fell unconscious on the plane and was taking to the emergency room at the hospital.

I dropped to my feet.

Without blinking an eye, I jumped out of my bed and ran to my parents' bedroom to tell my mom that I was able to look after my younger brother's a heart while she was away.

...