TRAUMA DRAMA, Chapter One

By Bonnie Hayden

I was told I walked early. I don't remember.

I once saw a picture of "baby Bonnie" -- ME -- standing in front of our house.

I don't remember. I don't remember when I stopped walking.

I have little flashes of memories, from maybe when I was four years old. Doctors in white coats pulling on my legs, trying so damn hard to straighten out the muscles. Open the joints. Vaguely I recall thick white casts being smeared on my legs.

To this day, I don't know why the doctors were doing this.

Ma never said. She just stood by and watched.

I don't even remember how many times they tried to straighten my legs out and put them in casts. I remember they drilled holes in my knees, and in my ankles. Twice they did that.

I do remember the fear and the excruciating pain I felt every time I had to go to the doctor's office so they could cut the casts off.

I remember Ma covering my ears

and telling me to stop crying like a goddamn baby.

I was no more than four or five years old.

After the doctors were finished cutting off my casts, my dad would pick me up very gently and he would carry me to physical therapy.

I lived there, in what was then Pittsfield General Hospital, for months at a time. I never went to school. What I learned, I learned from tutors.

There at the hospital, therapists would try to force my legs to bend. They wanted to open my broken joints.

Pushing and pulling. Punishing. Always always punishing me with the pain. They were always measuring "degrees of movement" with

I was alone with these people, total strangers, for what felt like hours. Days. I was so very young.

No one talked to me. No one laughed or tried to cheer me up. THEY ALWAYS TALKED ABOUT ME, AS IF I WASN'T THERE. They talked about what to try next. They talked about what decisions they had to make:

which set of casts they would make into splints, splints that I had to wear every single night.

Torture. It was...torture.

Because my joints were collapsing from the juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, I had to sit all day long, and my knees would bend and every night Ma would force my legs back into the casts and tape them tight.

Dad would not do it.

Dad said that Ma was just torturing me, for nothing. He said the doctors and therapists were wasting their time.

Eventually I realized. Dad was right.

DRAMA QUEEN: How I Met Bonnie Hayden

By Claudia Ricci

I had the distinct privilege of meeting Bonnie Hayden, of Pittsfield, MA, only a few short weeks ago. Three, perhaps? Honestly, I keep going back to the calendar, and counting the days since I met her in early August, 2025. I keep being astonished, over and over and over again, by her unique life story, and what she has been willing to share about her lifelong struggle to survive rheumatoid arthritis.

Every time Bonnie sends me another piece of her life story -- some of it she sends by text, some by email -- I am astonished,

and completely outraged. I told her last week that her writing, and her story, may be the most powerful writing I've ever read from even my very best graduate students in Journalism at Georgetown University, where I was on a teaching sabbatical during 2009 when my husband, national political activist Richard Kirsch, and I lived in DC while he led the fight to get OBAMACARE passed.

Yes, I am astonished over and over again by Bonnie's heartbreaking life story, I am moved to tears by the needless agony she has endured. And yet not for a single moment have I been moved to pity Bonnie Hayden. Because one of the first things she made clear to me as we talked for hours and hours by phone, was that she has never wanted pity from anybody. And she certainly doesn't want it now.

What Bonnie Wants Now Is VERY Simple:

She wants to write a book. She wants desperately to tell her life story: "This book is my truth," she says. "It's not the life that other people tell me I had. This is the way it was."

All her life, Bonnie has had to deal with selfish and downright nasty family members, first and forement, her mother, and also, her sister who is 16 years older than Bonnie. Family members have tried to ignore or dismiss or discount her agonizing pain, and her truth. Family members who haven't made any attempt to hide their contempt for her, or their disgust, or their feeling that she was a hopeless burden. Family members who didn't really expect her to live past age 18.

More recently, Bonnie, who is 62, says that she is sick and tired of people who try to boss her around. And people who try to take advantage of her. Or use her for their own purposes.

Because she relies on a wheelchair and crutches, Bonnie confided, some people think she is weak, or weak-minded. They often try to dismiss her. Discount her. Or worse, they ignore her completely.

Bonnie grew up being told by her mother, over and over again, that she wasn't wanted. She grew up feeling INVISIBLE.

Somehow, though, Bonnie Hayden endured all of this endless, hellish physical and brutal emotional pain, relying on her faith, and her core of steel. She prayed constantly, pleading that God would grant her one thing in life: love.

I may have only known her a few weeks, but Bonnie Hayden is already one of my all-time favorite heroes. A fiercely determined woman, Bonnie has become a friend that I trust, a friend that I am fiercely determined to defend and support as she expresses her truth.

And her RAGE.

Bonnie Hayden is Determined to Set the Record Straight

Once and for all, Bonnie is going to tell all of the people who should have loved her but didn't to -- in three choice words -- go to hell. tell it the way she lived it. As it happened.

"My sister tries to tell me what my life was like but she wasn't even there." (Bonnie's sister is 16 years old than she is.)

"And my mom? My mom should have had a bumper sticker that read: everthing will be fine just as soon as you realize that I -- MOM -- am God!"

I am overwhelmed with admiration for Bonnie's fierce determination to do what everybody else tries to do: simply, to live a normal life, despite the rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune disease that makes the body's immune system turn on itself. RA has ravaged her joints.

I am also infuriated into a bloody red rage

that her mother refused to bring her, when she was six years old, to Shriner's Children's Hospital in Springfield, MA, after the Pittsfield doctors said Bonnie needed to see a specialist. Instead, Bonnie was never seen by a rheumatologist, as she should have been, but instead spent months in hospitals as a parade of orthopedists who didn't have a clue how to treat her autoimmune disease basically experimented on her child's tender body -- they tortured her body, starting when she was only two years old.

*********

Within moments -- literally moments -- of hearing Bonnie's calm and yet very cheerful voice over the telephone, one thing became clear: I knew in the depths of my bone marrow that I was in the presence of a true hero.

I have been working as a journalist, a personal essayist and fiction writer for some 50 years, as a recent Substack column of mine reveals. A half century of writing?

It hardly seems possible sometimes. But it's true. I began my daily newspaper career at age 26 in April of 1979 at the Chicago Sun-Times, where after less than a year as the paper's environmental reporter, I proposed to my editor that the Sun-Times mount a state-wide investigation into the crooked and shady -- and altogether illegal -- dumping of highly dangerous and unhealthy chemical wastes into landfills that were supposed to be reserved for plain old household garbage.

