«Dear Editor, good morning, sorry for the inconvenience.
I take the liberty of writing to you with profound respect for the time you wish to dedicate to me.
I am 46 years old, I am a lower secondary school teacher in Piacenza, of Sicilian origins and I am an orphan due to a femicide.
In recent years I have understood how difficult it is to explain such deep, intimate and personal pain. Often, those who listen to stories like mine say: “I can imagine”; but the truth is that no one can really imagine such pain if they have not experienced it.
I would like to underline the total absence, in our country, of a national register of orphans resulting from feminicide. Even today we insist almost exclusively on training courses aimed at women to learn how to defend themselves, while there is a lack of structured educational action on male emotions (but it is only private associations that comply with this lack), which is fundamental for preventing violence.
Those who, like me, have lost a parent in this way, experience a journey full of pain, often aggravated by economic and social difficulties. I was lucky enough to be adopted, but many others didn’t have the same support.
From this life experience was born the desire to transform pain into civil commitment. I published a book(the first edition, in 2013, was published during my attendance of the course “Women, Politics and Institutions”, at the Faculty of Political Sciences of the University of Messina), “Two lives in one. Story of a rebirth” (edizionipontegobbo). From that publication came meetings in schools, universities, unions and television appearancesincluding Italian stories, Door to Door and Your Business.
On 5 December 2024, the docufilm was broadcast in prime time on RaiDue “Crimes in the family. Before my eyes”in which, together with two other orphans of feminicide, I told my story.
The V District of Messina voted unanimously to name a public space after my mother: a place that will host social projects, a concrete sign of memory and rebirth.
I have been fighting against indifference for years. I strongly ask that a national register of feminicide orphans be established, so that these children – minors and adults – can receive concrete help. Currently, in public competitions, we are also absent among the protected categories and we are not recognized as victims of the State (like orphans of the mafia and war). Finally, asking that in the face of a warning for violence or stalking, a mandatory emotional path for the man be activated, after verification, as a preventive and re-educational measure. All this so that it can be paid attention to by the State.
Mine is a story of rebirth, made possible thanks to the miracles that only love is capable of generating. Because love saves. My adoptive father taught me two fundamental things for my growth as a woman: humility of my pain (and I understood this thanks to volunteering) and not to hate the man who took away my most precious asset, my mother. Both because I wouldn’t get her back and because in my heart, hate shouldn’t be part of it.
Why do I want to tell my story? I got my answer by reading a post by Maestro Ferzan Ozpetek: “When you find the courage to tell your story, everything changes. Because at the very moment in which life becomes a story, the darkness becomes light and the light shows you the way“.
Giovanna Cardile
