A story about the kitchen, the roots, and the long way home.
From a girl born in Milan who spent decades shrinking herself to fit two worlds — to a woman who built a life on her own terms. This is the story behind the work. The kitchen. The grief. The Italian summers. The 63-hour labor. The moment in a funeral home when everything changed.
"Today I choose me, and that is all."
Eight simple words. A period. The end. The truth is that arriving at truly embodying those words has been anything but simple.
Choosing myself is the hardest thing I have ever done. Not because the decision itself was complicated. But because everything in my life had been slowly, persistently teaching me that I was not the one who got to be chosen. That wanting things for myself — the big things, the kinds that live in you like a pilot light you can never quite extinguish — was too indulgent, too selfish. A luxury I hadn't yet earned.
I had spent years letting everyone else write my recipe for me. My parents handed me the first draft and society kept it going. Be a doctor, a lawyer, something respectable. Follow the rules. And I kept following it, adding ingredients I didn't choose, cooking a life that looked right on paper but never quite tasted like mine.
But no one was coming to give me permission to flip to a blank page and start over. I had to grant it myself.
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