Month: June 2023

Ciao amore mio

I am writing from our couch in Singapore, in a house that is almost empty….well definitely messy, a few days before taking you back to Italy to live. I will come back by myself on July 10th to pack the last bit of our belongings and put 21 years of my adult life in one container and come back to you. Come back to you…to our new home…to your brand brand new home but that is my old home.

I left home when I was 19, in 1997. I decided a few years before then, that I wanted to study Chinese language and culture and at that time the only place close to my home, that taught Chinese was Venice “Ca’ Foscari”. As a matter of fact, that was a great university for Oriental studies, I dare say the best in Italy. So I remember I packed with nonno and nonna and I found a flat at Zattere…just behind Accademia. I moved there with a girl that was with me in high school, but I wont spend time talking about her cause this lady added very little to my existence and I really believe she is not worth any mention in my dialogue with you.

Since then, lots of things changed. My dad died in 1999 (June 13th) and I kept coming back and forth from Venice (I was also in a very serious relationship at the time) but I never went back to live there on a regular base. Back home that is Casalmaggiore/Vicomoscano. On November 23rd 2002 (exactly 23 days after my graduation) I moved to Shanghai. I went with Marco (Bresciani – I hope he is still in our life now that you read…he is still now that I am writing this) and I have never left Shanghai till 2017 when I was about to have you.

Now I am ready to go back…at first my decision was driven by the fact that the financial pressure in Singapore as single solo parent entrepreneur was literally eating me alive and therefore I decided I had to move cause my lifestyle, although formidable for some aspects, was not sustainable anymore. But the more this idea was created and the more this idea was becoming a solid reality, the more I was owning it at many different levels.

I thought… well yeah I can explore more professional options there…..well yeah I can save money on some things and invest them in making my girl (you) travel Europe…well yeah I can see many people that have moved from Asia way more often now…well yeah I can drive every day…well yeah I can rest my mind a bit, being in a place where I don’t need to justify my presence as I am a citizen of this country finally….well yeah I can finally have some rights….but in the end I have realised (just recently to be fair) that I need to go back to where everything started to keep on growing up. In a bizarre and unexpected way I feel I need this deeply…I need to reconcile my old me – the young girl – and the me now – the adult woman and mother – and make these two people meet and be one…no more dichotomy and I feel I can only do this there…and nowhere else in the world.

And I deeply feel that if I don’t do, I won’t continue in my growing and maturing process. I have never lived as an adult back there… I have never had my own place there. For obvious reasons too, but somehow that didn’t allow me to step out and up from the “daughter-girl” role and being who I am really. It took me many hours of therapy, many many conversations with my friends, many many books to finally understand this…and when I say conversations or books I am not saying that we were talking about this topic specifically or even about me specifically, for that matter…but when you are used to speak to yourself and try your best to read yourself deeply, ANYTHING can become a spark of enlightenment and a spark of epiphany and clearance. So through all of that now, I can tell you I NEED TO GO BACK TO MY HOME. I need to do it for me and a direct consequence for you, who are the most powerful inspirations of all my deeds. I want to be a much better version of myself every day that I wake up, I do this for myself cause I know you are looking. And don’t get me wrong, sometimes being better than yesterday, might mean, just chilling and learn how to rest. Yes because when you are an over achiever, you are a victim of your own expectations (most times driven by the way you have been raised) and you must learn how to step away from it. I am learning…and I am also learning my worth and that my needs are important. And that I need to appreciate myself and be proud of who I am and to ask for help (that is a tough one for me).

I wont get into the details of the many folds that the sentences I wrote above carry, but one day I will tell you all, maybe in the next post…God knows.
What I can tell you for sure though, is that you should never stop working towards understanding yourself…that relationship is the most important one you will ever have….above all, above anyone’s. In the last 3 years I had a good guidance through my therapist (Laura), that I had to say goodbye to on Monday (I cried a lot) and its been hard work but SO LIBERATING to do the work. I will keep in touch with her, cause I know that once I will be back and my two MEs will meet, it might be a bit destabilising, therefore I will keep on having her in my corner to help me navigate my complex emotional world.