"The Toxic Time Bomb" series of articles appeared in the Sun-Times in November, 1980, and the following spring, our team of a half dozen investigative reporters was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in Investigative reporting. Instead of sticking around Chicago to continue working with the likes of the extraordinarily successful investigative reporter Pamela Zekman, I opted instead to seek greener pastures in New York, accepting a job in July, 1982 as a Staff Writer at The Wall Street Journal..

*********

Over the course of my career writing journalism, essays, and in the early 1990s, fiction (I am at work on my sixth novel, "Angels Keep Whispering in My Ears,") I have done thousands upon thousands upon thousands of interviews. Actually, it feels from this vantage point that I may in fact have done millions of interviews.

But honestly, how can I possibly know?

I do know one thing for certain though. Three weeks ago, without thinking about it too much, without comparing Bonnie to any other "subject" I have interviewed, without even knowing quite what was happening to me, I knew deeply and intuitively in the depths of my bone marrow, that I had been given a rare and precious opportunity: to speak to a person who at 62, was not supposed to be here. A woman who was told as a teenager that she would never thrive. Or be normal, i.e., she would never have a partner. Nor would she, for God's sake, with her joints broken and her limbs shrunken by rheumatoid arthritis, EVER HOPE to bear children.

Ah but there we go again with la miracolosa Bonnie Hayden: she is the proud mother of three adult children, one of whom she lives with -- thanks in partnership to Central Berkshire Habitat for Humanity -- in a cozy little home in Pittsfield, MA, where she (and her son, Bobbie) chose to paint the living room walls a soothingly dark, dove gray, with crisp white trim.

It has taken me a few weeks to begin to understand that it is in fact the Divine Creator Herself -- in italiano, CARA DIVINA -- who seems to have chosen me for this extraordinary assignment: to partner in a unique writing project with a person who has boundless determination. And who has demonstrated the kind of bravery that is rare in this day and age. And above all, she is a person who has endured outright cruelty most of her life, still finds it in her heart to love very deeply.

********* As I wrote just a few days after the first interview I had with Bonnie on August 1, 2025: "Bonnie Hayden has a life story that will first break your heart, and then, perhaps, it will remake your heart, so that you will once again begin to believe in miracles. In italiano, miraculos.

I MIRACULOS

As a very young child, just after her second birthday in 1965, Bonnie's mother, Rose was told that her daughter, who had a rare disease that today would be called Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis, couldn't possibly make it to her 18th birthday.

When Bonnie fooled all the doctors and was still living and breathing at age 18, she was told she would NEVER BE ABLE TO HAVE CHILDREN.

Bonnie defied everyone -- most notably her own mother -- and delivered three healthy children beginning in mid-October, 1986, which ironically is when I had my second child.

We were in the same hospital the same day, both giving birth to baby girls.

*********

Diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis when she was only two years old, Bonnie spent most of her childhood living in hospitals -- for months at a time. Doctors had no clue what to do with -- or for -- her.

So, literally, they experimented.

She was treated by orthopedic specialists who tried setting her limbs in casts.

When that didn't work, they drilled holes in the bones of her tiny knees and ankles, and then strapped her into weird contraptions called tractions, trying to get the muscles and joints of her legs to straighten out.

Three separate times, they broke her thin little wrists when she was a child and reset them, thinking that might help straighten her arm muscles.

When she was six years old, Bonnie's mother, Rose, was instructed by local doctors in Pittsfield that Bonnie needed to be seen by specialists in rheumatoid arthritis at Shriner's Hospital in Springfield, MA, where she might get the appropriate treatment.

Rose chose to ignore the doctors' advice, telling Bonnie it was too much of a bother.

To this day, Bonnie, who is 62 years old, has seen a rheumatologist exactly once, for a consult, about 15 years ago:

"He told me there was nothing he could do to help me with the arthritis. He offered me morphine for the pain. I told him 'No thanks.' If I have pain, I take Tylenol."

What follows is the second chapter in Bonnie Hayden's healing story. Stay tuned, because Bonnie says she has been getting ready to tell this story for most of her challenging life.

When I had the privilege of meeting Bonnie for the first time on August 25, after she had spent a total of four hours on the phone, telling me her story, she said she has "always been told that I should write a book."

Indeed, Bonnie seems she's about ready to burst, because she wants so badly for the world to know how she grew up. How she suffered, oh my DEAR GOD IN HEAVEN, but also, how she managed to prevail against not just overwhelming odds.

She managed to prevail against all possible odds. She managed to prevail when anyone else would have gone sailing off into the sunset.

Because pain doesn't get any worse than the pain Bonnie endured at age 2, and age 5, and age 7, and age 11, and 13 and 14 and 24 and

yes, every single day of her entire life she has endured pain that would have sunk me for sure.

The second time I interviewed Bonnie, on July _____ for two straight hours, typing a total of 25 single-spaced pages of notes (because that is just one thing I was taught to do, very very carefully at The Wall Street Journal) she confided in me, very sweetly, that "I have always wanted, I have always intended, to write a book about my life. And people over and over again have said to me, 'Bonnie, you could, and should, write a book.'"

Well, now it's time. Bonnie is quite honestly, a bit nervous (and i am quite honestly more than a bit nervous because I feel so incredibly protective of my sweet new friend.)

But then Bonnie says something that sends me into hysterics, laughter that is, and I say to her and myself, "she is one tough cookie," and I take a breath in and say she/we will be fine, telling this story, together, my arm linked with hers. (Bonnie relies on crutches or a wheelchair to get around, and always has.)

Yes, she is one helluva of brave woman, and smart as a whip, as gifted as ANY of the students I taught for a year at Georgetown University in the Graduate School of Journalism! (No, dear Bonnie, I wasn't just saying that to butter you up or make you feel good -- it's the God's honest truth!)

In the end, when I said to her this afternoon, are you sure you're ready for this, Bonnie? Are you certain that you are ready to go out into the world without any cover? Are you prepared that your story could go -- well, who the hell knows? These days, a story goes viral faster than it takes to write down even one sentence!

She paused. She went silent as she does now and then as we are chatting. She thought about it for a while. I think it was in that moment that it really dawned on her what I was saying: once you go public in this godforsaken modern world, where misery and mayhem live side by side with blessings and beasts (like i will say it, okay, like our inhuman vermin that is the non-president, would-be DICTATOR DUMP)

When you drop all your cover from your life and the lives of the ones you love most, that for Bonnie being her precious children, well you better be prepared to get wet.

And then, Bonnie Hayden just got to her feet -- and here I am giving her speed she doesn't have with her legs but absolutely has with her BOUNDLESS HEART -- she ran right off an elevated platform --picture it here with me -- as if she is in fact one of those extraordinary divers we love watching in the Summer Olympics.

