Clirium’s Magazine · Issue 02 · 01.2026 · Member Story
Varvara Shevchenko: “So Who Am I, Really?”
Artist Varvara Shevchenko on eighteen months in the world of esoteric practices that changed nothing — and the three summer months that changed almost everything
Featured: Varvara Shevchenko — Artist · Poet · CLIRIUM® ME member. Published: . Reading time: 10 min. Story and interview by Victory Naydenova.
Topics: Member Story, Creativity & Fulfillment, Leaving Esotericism
For a year and a half, Varvara believed she had found her life’s purpose in esoteric spirituality — tarot, energy work, and the like. Meanwhile, the painting she had done her whole life, she kept calling a hobby.
Thirty-eight years old, two kids, her fifth year in England, working as a teaching assistant. At the end of June, when she came to Clirium, she had — in her own words — no money and no idea who she was or where she was going.
I’ve seen this substitution many times: a woman takes courses, does practice after practice, searches for herself, works herself to exhaustion — and never takes a single step toward what she truly loves. From the outside, it looks like progress. From the inside, too.
By September, an online gallery had accepted her work, she had put together her first-ever artist portfolio, and she had submitted an application to London’s Saatchi Gallery.
But the most important thing happened earlier. For the first time, she allowed herself to say: I am an artist.
Victory Naydenova · Founder of CLIRIUM® ME
As told to the editors of Clirium’s Magazine
Her Story · In Her Own Words
Varvara Shevchenko
More Than Art
Artist · Poet · CLIRIUM® ME member
For a long time, Varvara Shevchenko was someone who genuinely did a lot. She studied, searched, worked on herself, tried different directions, made videos, held a job, raised her kids, wrote poetry, and every so often went back to painting. From the outside, it could look like constant motion. But one day she had to admit it: the effort was enormous, and the life she wanted was getting no closer. That admission is where this story begins — a story in which inner change started turning into concrete decisions, actions, and results.
When You Work Hard on Yourself and Your Life Stays the Same
In the eighteen months before she joined CLIRIUM, Varvara was searching intensely. She did esoteric practices, meditated, took courses, worked with tarot and energy practices, and tried to make sense of herself and her love life. At the same time, she was trying to attract clients, shooting videos, and promoting herself. This was not inaction. Quite the opposite — there was so much activity that it was easy to mistake being busy for moving forward.
Gradually a question emerged that no new practice could make go away: What has actually changed? Her finances were the same. Her job still wasn’t the work she wanted to do. The changes she had been waiting for in her personal life hadn’t happened. And most of all, the inner sense of emptiness hadn’t gone anywhere.
It felt like I was on the right path, living my purpose, but basically nothing was changing. It was an illusion of success.
By the end of June, her old way of explaining things stopped working. Varvara talks about it without dressing it up: her sense of who she was, where she was going, and what she was even supposed to do next fell apart. At 38, she had to admit she was lost and didn’t know how to break out of the recurring cycle of never having money, loneliness, and endless searching.
You Can Do a Lot — and Still Do the Wrong Things
Varvara didn’t come to CLIRIUM® ME for inspiration or for a new version of her “purpose.” By then, one more beautiful idea about herself wasn’t enough. She needed a way to see why, despite so much effort, the results stayed the same.
I realized I was doing a lot, but I was doing all the wrong things. Things that didn’t take me to another level and, in the end, didn’t change my life.
That became her key insight. The problem wasn’t laziness or a lack of desire. You can analyze yourself endlessly, do practices, search for answers, stay busy from morning to night — and still keep making the same decisions, living the same patterns, and getting the same results.
For Varvara, the point of the work in CLIRIUM® ME turned out not to be adding even more activity to her life. Instead, she began to separate the actions that create a feeling of busyness from the actions that actually change things. Her habitual patterns gradually came into view: choosing the hard way, carrying everything herself, not asking for help, putting off what she really wanted, and ending up right back where she started.
The endless question “What else do I need to work on?” gave way to a different one: “What can I do differently?”
The Painting She Finally Decided to Take Seriously
Painting didn’t enter Varvara’s life in the summer of 2026. It had been there much longer. What was new was how she treated it. Something she could have left in the hobby category for years, Varvara decided — for the first time — to test as a real professional path.
She started with a large painting. Along the way came the idea for a second. Then came the decision to make these works the foundation of a portfolio. Varvara finished both paintings, prepared an artist’s CV, articulated her own artistic concept, and started submitting applications.
One of her first applications, to an online gallery, was accepted. A second gallery turned her work down. But the rejection no longer served as proof that “this just isn’t for me.” Varvara sent out the next application, and then another. She submitted work to an exhibition in London, started listing on professional platforms, and began looking for collaborations, including with interior designers.
For me it was a huge step just to put together a portfolio, because I’d never had one, and to write an artist’s CV. To actually develop my concept as an artist — my direction, my philosophy.
This is where you can see exactly what changed. CLIRIUM® ME didn’t “make” Varvara an artist. She already had the ability to paint. She had the poems. She had the ideas. She had the potential. What changed was something else: what had existed only inside her began turning into actions with visible, external results.
When a Talent Takes Shape
Along with painting, another part of her life came back: poetry. Varvara had been writing poems for a long time, but they stayed in her notebooks, resurfacing now and then. Now she is gathering them into a project of their own.
