I've never found it easy to accept myself. I'm 34 years old and I live with a motor disability. Despite steady progress in independence through years of physical therapy, I remain physically dependent on others. Some friends who share my condition told me something I've taken to heart: with disability, you can learn to live alongside it. You can come to understand that a limitation isn't necessarily entirely negative—it can actually help you discover capacities you never knew you had, gifts already within you waiting to emerge. And yet, no matter what, it's hard to accept this fully, to make peace with it once and for all.
The family I grew up in helped steady me, giving me the emotional foundation I needed despite my anxious nature, which surfaces in certain seasons and contexts. Honestly, I can say I'm satisfied with who I am. I see my stumbles. I have plenty of character flaws and things to work on. But if I've managed to hold onto a joy in living despite everything, I owe it not just to my parents' love, therapy, and my studies in philosophy—I owe it above all to my beloved twin sister Silvia and to the hunger for spiritual searching that drives me.
We're identical twins, and the physical resemblance is hard to miss. Over time we've become very different people, and we've always been careful to preserve each of our own styles and qualities. Love grows through dialogue and encounter with what is other than ourselves. What is different from me enriches me, challenges me, makes me grow. We have different aesthetics: hers is ethnic, simple, more minimal than mine (even in makeup); I'm more eccentric in clothes, drawn to bright colors and unusual accessories. I think mine is less about showing off and more about hiding shyness and inner fragility—a way of letting my colorful, light soul come through, freed from the weights we all carry in different measures. Silvia and I talk a lot. We understand each other. She's not particularly religious, but she shares my dream of a more solidary, egalitarian, less materialistic world. But the thing I love most about my sister? She makes me laugh. She always brings calm into my days. We have so much fun together.
We share a deep love of nature, of animals (there've always been pets in our house), of poetry and art: things that connect us to what goodness and beauty still exist in the world, that invite us to believe in good despite all the harm. Italo Calvino wasn't wrong when he said you must live lightly—and that's very different from being superficial. This is also the most beautiful lesson Jesus taught me.
I wish we could all stay united, not closing ourselves into our separate communities, because the Church is all of us. Alone, we cannot win.
In recent years I've been active in the Sant'Egidio community. Through them I've learned to look more at the present moment, without being crushed by the problems of our consumer-driven Western world, so bent on teaching ambition and competition. I have many friends with different disabilities, including cognitive ones. They've taught me to be simpler, to understand that Jesus doesn't want us all to be "professors." Pope Francis reminds us of this constantly: the Gospel isn't announced from a lectern or through proselytizing. God loves us as we are, in our humility. He calls us to stand beside the poor and all those who are alone and forgotten, the last ones. In fact, it's in them that we meet him.
I wish I could have a simpler faith. I wish I could trust more. Sometimes, maybe, I ask too many questions, carry too many doubts and worries. But I think I've come to understand that God is the name I've given to hope.
I wish we could all stay united, not closing ourselves into our separate communities, because the Church is all of us—and alone we cannot win. Only then can we people with disabilities find our gifts within our limits, and understand that we need help, just like everyone else, without shame. We are all called to help and to help one another as brothers and sisters.