"I'm ready," she squeals and she just takes off -- goddammit Bonnie Hayden you are so damn fast!

I shout to her, "HEY Bonnie, for heaven's sake, wait up, will you? Wait up for me, I'm right behind you!"

But -- and here I'm laughing to think about it, because Bonnie Hayden, despite her RA, is such an incredible daredevil, and she's so incredibly gutsy.

And now she is out of earshot, she is flying out and over the water in a perfect jack-knife, she must be diving into the water by now I think, but I can't see her --

and I wonder, is she, like me, holding her breath on the way down into the blissfully cool water?"

********

What makes Bonnie Hayden want to tell her (almost impossible to believe) heartbreaking story? Why did she tell me almost immediately after we met each other in person that "people keep telling me to write a book and I want to. I want to write my story."

She wants to tell it so that others will know. She wants others to know what she lived through, not just physically, but emotionally too, because Bonnie's mother made it crystal clear to her daughter, starting from her first waking memory, that "I was not wanted. I was the fourth child, born 16 years after Louise..."

But do not for a moment think DO NOT DO NOT DO NOT that Bonnie Hayden EVER IN A MILLION YEARS wants your/our pity. No! UH HUH. Bonnie isn't the least bit interested in pity and in fact, when people have from time to time tried to use her to scour up pity, for their own purposes, she has gotten rightfully and understandably pissed off.

No. She wants others to know, for the record, of course, what happened. And to preserve for her children, and for their children, should they decide to have offspring, the extraordinarily deep trauma that she has survived.

But most of all, she wants to inspire others to be courageous. And to hang on to hope like a drowning victim would hang onto a rope.

She wants to reassure others, and to inspire others, people who live with excruciating pain -- physical, mental or emotional -- that she has been doing all that and then some, enduring pain that presses into her deepest fibers for more than six decades. NEVER LOSE HOPE, she says and never ever stop praying. PRAY EVERY DAY. PRAY EVERY MOMENT. Because she does just that. She continues to pray to a God that she is absolutely certain exists, despite the fact that she doesn't -- and I certainly don't either -- understand why this God allows people to suffer? Why most of all, why this God of OUR FATHERS especially, allows precious little children, the tenderest of children, i bambini, to sustain pain like she endured?

Because one thing we -- even the most diabolical among us and you know of whom I speak by now -- all can probably agree, children, especially children, never ever should have to endure the torture that she suffered.

She wants to tell her heartbreaking story, right now, before another moment goes by. Because she knows people are suffering all over, in Pittsfield, across Massachusetts, and all across the nation. And the world, too. From Gaza to the Ukraine, from South Sudan to the Congo, in Afghanistan and yes, in our own backyards, too.

Bonnie has an urgent message for all of us who feel so incredibly discouraged and fearful, nearly at the end of our ropes.

NO MATTER HOW BAD LIFE SEEMS, dear Bonnie says, NEVER EVER GIVE UP HOPE.

"Because there are angels out there," she says to me, and when she says it I get chills, running up and down my arms and legs. "Claudia, I know for a fact that there are angels out there to help you when we are most down and out. I know because I have met them, I have met them when I have felt like I had nowhere to turn!"

Oh yes, my new bestest in the world bestest, she knows about angels,

first-hand.

MEET Bonnie Hayden, USE THIS MATERIAL IN A FUTURE CLAUDIA CHAPTER****

Bonnie Hayden, of Pittsfield, MA, has a life story you might not believe -- or want to believe, not at first, anyway, because Bonnie has suffered physical and emotional pain the likes of which...

For starters, she spent most of her childhood living in hospitals -- for months at a time. Diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis at the age of two, Bonnie went to doctors who had no clue what to do with or for her.

So...they...experimented. Three different times, when she was only six and seven years old, these doctors put her in traction hoping her leg muscles would straighten out. The pain was excruciating.

They broke her wrists, too, three separate times, yes, that's right, three times, and then reset them in casts, hoping her wrist muscles would straighten out. The wrist muscles, like her leg muscles, did not straighten out. Because rheumatoid arthritis is NOT AN ORTHOPEDIC DISEASE. It is an auto-immune disorder, meaning the body mounts a severe immune response against itself.

The pain, in her words, was "unspeakable.'

As if that weren't enough, the doctors put Bonnie's legs in traction. Twice. When she was five and again when she was seven. To do that, they had to drill holes in her knees and her ankles. Yeah, she was just a child. And the procedures, the experiments, were totally unnecessary and ineffective. Many years after Bonnie suffered this horrible pain from the traction on her legs at North Adams hospital, she happened to see one of the doctors who had treated her. He had been a new doctor at the time.

“He was there when they put me in traction,” Bonnie recalls. "The doctor looked at me, and instantly he recognized me. I said to him, 'Yes, I know you, doctor,' and the doctor blurted out, 'We never should have done that to you.'

“He acknowledged me and I left in tears only because it was such an awful thing, I was an experiment, he knew it, he knew that it never should have happened.”

Before I met Bonnie on Monday, August 25, 2025, I interviewed her twice on the phone, each time for two hours straight. By the time I was finished these interviews, I had typed 25 pages of notes, single spaced.

Bonnie told me right away "my life is a book, and I want to write it."

When I finally got to meet Bonnie a couple of weeks ago, at her house, a home she was able to acquire in partnership with Central Berkshire Habitat for Humanity, an incredible not-for-profit organization in Pittsfield that makes it possible for everyday Americans -- teachers, nurses -- to own their own homes.

I knew for certain, immediately, that Bonnie's desire to write a book about her life was vital, not just for her, as she desperately needs it as part of her healing journey. But I knew too that it is incredibly important for the whole world to know Bonnie Hayden and what she has lived through.

The world doesn't yet know it, but they are waiting for her story.

Because Bonnie Hayden's life is the story of an incredible hero. And what we so desperately right now in our nation ARE STORIES OF ORDINARY PEOPLE WHO ARE EXTRAORDINARY, stories of people like Bonnie, who give us incredible HOPE. ******** When she was diagnosed at age two with rheumatoid arthritis, doctors told her mother, Rose, that Bonnie would never reach her 18th birthday. Then, when Bonnie turned 18, the doctors told Rose that Bonnie would never have children.

But she did. Bonnie is the proud mother of three healthy and beautiful adult kids, one of whom, Bobby, lives with her in a beautiful home that she never EVER EVER thought she would own.

What follows are the first steps that Bonnie is taking to write her book. The book she has always wanted to write.

"This book," she told me the other day, "is my truth. It's not the life that other people tell me I had. My sister tries to tell me what my life was like, but Louise May, she was 16 years older than me. She wasn't even there."