The two large paintings she made over the summer unexpectedly connected with her poetry: Varvara wrote a poem for each one. She began collecting older pieces, translating them into English, and planning a bilingual collection where painting and words live side by side.
It was very deep, even intimate. Because it’s all about me, too. It’s like announcing to the world: I went through this.
Today she still works as a teaching assistant at a school. Her free time goes to painting, her portfolio, applications, social media, finding platforms, and working on her book. This story doesn’t have a tidy ending yet, where a single decision makes everything instantly perfect. And that is exactly why it rings true.
The Changes Went Beyond the Canvas
Meanwhile, things that seemed to have nothing to do with art began to shift. Varvara is learning to accept compliments without her usual habit of brushing them off. When she needs help, she tries to ask for it — and for someone who spent years living by the rule “I’ll do it all myself,” that turned out to be work in its own right.
She started delegating some of the household chores, setting boundaries with her kids differently, and looking more closely at her relationships. When Varvara joined CLIRIUM® ME, she was seeing a man. Reading the case discussions in the women’s group chat and comparing them with her own life, she saw what she had previously excused or failed to notice. Within a week, she ended that relationship.
Today her standard is simpler: when a man shows from the very start that he isn’t willing to make time for her, invest in her, and build a relationship, she no longer tries to earn better treatment.
I realized that the priority in my life is me. And my future.
Varvara describes even the financial changes without any mysticism. In August she was offered extra work. She took it, earned the money, and was able to cover the loan payments she needed to make. A modest event, but the logic is precise: an opportunity appeared, she acted, and there was a concrete result.
Not Motivation, but a Reality Check
Varvara makes a point of saying that what she values in CLIRIUM® ME is the absence of endless reassurance. What mattered to her was not hearing one more “You’re doing great,” but seeing her own illusions and the ways she had kept her old life in place for years.
She works through the modules, listens to the podcasts, uses the hypno-clearing audio sessions, and reads the case discussions in the private women’s community. Not every piece leads immediately to an outward event. But little by little, a different decision-making system takes shape: notice the fact, check your conclusions, see your own role in what’s happening, and choose an action that can produce a new result.
It’s not the kind of thing where people tell you how great you are and nothing changes in your head or in your life. It’s about hearing the truth about yourself, taking off the masks we’ve worn all our lives, and breaking down your illusions.
Two Paintings as Proof to Herself
When Varvara is asked whether there has already been a moment when she looked at a result and thought, “I really did this,” she talks about the two large paintings.
For her, they became tangible proof of a new relationship with herself. She didn’t wait for someone to officially give her permission to call herself an artist. First she painted the works. Then she put together a portfolio. She sent it out. She got her first acceptance. She got a rejection. She sent it out again.
That’s how her sense of her own “ceiling” is changing, too. Varvara wants to travel, to give her kids more opportunities than she had, to grow as an artist, and to see how far she can go if she keeps doing what she used to put off.
I understand that the ceiling is only in my head. And everything will depend on my actions.
More Than Art
That’s why Varvara Shevchenko’s story isn’t just about a woman who decided to paint. It’s about how many years you can spend being very busy with your own transformation without actually changing your life.
In her story, CLIRIUM® ME wasn’t a place that offered her one more beautiful version of herself. It was a space where she had to look at the connection between her choices and her results. Not everything Varvara wants has happened yet. The paintings are just beginning their journey to buyers. Decisions on her new applications are up to the galleries. The book is a work in progress. Her professional career as an artist is only taking shape.
But a few months ago, none of this existed even as a coherent plan. There were talents, dreams, poems, paintings, and a feeling that life somehow just wasn’t coming together. Now there is a portfolio, applications, galleries, new work, a book on the way — and, perhaps most important, the understanding that inner change means something when it becomes action.
If Varvara tells a woman in a similar place today, “Don’t give up, and believe in yourself,” those words are backed by more than hope. Behind them are two large paintings, several submitted applications, a first rejection, a first acceptance — and the next step.
Timeline: April–September 2026
- April — Receives an invitation to join Clirium and replies, “Thank you, I’ll think about it.”
- Late June — A year and a half in esoteric practices has brought no change in her income, her work, or her personal life. She joins Clirium.
- First week — Ends the relationship she was in when she joined.
- July–August — Paints two large works and writes a poem for each. For the first time, puts together an artist’s portfolio, writes a CV, and articulates her concept and philosophy.
- August — Takes on extra work; covers that month’s loan payments.
- Summer — An online gallery accepts her work; the approval email lands in her promotions folder. The first painting is being prepared for listing, with three works planned: a rhino, a leopard, and an elephant. A second gallery says no.
- September — Applies to a third gallery and to an online art marketplace.
- September — Submits the first exhibition application of her life — to London’s Saatchi Gallery.
- In progress — A bilingual poetry collection.
An artist living and working in the United Kingdom. In the summer of 2026, she created two large-format works that bring painting together with her own poetry. She is building a professional portfolio, presenting her work on international art platforms, and preparing a bilingual poetry collection.
Previous issue: No. 1 · Victory Naydenova Next issue: No. 3 · Nadezhda Gavrilina
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