I wrote these pages "first for myself, to put my confused thoughts in order…". "Then for Valentina, my older daughter, so she could know the story of her sister's birth…". "For Giulia, so one day she can look back on her own story…". For Francesco, my husband…", "To share this experience with others in similar situations…".
After reading the book, I'd add to that list: for all of us. It's a gift—a true, beautiful story that teaches us to face life with courage, to recognize and overcome difficulties, to question ourselves, to learn to trust others, and at the same time to take initiative and responsibility for our own lives.
It's the simple story of a girl with Down syndrome, told by her mother, Isabella Piersanti. The experience is common to many families, but Isabella tells it with an immediacy, a plainness, a candor, and a depth that leave no one unmoved. It's an honest account—no apologies for the author's feelings, for the events of family life, for the judgments and behavior of others.
"We are happy. Giulia is happy. And she makes us happy."
"We are happy. Giulia is happy. And she makes us happy."Overall, the book radiates trust, calm, hope. "We are happy. Giulia is happy. And she makes us happy." At the same time, Isabella doesn't hide—alongside the discoveries, the satisfactions, the joys, the good relationships—the rough patches, the suffering, the misunderstandings, the exhaustion that marks the path toward happiness.
She doesn't minimize or conceal the initial difficulties, many of which come from how others behaved—words and gestures driven, in far too many cases, by a poisonous mix of clichés, prejudice, and complete lack of sensitivity. The nurses who, right after birth, come in shifts and ask: "Ma'am, at your age, why didn't you have an amniocentesis? You wouldn't be in this situation." And some even mention the mother's advanced age. The principal of the Catholic school: "You were really unlucky. Someone breaks an arm and loses it, but this disaster—you'll carry it with you your whole life." Isabella fights back and answers: "I'll introduce you to Giulia. Wait till you meet her—she's a delightful child."
What strikes you, faced with the banality and shallowness—worse yet, the cruelty—of so many judgments and behaviors, is the process of maturation and personal growth that begins for Isabella and her family with Giulia's birth. After "the sword that pierces me" and "universal sorrow" at the news, awareness comes swiftly: Isabella needs others. She needs her husband's affection and support, her mother's help (she'd feared her mother's intrusiveness), her friends' company.
Others become the doctors, the neuropsychiatrist, the psychologist, the physiotherapist, the families from AIPD (Italian Down Syndrome Association). Her relationships with these professionals are honest: sometimes she receives hard truths, has to own her mistakes, confront her groundless fears, recognize the overprotective habits that keep Giulia from her peers and her sister, the scarce time spent building a real relationship with her. She has to learn about the syndrome, follow Giulia's growth and her many needs, find the right answers to the questions of a child growing more aware of her own condition every day.
The book also covers the difficult but ultimately positive relationship with school. An institution that, on paper, leads the way in how it handles disability in our country—but in practice reveals its limits. Support arrives late and runs only a few hours per week. The math teacher changes four times in one year, but fortunately the Italian teacher brings skill and passion, pulling the whole class along. At school, Isabella learns to turn a blind eye when the special education teacher, with Giulia present, takes over from the regular classroom teacher, or when the middle school English teacher asks Giulia a question and tells her she did better than Lucia, "wounding two people at once." On school, though, Isabella has clear ideas. Support is necessary, but it's not the fundamental issue. What's needed are "good classroom teachers, a willingness to communicate, full engagement from everyone—including classmates and their parents".
Then there's Valentina, who sometimes struggles to include Giulia with her own friends and who raises early the question of "what happens after we're gone," worrying about her sister's future. Yet Valentina, Isabella notes—like all siblings of disabled children—will have "capable friends," "young people without prejudice," because "the people who come to our house will be free from fear and bias".
The book traces Giulia's gradual discovery of her identity as a person with Down syndrome. Giulia learning to build relationships with her "peers" and with non-disabled people, getting teased and shut out but also welcomed, defended, and valued. Because, as Isabella explains to Giulia, "Down syndrome isn't a disease. It's a condition that will be part of the person for their whole life. People with Down syndrome have common physical features—eyes shaped like almonds, small ears. Having the syndrome means having some extra difficulties, taking a bit more time to learn to count, to read. But people like this are like everyone else: they're all different from each other, and they can do many things".
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