The letters that follow include Bonnie's very first writings, emails to me in response to mine to her. They are, collectively, a story for LABOR DAY. They are a rare and extremely courageous woman's story of an extraordinary LABOR.

********* Friday, Aug 22, 11:27 PM (9 days ago)

Hi Bonnie, so here is the healing story I wrote today, I spent many hours writing it, and I thought of you right away, because my HEART REALLY NEEDED IT! I thought it might give you food for thought about your own healing journey, whenever you are ready to take the first step.

More on Monday, August 25, 2025, when I pay you a FRIENDLY VISIT :)

HUGS,

Claudia

August 27, 2025

Hey Bonnie,

How would you like to have your own Substack column? Your son Bobby and I could set you up easily, he and your older son Andrew are sharp, sharp as razors

All you need to do is write ANYTHING you write anything

and I would put it into your own Substack or BOBBY COULD

just let YOUR story POUR OUT OF YOU

YOUR truth

just like I know you can do With a Substack blog, your story will go out to the world

RIGHT NOW

We could experiment. I could first put your writing, into my Substack

https://open.substack.com/pub/claudiaricci/p/art-heals-the-heart-here-s-how-i?r=ztmb9&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false and then u will see how easy it is

Are you willing to try? I will coach you every step of the way

With a Substack, you will see your results immediately

YOU won’t need to WAIT, we can then assemble all of your columns into a book

OK, when you read the next email from me, talking about my labor with my sweet LINDSAY ANN on Sunday night, October 19, 1986,

After that, just write me as simple a letter as you want

it can be four words, or 40.

BREATHE in and out, staring into your doggy's eyes

then when you are very

relaxed

and not before,

just mosey back to your table, where you love to sit in the sunlight, like I am moseying right here to my table,

and

write something

anything will do just fine!

NO MORE EMAILS TONIGHT

promessa! Promise

Buona serra, sogni d'oro

Nighty night, sweet dreams dear new friend Bonnie Hayden

OK, Bonnie,here are my three children:

Claudia Ricci

Wed, Aug 27, 3:04 AM (4 days ago)

to Bonnie

That's Jocelyn on top, she is 40. She will be 41 on October 16th

LINDSAY

IS THE SAME EXACT AGE AS YOUR FIRST ONE, ELLEN

OK Bonnie, here is my LABOR STORY for my sweet Lindsay Ann:

October 19, 1986, it was a Sunday night

my WATER BROKE sitting on the couch immediately after giving a bday party for Jocelyn who was turning two.

Before I knew it, Richard was rushing me to the hospital at what felt like 90 miles an hour from Spencertown, me laboring the whole way, Richard hoping the whole way that we would get pulled over by a cop who could get us to Berkshire Medical Center

FAST

WELL, I had labored for what felt like forever for Jocelyn, my first little darling, it went for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and finally they gave me Pitocin in that awful New Jersey hospital. And then the nurses they left me alone, Bonnie.

It was very scary because I was having what felt like a train wreck in my abdomen and no one was there with me at all, except of course Richard who didn’t know what the hell was going on

My sister, Karen, was a labor and delivery room nurse at Berkshire Medical Center, but she wasn’t with me in New Jersey for Jossy, Karen told me later that my uterus could’ve exploded with the Pitocin. They were so so awful down there those nurses in New Jersey

Now I’m thinking about all the agony you suffered all your life growing up with Rheumatoid arthritis and those stupid doctors didn't know what the hell they were doing they put you through SUCH AGONY in the hospital

Oh, it makes me feel so angry, frustrated and confused, you have to write about it, Bonnie, it's YOUR HEALING JOURNEY, you have to start, just write me a letter maybe or not, whatever you want to do is fine... It’s way late, I have to go to bed, but I wanted you to know what I wrote in my journal today, I wrote this early in the morning when I was meditating: “I met Bonnie Hayden today. She already feels like another best friend!” Very late now, I have to get up to go to the doctor for my Medicare visit tomorrow morning. I will be busy until 12:30 and then free till 1:30 and then free again at 3 o’clock

Please don’t feel like you have to call me at all, really, no pressure no worries.

Write me a letter sometime. Tell me what it was like to go through that LABOR you alluded to with your stupid ass mother trying to get you to sign papers before your daughter was even born because, as you explained to me when we met at your house, your mother wanted you to give away your baby because she didn't think you would ever be able to take care of the baby and Social Services would then take the baby away and then your SSI check would go to your partner and then your mother would lose your SSI check...

My God...

I think one of the reasons I feel so close to you is that you have a girl and two boys and I have two girls and a boy. But what is incredible about you Bonnie, just one of the incredible things is that the doctors told your mother that you wouldn't live to 18, and then you did, and then the doctors said you would never have children, and you have three!

We have a lot to talk about my friend. Hope to hear from you soon, but no pressure no worries

Have a latte. And then, in italiano

ripossare— rest

ė (and)

rilassare — relax

I learned those two words today I’m trying to teach myself Italian with the help of a friend, a healing massage person actually. If you’d like, I will teach you some words too.

😂🙏❤️

***********

HELLO

Inbox

Bonnie Hayden

Fri, Aug 29, 10:00 AM (2 days ago)

to me

Hi, it's been a full week. Full of crazy. I sent you a part of my giving birth story. I think. I sent it as a reply to yours. Unless i deleted it. LOL. Any way, I wanted to thank you for such a fun visit on Monday. You brought joy and excitement. Hope all is well with you. Have a wonderful weekend.

******

Good morning Claudia! I've had my coffee so i'm half human now.

So, my birth story actually started on Labor Day in 1986. Doug and I were at a big family thing with his family. (They did not like me but, tolerated me). I started contractions that day. i was admitted to BMC. Spent a couple days getting fluid and a small dose of Mag Sulfate. Dr.Haling put me on bed rest. So, that went ok.. I putterred. I rested.Good morning! I've had my coffee so i'm half human now.

So, my birth story actually started on Labor Day in 1986. Doug and I were at a big family thing with his family. (They did not like me but, tolerated me). I started contractions that day. i was admitted to BMC. Spent a couple days getting fluid and a small dose of Mag Sulfate. Dr. Haling put me on bedrest. So, that went ok.. I puttered. I rested.

The first week of October, contractions hit again. This time it was more serious. I was in the hospital for four days with more meds. Then an amnioscentisis. Neonatologist said baby needed two more weeks. Labor stopped, so, back home to rest. Then i started getting sick. October 19th was Doug's and me one year anniversary of being together. Dr. Haling said I could go fishing with Doug. (I hate fishing) then to dinner that night. Our anniversary was actually the 21st of October, but that was a school day.

