When Lucia Gravante she feels the shadow of the past stretch over her making her feel as inadequate and insecure as when she was a child, she goes out into the garden and looks at the mistletoe flower she planted after her father died: small and helpless as she was, unknowingly crushed by her husband several times to the point of losing hope that it would grow, the mistletoe has become, over the years and to her great surprise, a splendid and luxuriant plant over two meters high.
“When I have my moments I look at it and I say to myself: if this plant has done all this, what can ever go wrong with me?” Lucia asks herself on the phone from her home in Chiaverano, contemplating from the window the garden that helped her to mourn – “After my father’s funeral I started pulling the weeds and I realized that the more I tore and the better I was »- and from which she observes the sun, astral and metaphorical, able to make her understand that the shadows, however deep, are never destined to last.
Despite it The college, Raidue’s docureality that made her famous, Lucia presents herself as an uncompromising and unscratchable supervisor, her experience retains marks and wounds that sink their roots when she was very young. Daughter of Antonio, a customs officer from Campania, and Giovanna, an entrepreneur from Puglia, Gravante moved north with her family and attended school in a small village where she was immediately branded as “different”: with dark hair, olive skin and the accent not aligned with that of the others, the companions begin to make fun of her making her feel incapable, inadequate, ugly. They tell her that she has a mustache, that her dark circles are too deep and that she won’t get far: Lucia feels alone, she has no friend to confide in and, a bit like Roald Dahl’s Matilda, takes refuge in books, drawing inspiration from those heroines who, in spite of the difficulties, have always carried on with their heads held high. “I remember a little book from my father’s Reader’s Digest series called The breviary of success: inside were the lives of so many people who had been successful despite falling to the point of getting hurt. Translating failure into experience is perhaps the most precious lesson I have learned ».
Today, more than forty years after those small traumas that continued to haunt her even in adulthood – like the casting directors who told her in Rome that she was too old to pursue an acting career and that she would do well to return to home and take care of her children – Lucia wrote a book in her own hand: is titled The sun is born for everyone, is published by Piemme and is a beautiful and moving window into his world, on the pain she has tried to hold back for years – she writes that as a child at school she collected tears in vitamin bottles so as not to be discovered – and on the experience she feels she wants to share especially with younger boys (most of her followers on Instagram are, in fact, teenagers) to accept their insecurities because even the most daring people hide fragility that they would never want to show to others. «Fragility is a common thread that concerns everyone, only we forget it a little and we feel a bit ashamed of it» explains Lucia.
Why are we ashamed of it?
«Because we are all a bit disguised, we take our Achilles heels and, instead of fixing them and then running, we prefer to leave them there and limp. Who is it that today says she was made fun of because they told her she had a mustache as a child? If you say that, you become vulnerable and it clashes with everything around us, with the idea that we must all be very performing and spectacular. It would be so easy if we admitted with serenity “I fell and I found a way to get up” ».
When did the decision to get naked like this come?
«When I received the Mondadori proposal, I reflected for a moment in my garden and thought: why not tell my journey as an opportunity? I believed it: in the last 18 years I haven’t spent a day without believing in my dream of becoming an actress and in what I could do, trying to protect my light from everything around me and from the people who told me to let it go because I was old and ugly. I have always taken notes in a pink notebook which, at the time of writing down the idea, I pulled out because I knew well what I wanted to tell in the book: the rest came by itself ».
How did you feel in retracing all the traumas of the past?
“At first I had strange dreams, the same as those of dark times. When the book began to take shape, however, I began to look good-naturedly at everything I went through: it seemed absurd to me that I had suffered so much. This book was useful because it allowed me to take the last step, to give me what I was missing, to fill in those centimeters that, in reality, seemed a lot ».
A great writer, Nadia Terranova, says that writing about one’s own experience does not heal, but helps to become aware of what one has faced. Agree?
“Totally. The book, in the end, talks about just this: to accept every day to be afraid and to continue to admit to having doubts and insecurities. Who said that if we feel inadequate we have to be wrong? Perhaps it is something that someone told us and which we believed without reflecting ”.
At a certain point, she quotes a maxim by Eleonor Roosevelt which, perhaps, well captures the ultimate meaning of the book: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
«It is a phrase that I have carried over from diary to diary, from year to year: if someone tells you that ‘you are ugly’ it may be fine, but what clicks inside you to allow that thing to hurt you so much? The key is all there. If I feel beautiful and I like myself, whatever comes to me from the outside can no longer harm me: the important thing, however, is to be able to make this passage inside you “.
In the book, she also talked about her father’s illness, who passed away in 2015, and how she suddenly felt like an adult.
“My father’s illness has blown the balance of my life: when he left, I realized I was another person, older. I was already married and had my children, but that wasn’t what I felt growing up in. The real transformation, the passage from the chrysalis to the butterfly, happened there: when the parent leaves, it is as if he leaves the road open for you ».
Speaking of children, have your parents read your book? What did they tell you?
“I’m just telling you that my daughter found out that I only dedicated it to her because a friend of mine warned her. I feel a little snubbed by them, but maybe I like it a little. “
Do you think the people who hurt you could have recognized themselves by reading the book?
“Maybe yes. But I tell you another thing: if I had had another life, we probably wouldn’t be here today to talk. In retaliation, I almost feel I have to thank these people because, without them, I might not have had the same determination to go on as I did. I think of the philosophy teacher who told me that I would do nothing, or the one who told me at the auditions that I was old to do this job: without them I would have been satisfied and I would not have tried more, who knows. I think everything had to go like this and, looking back, absurdly I think it went well ».
Another disturbing thing that emerges is the complicity of adults, in this case of professors, in the insults of peers. What is the answer to this?
“Some adults are smart, especially in the school environment. It makes me smile when the teachers say “not to grasp anything”: but how is it possible, that when you are in class you have to have your senses shot to a thousand? If I hadn’t been a teacher myself, I might have believed it, but not going through it. It is impossible for a teacher not to be aware of what is happening to his children ».
Worse is the amplification of bullying and insults through social media.
“Today kids are thrown outside at the speed of light and it’s normal for them to feel crushed. When I read about teenagers taking benzodiazepines to support anxiety and to cope with the vicissitudes of life, I was almost frightened: the burden of passing generation seems unbearable. Instead, we should tell young people that you can be afraid, that it is legitimate, it is part of life and death. If we remembered it, we would live better, with more honesty ».
Speaking of death, she explains that she has feared it since she was a child: certainly not a common thing.
«If you think about it, death is the forerunner of all fears which then turn into something else. There is something that is not metabolized and that a child cannot code with the tools at his disposal. This is always the problem ».
As its title says, however, the sun is always born for everyone.
«When I understood it I felt light, finally free to say“ who cares ”and to repeat it with joy. In the end, darkness always gives way to light: it is a cycle from which one cannot escape. If we could take a closer look around us, we would understand immediately and this would probably change our lives. Despite all the things I lived, I, as Vasco Rossi sang, I’m still here. I have finally found the person I want to be ».
Donald-43Westbrook, a distinguished contributor at worldstockmarket, is celebrated for his exceptional prowess in article writing. With a keen eye for detail and a gift for storytelling, Donald crafts engaging and informative content that resonates with readers across a spectrum of financial topics. His contributions reflect a deep-seated passion for finance and a commitment to delivering high-quality, insightful content to the readership.
