Following her first book, Cruel and Sweet Love, Chiara M. returns to tell her own story—the life of a woman forced by relentless illness to surrender herself, her appearance, her habits, her work as a nurse. In a short time, she had to reimagine her entire existence to make room for a disease that brought her to contemplate death itself.
Life had given her, even in childhood, a hard exterior that allowed her to preserve an exceptionally resilient spirit against the storm of illness. She speaks directly with it, calls it her Partner, debates her condition while swinging between moments of deep despair and genuine hymns to life and Love.
Her story and the way she tells it touch something in everyone, regardless of belief. This is one of those books that can provoke resistance; skepticism might lead a reader to abandon it halfway, to leave it suspended like an unfinished task.
And in fact, Chiara's account touches on those unfinished tasks that each of us must face, sooner or later, in our own way. Extreme suffering—from serious illness and the very human search that follows for meaning and purpose—these are private struggles that require deeply personal paths. Chiara does not attempt to explain suffering. She testifies to her way of meeting it with dignity and boundless hope. Readers may wonder what illness she has. I wrote her an email (contact information appears at the back of the book) and she replied:
"I don't think it matters to readers what my illness is called. For me, it was simply a means—one that allowed me to live an experience of this magnitude. We've grown used to the media telling us everything about everyone. Perhaps we need to recover a sense of respect, to stop demanding to know everything and instead accept what others feel able to share, without forcing it. The message I want to convey goes beyond any diagnosis, beyond any medical record. Pain cannot be labeled. Pain is universal, and for that reason I want to reach people's hearts—not through a particular disease (that would risk narrowing the audience from the start) but through what illness, what pain, has done to my soul. That is what matters to me. Everything else is secondary."
"Light cannot exist without its shadow. They walk hand in hand. The darker the shadow, the brighter the light shines. Everything has a cost. One I pay personally, again and again."
Laura Nardini, 2008