Your friend, Bonnie

Ancestors Are Whispering in My Ears, Telling the Story of the Two Dante Antonios

As hard as it is to believe, I am now beginning to understand that I may be writing another novel, another tale about another ancestor, this one on my mom's side of the family. This realization comes after I swore to my dear massage therapist Sarah Williams last fall that I might very well never write another novel again.

I am doing this when I haven't even picked up the paperback version of my fifth novel, "Finding Filomena." That happens tomorrow, August 1, 2025, when my husband and I drive an hour to The Troy Bookmakers to pick up the boxes. Am I excited, oh yes.

Anyway, if I didn't know better -- that is, if I didn't know very very well that it oftentimes takes hundreds, and even THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS of pages of writing before a novelist even knows what chapter goes first -- then I might be willing to call what follows

CHAPTER TWO, "Angels (or Ancestors?) Keep Whispering in My Ears."

I am not more than four years old the first time I follow my Grandma Mish, short for Michelina (my mother’s mother) into her bedroom. She lifts the oval photo off the wall. She shines the glass with the bottom of her cotton apron.

Mish was, temperamentally, as soft and gentle as her pillowy lap.

I lived with my Grandma Mish and Grandpa Claude (“Pop” to everyone who knew him)

Grandma Mish lived until age 95, long enough to know my three beautiful children.

when I was a brand-new infant, while my Dad was finishing building -- with his own two hands -- our first house, in Bristol, Connecticut, and then again when Dad was away at IBM's computer school. Mom and me, and my brother Richie and my baby sister Karen stayed in Canton, CT -- about a half hour's drive from Bristol -- for what seemed like forever.

Anyway, in Grandma’s sweet bedroom, there is, hanging on the wall, an oval frame and

inside this frame is a baby. But this is not a baby, this creature inside the frame. He looks to be more like a doll, or better yet, a saint. In my first recollection, I remember him being all powder blue and yellow and glowing in the photo like an angel, at least the way I imagine angels being.

Grandma Mish is slowly polishing this precious photo of her first baby. But wait, when my cousin sends me the photo of the baby last week, I realize that my memory bank is all wrong.

He is cherubic, much like my grandson Monte (Italian for mountain), but this other long ago baby sits inside a gloomy background. Dark, just like his story.

He is Dante Antonio Rotondo. The first Dante Antonio Rotondo.

Is he a ghost? Who am I to say? Lately, I have begun to believe in ghosts, even though I never actually see them. Or do I?

But I know for a fact that this baby did haunt the life of the second Dante Antonio, my mother’s oldest brother, all of his life. My Uncle Dante was a giant of a man, like his brothers, over six feet tall. And handsome

as a movie star!

It is for my beloved uncle that my oldest grandson, Ronen Dante, 11 years old, is named.

What I remember best about Uncle Dante is his scissoring sense of humor. And his superb ability to make the best wisecracks.

I can still recall him telling all kinds of funny stories, many of which he shared as he sat sandwiched into the corner of Grandma Mish and Pop’s couch. Uncle Dan was such a great great storyteller, and jokester, that it should come as no surprise that his children, my beloved first cousins, whip out funny stories at dizzying speed. They are really really funny stories. Oh, and it also helps that their mother, my aunt who is 97 years young, and the last of my parents’ generation, has a crackling sense of humor too.

OK, back to Dante Antonio the first. This is the story of the first Dante Antonio. And also, inevitably the second Dante — whose middle name was Americanized to Anthony. Dante was my mother’s oldest brother and he suffered dearly because of Dante Antonio.

********

You may be wondering how this story of the two Dante Antonio's connects to "The Story of Clementina," which I wrote and posted in Substack last month.

The simple answer is that this story has EVERYTHING to do with Bis Nonna (Great Grandma) Clementina's story. I suppose I should just tell you right now that it was because of Clementina that the first Dante Antonio died, at the excruciatingly tender age of eight months, all cherubic and fleshy, his cheeks brushed pink and constantly reminding me -- and perhaps scaring me too -- of the cheeks of my darling grandson Monte, who is two and a half years old but still highly cherubic. When her precious first baby died, Grandma Mish was still a new bride, only 20 years old.

What continues to amaze me, all these many decades later, is that looking back, when Grandma Mish used to sit on her bed and proudly show me her beloved first baby, she never once spoke a mean word about her mother. She never once even whispered words of sadness. I didn't know better then, but now, as the mother of three and the grandmother of three, I realize that Mish's restraint bordered on the miraculous.

Can I in my wildest imagination comprehend how Mish managed to keep mum about the fierce sadness that must have hummed in her heart?

Ah, but as time would tell, Grandma Michelina, for all her pillowy softness, had a core of the hardest steel, as was demonstrated six decades later when in the space of ten years, she lost two of her beloved adult sons, Delio, who held a doctorate in Math (he succumbed to Multiple Myeloma in 1980,) and Claude, Jr., "Sonny," who held a doctorate in engineering, and who died in 1990 of a massive heart attack.

Back to baby Dante Antonio.

Grandma Mish learned very very early in her extraordinary life as a mother (she had six more children after losing the first Dante) a fundamental lesson that THANKFULLY we modern mothers rarely have to learn:

that children are God Given and (God FORBID) God Taken Away. At any moment of any day, these precious offspring can be snatched away from us, even in their prime months of babyhood.

The Story of Clementina, o "La Storia de mi Bis Nonna!"

July 16, 2025 1:13 pm

I spoke to Sarah Williams a few minutes ago on the phone. Sarah, a massage therapist in Lenox, MA, who spent a year living in Florence during college, was the person I turned to last fall when it was time to let someone fluent in Italian read my new novel, Finding Filomena.

Finding Filomena tells the story of how my great great grandmother Filomena Scrivano gave birth to her son out of wedlock in 1870 in southern Italy.

Filomena Scrivano’s son, Pasquale Orzo, was my father’s grandfather.

Much of this new novel, I am only a little embarrassed to say, I wrote with the assistance of Google translator. I am not too embarrassed because I was so desperate to write this book about my ancestor, and I don’t -- yet -- have the capability of speaking and writing in Italian. Voglio parlare e scrivere en Italian ma…

I have felt an irrepressible need to speak and to write and to hear Italian spoken for about five years now, ever since the pandemic to be exact. But I was much too busy writing this new novel to enroll in language classes.