Ok I just wanted to tell you this.

You are in school at the moment, you are very excited to get to Italy and Saturday you have a birthday party to go to that you cannot wait for.

You are a wonderful child and I am oh so lucky to be your mother.

I love you, my sensational baby.

La mamma

13/06/2023

Ciao amore mio,

today its a bad anniversary…you know that right? it’s 24 years that my dad (your grandpa) passed away. Its always a weird day for me…super weird indeed, but anyways I am not here to speak about this.

I have a bit of time and I thought of writing you about what’s going on in our life right now. You are 5 and a half years of age and in this very very moment you are on the way to a sleepover at your great friend Harper’s house. Harper is a Korean super cute kid, that went to school with you for 4 years and now moved to an International school. You guys adore each other and I really like her family too. Tonight you will do your first sleepover at her place and you possibly couldn’t be more excited than you are. You are beyond ecstatic to do it. This morning you came into my room at 6 am, telling me that you couldn’t sleep any longer for excitement. Well baby I hope this will be all you wish for and then some. I will hear all about it tomorrow.

In this blog entry I wanted to talk to you about my last trip to China. I was in China from May 28th till June 10th (minus a little 2 days that I took to myself completely to go to Seoul….by the way AMAZING CITY…cant wait to go there with you…as a matter of fact Harper’s mum last night told me she would love to have us over in the coming years). So anyways this was my last business trip to Shanghai as an Asian resident. Soon we will move back to Italy.

The reasons that are driving me back are for the most financially, but as time passed by and this idea became more and more solid in my brain, I realised that in fact this is exactly what I wanted and needed. I dont know exactly how that is going to be, as I have not lived at home since I was 19 – I was living in Venice before moving to Shanghai – but I know that I am willing to take on the challenge and begin to look at the world from the starting point but with a huge and brand new set of knowledge and experiences under my belt. I am sure that the world from there will look different but also very different from what it used to look when I was living there before 19. Well my dad was still alive then…and defo the world was different.

Anyways all of that said, I was walking through Shanghai the other day, coming home from office and I passed by my old house. That house was my house since 2004…many people passed through that place and that single apartment holds a big chunk of my life…I can tell you that for sure. For once, thats where I found out you existed. That, in a way, was your first home…inside of me.

Shanghai for me means many many things, I have its characters tattooed on my right ribs. It’s a city that carries everything for me: in every corner I can see myself having fun at 25…I can see myself opening my first company at 26…I can see myself heart-broken at 29….I can see myself celebrating my 30 birthday with close to 60 people…I can see myself learning how to own my own…I can see myself facing another culture and making it mine in a way…I can see myself becoming a woman there…and for this I will forever be grateful to it. Landing in Pudong airport brings always the same feeling…love and hate but home. I was telling someone lately that going back to Shanghai after 3 and a half years of Covid, felt like going back to an old boyfriend: you feel very very comfortable with him cause he knows and you know him inside and out BUT you know there is no future. So you can linger there for a while cause you are comfortable there but you know, there will be little to no growth there anymore. And thats exactly how I feel. You see, china is going through a lot, politically, you will study this on books and I will be ready to tell you all about it. So it is changing a ton but yeah, sometimes comfort doesn’t mean right. And this is another thing you need to learn: the fact you feel comfortable in something doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right thing to do or to continue doing. Diamonds are born under the biggest pressure and pressure I am sure is very very uncomfortable, so yeah I am definitely done with living in the city, but I will never ever deny the importance of that place/city/moment for the economy of my life.

As a matter of fact when I first moved to Shanghai, it was anything but comfortable, I can tell you that much. But we had the best of the best years that it had to offer, of this I am 100% sure.

So now we are leaving…I will make another post for singapore…your first real home and where your English accent comes from (Jeez). Now I have to go back to work.

Remember my wonderful child, that I love you beyond my capacity of understanding and there is nothing you cannot do in this world and I will always have your back.

La mamma