An excerpt of a letter of thanks sent to the Mothers of Lazio.

 Lastly, as you shared such personal things with me, I feel compelled to share the following with you. As many of you know, when I first arrived to Italy I had just lost my mother to cancer. To call what I felt inside of myself total devastation does not even begin to accurately describe it.  I  wondered how it was going to be to live without my mothers fierce and unbounded  love and how to understand that to go “home" would never again be something I could do. 

Never in those first months could I have imagined that one year later, in the very month which marked the one year anniversary of my mothers death,  I would find myself traveling in every direction and every Province of Lazio. One by one, mother by mother, gathering a fortress of women around me. I realized later that my doing that was no coincidence.  Each of you, in your own way, enveloped me with your kindness, your wisdom, and illuminated for me to remember what “home" truly is and that need not be a city or structure, but a feeling, a deep feeling of knowing who you have come from and remembering that voice which will forever tell you who you are in this world. 

Not until I began to write your stories did I understand that during that amazing month what I had been looking for and found within each of you was the voice of my mother and her mother and her mother before. It’s true, we are all connected and though I may not have spoken your language, I can attest that a mothers love, even for someone not their own child , transcended that boundary. I will forever be in gratitude for what each one of you ended up to give me.  More than I could have ever asked for and more than you knew.  One day I hope to see you all again.