So I relied on Google, along with the patchwork of Italian I know from sitting at the dining room table in Canton, Connecticut and listening endlessly to my Mom converse with her mother, Grandma Michelina Caponi Rotondo, and her father, Claude “Pop” Rotondo. I eked out the Italian as best I could.

Sarah, who is a massage therapist, read Finding Filomena so carefully, she even edited some of the English, along with correcting the Italian. That's not surprising, considering the fact that she did after all attend Mount Holyoke College, majoring in Italian.

My mother, C. Dena Ricci, and me, Claudia Ricci, age three or four.

It was after I got off Sarah’s massage table last September that I handed her a box with a neat pile of paper, three inches high, which was the manuscript. I remember asking her why it doesn’t work to rely on Google translator to write a book. Her reply was simple.

“Well,” she said in her very patient and loving way. “People just don’t speak like that.”

It was also during that same massage last September that I first found myself verbalizing a horrifying story from my MOTHER’s side of the family. The story involves my mother’s grandmother, Clementina Ciucci.

I didn’t even realize I was telling the story until Sarah stopped rubbing my right arm with lavender-scented lotion and said, without the least bit of humor in her voice, “Claudia this is your next novel.”

At that moment I surfaced out of the massage-induced trance. I laughed, quite dismissively. “Oh Sarah, I haven’t even finished writing about Great Great Grandma Filomena Scrivano. Right now, I cannot imagine writing another novel. Maybe ever!”

*****

Mom was christened Clementina Dena Rotondo in March of 1926 and as she grew into adulthood, she realized how much she detested her first name. She hated it so much that she actually went to court sometime during the 1990s to have her name officially changed to C. Dena Ricci.

“I don’t want that awful name Clementina on my gravestone,” Mom said matter-of-factly. My mom was as gentle a soul as you will find, an angel really, except every now and then, she would get enraged and put her foot down about something.

She put her foot down on this matter of her headstone.

When I texted Sarah the other day, I told her I needed to speak to her right away. She told me she had some time this morning before noon. Almost as soon as we began speaking, I told her that my mom and dad, who were the wind in my sails, pushing me to write Finding Filomena, are now pushing me to write my mother’s namesake’s story.

Sarah was shocked. She hadn’t forgotten about the story that she unlocked from me last September, but she was surprised that after telling her I might never write another novel, I was now, ten months later, telling her that I had to write the book, as in, right away.

I told her I was feeling scared. I told her that I wrote Finding Filomena with my parents vaguely floating all around me. But now they were making themselves known in more direct ways. It was, in short, kind of spooking me out.

"Sarah, I don't feel ready to meet with dead people, even if those dead people happen to be my beloved parents."

She didn’t miss a beat. She spoke softly but firmly, the way she always speaks. “Just ask your mom and dad

My parents, Dena Rotondo Ricci and Richard Louis Ricci, at their engagement in 1949. Rose painting by Fawn Frome, my brother Ric Ricci's wife.

to approach you with caution when they appear. Just tell them to go slow,” Sarah said, her gentle voice pouring over me as if I am a baby and my mother is pouring over me my first warm bathwater. I closed my eyes while she spoke.

I felt myself calming down right away. I told her that the way I relax these days is by shutting off my phone, and sitting quietly, doing absolutely nothing at all.

Sometimes, I said, I stare out at the glorious meadow, and the dancing willow trees, or the dazzling flower gardens in a rainbow of colors. Sometimes I lay in the pool in a "dead woman’s float," going limp and looking up at the cloud patterns in the deep blue sky.

Sarah endorsed relaxation above all else. She strongly encouraged me to keep shutting off my phone, and my computer if necessary. “Just give in to relaxation,” she said. “Feel your body. Listen to your body.”

So I am now going to shut off my phone.

To breathe. And maybe, just maybe, a little later on today, I will go back into my study and just sit quietly at my desk. Or maybe I will kneel at my meditation table.

I will speak very carefully, very slowly to my mom and to my dad, whose extraordinary photos stare at me over my computer.

I will breathe in and out a few times, and I will ask Mom to tell me the story of Clementina.

Finding Filomena is Coming Out in Paperback!

Nancy Dunlop, an extraordinary poet, is the author of a fabulous chapbook called “Hospital Poems,” but she’s also really into reading memoirs. Here, she kindly reviewed Finding Filomena:

In exploring a family’s genealogy, we often assume that we will make a tidy family tree. But dipping into the past is not tidy.

It is strewn with questions only ghosts can answer. Claudia Ricci began questioning the ghosts of her ancestors to discover why she always felt an undercurrent of shame in her family. Was this shame generational? And if so, where did it come from?

This question led her to her great grandfather, Pasquale Orzo, born in Italy to an unwed mother in 1870. At that time, it was considered shameful for a woman to have a baby out of wedlock. The baby would be taken from its mother and forced into a foundling home by the Catholic Church, almost certain to die there. In fact, in 1870 in the region where Pasquale was born, more than 93% of babies ripped from their mothers by the Church died in foundling homes within a year. Little Pasquale survived. But how? Did his mother, Filomena Scrivano, go against the Church to protect her child? Just what was the story of this brave woman, Ricci’s great great grandmother?

In Finding Filomena, Ricci crafts a lively and imaginative fictional account of Filomena, exploring just how her ancestor might have saved her child. Here we find a woman who is not a victim. She has strength and agency, as well as a cast of colorful characters who help her in her quest.

And it doesn’t seem like a coincidence that Filomena’s last name, Scrivano, means scribe in English. In the novel, Filomena is a writer who literally writes herself and her story into being. And the reader gets the feeling that Ricci is also writing HER story into being, with the clear belief in the power of writing to right a wrong.

In the end, we watch Filomena claim her child and her legacy, just as Ricci makes claim to the dignity of her extraordinary lineage.

If you are interested in pre-ordering a paperback copy of "Finding Filomena," please contact me at claudiajricci@gmail.com

What a Small Small World it Is! Also, a Print Version of My Novel is Coming Soon

My neighbor Lana Israel is leaving Massachusetts, moving back to Rhode Island to live near family, so a few friends and I took her out to lunch today.

She asked if I was working on a novel, so I told her about my new book, Finding Filomena, which tells the story of my great great grandmother, Filomena Scrivano, who way back in 1870 in southern Italy, had a baby — my great grandfather — out of wedlock (oh what an awful word.) The shame that resulted lived on for a long long time.

