“…we have two ways of being in our existence, to suffer life or to live it: Stefania has chosen to live it, without discounts and without excuses.” – Introduction “Embroidered Leather”
With the reading of these words - full of meaning, expressed by Doctor Carla Greco - capable of generating a powerful reflection, the literary meeting held on Tuesday 7 February at the Mondadori Bookstore in Castellammare di Stabia.
The appointment of the day, organized by the tireless Professor Carmen Matarazzo as part of the fertile activity of the Association Achille Basile le ali della lettura, of which she is President, addressed a theme of great impact and depth: illness and new birth, subjects of the book being presented, “Pelle ricamata”. Text written by the entrepreneur from Castellammare di Stabia Stefania Del Gaudio and published by MEA Edizioni.
PLOT
Stefania, a young entrepreneur, begins to suffer from an increasingly disabling illness, until she receives the cruelest and most difficult diagnosis to bear: suffering from Hodgkin's lymphoma. Without being discouraged, page after page, all the grit of a warrior mother emerges, who decides not to give up and not to give up for the love of her daughters and her own life. The story is told of her encounter with chemotherapy, with the other patients, with the sensitivity and/or insensitivity of others, not without a vein of marked and pungent self-irony. Stefania is healed, has a new life and has decided to tell her journey of rebirth in her book "Pelle Ricamata".
The author, with admirable naturalness, narrated her personal story – steeped in pain and courage – through a constructive and open dialogue with the empathetic Professor Matarazzo, interspersed with expressive readings, full of authentic pathos, by the actor Gigi Longobardi.
Also attending the meeting were the friends who motivated her to make her story public, who were the first to glimpse her energy, who grasped her ability to generate a beneficial impact on readers: Tonino Scala, representative of the MEA publishing house, and Luca Nasuto, a playwright from Castellammare di Stabia.
Del Gaudio, who had to face suffering and anguish related to Hodgkin's lymphoma, projects her own experience into the book, but also that which appeared to her during the long waits in the hospital - never idle on her part - for treatments and tests. Her attentive gaze rested on those around her who shared that illness, thus trying to confront and process the pain of others to understand her own, intimate and silent. Seven long years, seven seasons of her life broken, pierced, wounded, but never won. The healing, which the author likes to call a new birth, came at the end of this long period, thanks to the effective transplant performed with the donation of her sister. The one who, in fact, brought her back into the world.
“Pelle ricamata” is the story of a person who gives voice to the many who encounter the dark evil and look it in the eyes, suffer its discomforts, feel the thoughts and sadness of their loved ones, the upheaval of their own life and that of those around them, but decide to believe in a future, in treatments, in everything that can help them gain meters in that tortuous tunnel, apparently with no exit and no light.
They do so by recognizing in evil an opportunity, even if it is difficult to manage, as it is crossed by moments of crisis experienced in a watchful, but not limiting, silence.
Stefania, thus decided to caress that evil, to make it more human also taking care of her external appearance. And when the chemo forced her to give up her hair, emblem of femininity, she reacted by wearing showy scarves, whose eccentricity revealed itself as an added value towards awareness without surrender.
A sort of complicity with evil that allowed her to appear reassuring in the eyes of her daughters, to whom she constantly dedicated her fight, involving them without a shadow of resignation. An aspect that, day after day, earned her the image of a fearless heroine. Almost a label, heavy to bear, with which she still has to measure herself even when her fragile side would like to emerge.
But you know, a life that is born, or that begins again, has the right lymph to travel new and illuminated roads. And so, to the author, who with courage and so much dignity has resumed her journey, we wish a future of only light.
For you readers, instead, we wish you a good journey through the pages of this book that gives positivity and hope.
“The illness has allowed me to bring in new awareness and new perspectives, a wound, certainly, but also new possibilities to review my entire journey from new points of view, an opportunity to question everything. I saved myself from the illness and the illness saved me from myself, from a life that no longer convinced me…” Page 11 “Embroidered Skin”.
Annamaria Cafaro
Article published on 12 February 2023 - 11:56
