This is a book truly worth reading—authentic, meaningful, and scientifically valuable.
The author, president of the Cooperativa «Intervento» in Mestre and director of a rehabilitation center, recounts her experience: her encounter with the world of disability and her struggle to overcome it as far as possible. Piccoli came to know the problems of children with cerebral palsy almost by chance, at a mature stage of life. She was asked to help administer the Delacato method to a two-year-old boy. She accepted, perhaps because—or maybe despite—a profound youthful sorrow she had never quite made peace with life.
That first yes, spoken almost without thinking, set off a chain of emotions, attachments, and commitments that bound her to young Alvise. It moved her to organize the first group of volunteers who would follow him and help him make visible progress.
This first experience transformed Piccoli's life far beyond the emotional. The Delacato therapy she applied, the scientific theory behind it, pushed her to revisit her university studies. She found herself reading and translating medical texts about the causes of disability, growing ever more convinced of this therapy's irreplaceable value.
Events unfolded quickly. A chance meeting with other children and their parents showed her the need to expand her work. She wanted to test the therapy's effectiveness with more children, wanted many others to have the chance to gain movement, ability, and skills that she had seen possible through the Delacato method.
And so came a first simple gym where parents and friends took turns as therapists, then a proper rehabilitation center and a cooperative, while Piccoli learned to navigate between skeptical politicians and unions, always wary of the "volunteering" on which her organization depended.
The final pages turn to school inclusion—a question Piccoli now sees in a new light, having left behind her early enthusiasm. She argues that school cannot be aimed at social integration alone, for any child. Its true goal must be to activate, develop, and use every capacity hidden within the child, making them as equipped as possible to face what lies ahead. For disabled children, she believes, a specialized school with physical therapists, speech pathologists, and teachers trained in recovery techniques is better suited to this aim. Social contact, she suggests, should come through other moments and activities outside the classroom.
An authentic book, I said at the start, because it is sincere and passionate. A meaningful book because it witnesses a life transformed and enriched by encounter with the vulnerable. And a useful book because, beyond its more scientific and medical passages, it guides us to understand fundamental truths about disability and to think deeply about recovery and therapy.
by M. Teresa Mazzarotto, 1986