One thing led to another at lunch, and suddenly Lana said, “I know David Kertzer.” I was flabbergasted. What are the odds that she would know the historian at Brown University who wrote a definitive book: Sacrificed for Honor: Italian Infant Abandonment and the Politics of Reproductive Control. It’s an amazing book that explores the horrific facts surrounding my great great grandmother’s situation as an unwed mother. Lana’s family attends the same synagogue in Providence, Rhode Island, that Kertzer does. Lana’s husband, Richard J. Israel, served as Attorney General of Rhode Island from 1971 to 1975. He passed away in 2022.

A little-known fact — and one that Kertzer writes about in great detail — is that for centuries in Italy (and in all other Catholic countries in Europe) illegitimate babies were routinely taken away from their mothers and housed in “ospizios,” foundling homes where the poor infants usually perished because hired wet nurses readily transmitted disease from one baby to another. David Kertzer’s compelling historical account of this situation gave me a much-needed perspective on my great great grandmother’s scary dilemma back in the 19th century.

According to Kertzer, “even in the first years of the twentieth century…only 62 percent of Italy’s foundlings lived to their first birthday.”

Something else Kertzer reveals: women were policed! That is, unmarried women who got pregnant were often turned into authorities by priests, doctors, midwifes or even neighbors. Women were imprisoned in order to prevent them from seeking abortions.

In other words, women in Italy in the old days faced a predicament not entirely unlike that of too many women today. According to Sacrificed for Honor, published in 1993, hundreds of thousands of babies died throughout Europe because of this monstrous practice by the Catholic Church (which apparently started in Italy and was most extreme there.)

In 1870, in the southern region of Calabria, Italy, where my great great grandmother delivered her son (who was given the rather silly name of Pasquale Orzo), Kertzer reports that a horrifying 93 percent of the illegitimate babies died, making it an absolute “miraculo” that my great grandfather survived.

It was in part because I wanted to explain how this miracle came to pass that I decided to write Finding Filomena, the novel about my great great grandmother.

Until now, I haven’t publicly thanked Dr. Kertzer for his extraordinary book. He has written numerous other fine books, too, including several histories of the Vatican and the Popes. Kertzer still teaches at Brown University, where he is Paul Dupee Jr. University Professor of Social Science, Professor of Anthropology, and Professor of Italian Studies. I was a student in the 1970s; I graduated from Brown a few years after Kertzer did.

Meanwhile, my novel is earning praise even from some non-family members, which comes as a welcome surprise to me.

And now, it looks like there will be a print version of the book, and that makes me very excited. If you’re interested in a copy of the print edition, please email me at claudiajricci@gmail.com.

Finding Filomena is now available as an ebook on on Amazon.com and also, on Kobo.com.

An old black and white photo of a young woman, buried in a family trunk. Whispers over the years among my grandmother and her five sisters.

For as long as I can remember, there was a dark secret in my father's family. But once my grandmother and all her sisters had passed, the secret was out: my great grandfather, Pasquale Orzo, was born out of wedlock in 1870 to a poor young woman named Filomena Scrivano, who lived in the southern province of Calabria in a small seaside town called Paola.

In English, the name Scrivano means "scribe," but in this novel, I take on the job of scribe for my ancestor's love story, one that was “channeled” through me after I visited the tiny seaside town of Paola and met dear Great Great Grandma — Bis Bis Nonna, in Italian — in an old seaside cafe in 2023.

Finding Filomena, the book that resulted, is now available as an ebook on Amazon.com and Kobo.com. Not only does the book identify the man Filomena fell in love with, the man who is responsible for producing the enormous Orzo clan – one which today numbers hundreds of descendants from Connecticut to California – the novel also solves perhaps an even bigger mystery:

A little-known, and thoroughly appalling, fact is that for centuries in Italy (and in all other Catholic countries in Europe) illegitimate babies were routinely taken away from their mothers and housed in “ospizios,” horrible foundling homes where the babies usually perished before the age of one, principally because hired wet nurses transmitted disease from infant to another.

According to a well-researched book called Sacrificed for Honor, by Brown University historian David Kertzer, hundreds of thousands of babies died because of this monstrous practice. In 1870, in the region of Calabria where Pasquale Orzo was born, a horrifying 93 percent of the illegitimate babies died, according to Kertzer, leaving us asking the question: how did the "miraculo" (miracle) happen? How is it that our illegitimate ancestor Pasquale Orzo managed to survive?

For years and years, my family members have traded countless emails and conversations, always asking the same question: who was Pasquale’s father? Some speculated that Filomena’s lover was a nobleman from the north of Italy. Others suggested he was a rich businessman. Or a member of the Swiss Guard, the elite military assigned to the Pope.

In writing my novel, it was my intention to restore dignity to Filomena Scrivano’s reputation. I also wanted to try to erase the endless shame that was handed down from Pasquale Orzo to my grandmother, Albina Orzo Ricci, and her five Orzo sisters, as well as to their offspring.

What I didn’t realize until Filomena began to come alive as a character for me, is that this book is a dramatic coming-of-age story for a young woman who was born into a situation with absolutely no horizons, no opportunity, no possibility of escape. When she meets the charming Giovanni Masiero, her world opens up. Filomena realizes not only the possibility of love, but she is also exposed to Giovanni’s cultured world, where she finds herself as an artist (a writer, like her name suggests) and as a strong, independent woman. Filomena finds the inner resources to survive and ultimately, to transcend the tragedy of her circumstances. At the end of the book, Filomena and her best friend Nunzi actually come up with a marvelous way to help other young women who become pregnant and are in danger of having their babies taken away.

PICTURED ABOVE: Pasquale Orzo and his wife, Caterina, with six of his ten children. My grandmother, Albina, is standing to the right of her mother.

Some readers have asked how I came to write this story. To be absolutely honest, I really didn’t do the choosing. Like so much of the best fiction, the story was delivered to me by mysterious means. Moreover, as I will reveal in later posts, I received ample help in writing the book from my dear parents, Ric and Dena Ricci, who passed away before I wrote the book. I know, I know, how weird, right? But trust me, I have kept careful notes on the help they delivered.

Of course I received help from living relatives as well. First and foremost, I owe so much to my first cousin, Donna Ricci (her father and mine were brothers), who has done an enormous amount of important genealogical research on the Orzo family over the years. Indeed, it was Donna who inherited that trunk from our grandmother Albina Orzo Ricci’s younger sister, Lisette Orzo DiPinto. It was Donna who found the only photo that we have of Filomena Scrivano, the one that graces the book’s cover. On the back of the photo was a date, 23 Ottobre 1919,

and just a couple of lines of script: Filomena Scrivano Pera was presenting the photo “al mio caro figlio Pasquale,” to her dear son Pasquale. Beneath Filomena’s handwriting, my grandmother Albina identified Filomena Scrivano as her “Paternal grandmother.” In other words, Filomena is my grandmother’s grandmother.

Perhaps the biggest surprise for me in writing this book is that it ended up helping me tap into a whole new identity. As I explain in the book, growing up, I never felt much pride in my Italian-American heritage. But in the course of writing this book, and traveling to southern Italy to research it, I discovered not only that I love Italy (which was always true), but also that I love being Italian, I love hearing and learning and speaking the language and I love learning the country’s unusual history.

In other words, I have become passionate about being Italian American!

I have lots more I can say about the book. For now, though, I have my feet up and I am enjoying the fact that I “found” Filomena. As I say at the end of the book, “I’m done for now, but should our dear Great Great Grandma Filomena have more to tell me, I will be ready, and eagerly waiting to hear what she has to say.”

Thank You Mom and Dad, for Helping Me Write "Finding Filomena!"

I wasn't going to post this chapter. I kept telling myself it's just too kooky and "out there" and people might doubt my sanity :) But now that Filomena Scrivano, my great great grandmother,

has finished telling me, chapter by chapter, her very sad love story, and the ebook is out, I figure it's time to thank my parents -- who routinely were contacting me via my iPhone -- for helping me to write this book. Oh, I almost forgot to say, both of my parents passed away before I started writing the book.

How It All Began

I can't recall exactly when it started, but the first time I actually recorded their contact was in October, 2023, when Rich and I were travelling in southern Italy, in large part to research my great great grandmother Filomena's life. It was the 27th of October, 2023, to be exact, and we were in Lecce,

a magnificent old city in the region of Puglia (the heel of the Italian boot.) Rich had just been diagnosed with COVID. He was sick in bed with a fever, chills, aches, congestion, and a sore throat.

I had gone out in search of a "farmacia" for medication;

I was completely distracted because my husband was busy texting me. He was trying to explain what medication the physician, who spoke only Italian, had told him to buy. The woman at the farmacia didn't speak English either. Ayayayay,

the last thing I expected at that moment was to see my "pop" suddenly pop up on my iphone!

Perhaps because I was so so surprised, I decided to record dad's appearance. When I told my sister Holly about it (because we often talk about missing our dad!) she was skeptical. "Claud, dad never called himself pop!" she observed. And while she is right, most of the time he did not call himself pop, I do recall times when he was in a good mood, he did refer to himself that way.

This Is How It Works

What happens is this: I am on my phone, texting, and then I put my phone down for a moment. When I go to pick it up again, I have, in the texting line, either:

mom

OR

pop.

Here below, I will show you the latest two contacts, from last week.

The first is from Mom, while I was texting with a friend in the morning:

And the second, three hours later, from my dad (calling himself pop) while I was texting with my daughter Lindsay:

Something similar happened about two weeks before, when Mom and Dad got in touch on the same day. First, when I was texting with my friend Leslie in the morning:

And then, when I was texting with another friend in the afternoon, my dad popped up again.

My Parents Have Helped Me Write Filomena's Story

I'm pretty certain I know why they have been in touch so often. Mom and Dad have been cheering me on as I have been busy writing "Finding Filomena," my tale about how Filomena fell in love and got pregnant and had to give her infant son (my great grandfather Pasquale Orzo) away because she was an unmarried mother. Filomena was my Dad's great grandmother. His mother's maiden name was Orzo, which may also explain why in the last ten years of his life, Dad tried so extraordinarily hard to complete the ORZO family tree.

The Orzo Family Tree

He spent days using an exacto knife to cut out tiny rectangular pieces of paper with each family member's name; he glued them very carefully on a sheet of 11 by 17 inch paper. Despite all his hard work, however, Dad never quite finished the Orzo family tree, which is why I feel certain, in my heart of hearts, that he really wanted me to tell his great grandmother's tragic story.

Dad has also appeared when Rich and I have been texting about politics.

That's not surprising, considering the fact that my dad and I had countless arguments about politics. Dad supported Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and on and on while I supported Carter, Clinton, Obama, Biden. (I never asked my dad if he voted for Trump, because, by 2016, when Dad was 90 years old, I had told him that I refused to argue about politics with him anymore; he was too old, and I cared about him too much.)

The Weirdest iPhone Message of All

By far the most puzzling sighting EVER happened at the end of December, 2023, when my mother appeared not as MOM but as

DEE, which was everybody's favorite nickname for her (my mother's first name was Dena.)

The strangest thing about this DEE sighting on my iPhone was that it came in a conversation with my son Noah, who lives in Colorado. Noah was texting with me and my husband, telling us that he and a good friend had just completed a FOUR (yes, four!) hour meditation. He texted:

"Lots of images of grandparents came up in the last hour"

"Lots of crying"

"They loved me so much!"

And that's EXACTLY when his grandmother DEE appeared as

/e

e dee

on my iPhone. When I pointed this sighting out to my son, he responded:

"That is VERY weird"

and after I sent him more examples, he wrote

"Hmmmm!"

"Maybe there is a ghost afoot!"

Even my sister Holly lost some of her skepticism. When I described to her what had transpired with Noah, sending her that chain of texts after he meditated for four hours, she replied

"Holy crap!"

So now, of course, the question arises: can I explain what's going on here?

Of course not, not if you're asking me to present the underlying physics of how this happens.

Our Ancestors Are With Us But I do have an answer to the question: What does this mean?



What I think it means is that my parents are very close to me, spiritually. Many many times as I have been writing Filomena's story, I have felt their presence. Even though I don't see my therapist Mary Marino anymore, I remember how clearly and emphatically she believed that

there is no death, for the soul, the loved ones we lose are always with us, and

our ancestors are looking out for us, and they love us beyond measure.

She explained it to me this way: "Think about how much you love your children. Then think about how even more precious your grandchildren are to you. Now imagine your grandchildren having children. And those children, and on and on..."

With each generation, your love intensifies.

So I am going to stop here. Because clearly I have gone out on a bit of a shaky limb. I am quite sure that there are readers who are highly skeptical that my parents have been in contact with me. I fully realize that I am asking you the reader to believe in...well, in ghosts, as Noah suggested.

But believing in ghosts doesn't hurt anyone, at least as far as I can tell. And believing in ghosts, for lack of a better word, helps me, especially lately, when the world of politics feels so dark and desperate.

As I look back, I feel an immense amount of love for my parents, and I am endlessly thankful to them for all sorts of blessings they bestowed on me and my family. I am not ashamed to say that one way or another, my mother and father -- along with many of my other ancestors -- have been the wind in my sails as I've written this book. As we say in Italian, I am very very grateful: Sono così così grata!