We don't always see it, but they are there, often right beside us: children whom no one wants. Not only those abandoned at birth, but those who grow up with no one to truly love and accept them. These are children who experience—and often brutally—the rejection of others, and so they never learn to love. They are born healthy and free, we say. But free from whom? From what? A child cannot and must not be free. A child needs to belong to someone—someone who holds them close, someone who binds them with an intense and steadfast love that will accompany them throughout life.
There are many of them, and we often see them. They may be the ones who disrupt class, who talk back, who are "aggressive" and break the rules, but who rarely cry. We don't worry much about them. We see them as a nuisance, a threat to the other students. For this reason, I want to tell the story of two of these teenagers—"free" because at some point in their lives, they belonged to no one.
Stefania's life contains all the elements of a nineteenth-century novel: abandoned by her mother at birth, the death of both parents, her grandmother's grave illness (the grandmother who had raised her), a parade of "good" relatives unable to meet her needs, incapable of receiving her suffering, deaf to her desperate—if proud—plea for attention.
Stefania is thirteen and in her second year of middle school when she begins to reject school altogether. She misses classes frequently and behaves inappropriately: her relationships become destructive, and her lifestyle grows dangerously risky for her age. After her father's death, Stefania lives with her elderly grandmother. As the grandmother's physical and mental condition deteriorates, Stefania experiences yet another abandonment. She turns to "extreme" behaviors—striking for someone so young. She goes to nightclubs, stays out late with older friends, and stops following any rules at all.
When her grandmother dies, Stefania begins the rounds among relatives. But none of them can handle her rebellious, oppositional nature, which masks a desperate—yet proud—hunger for love. Her aunts and uncles attack her violently, blaming her for the real or imagined failures of her parents.
For several months, this fourteen-year-old girl lives almost entirely alone. She drifts through life, sometimes with no food to eat. She doesn't attend school and doesn't trust social services—which she sees as "the authorities," institutions she has learned to fear. Yet she has no choice but to turn to them for the basics of daily living.
Outwardly, Stefania is friendly and cheerful, but her feelings remain locked inside. She wants to seem "tough." She projects confidence and rarely gives in to emotion. This is why she is referred to a psychologist, whom she refuses to see. She refuses, always, with determination.
During those months when multiple institutions become involved—the municipal government, the local health authority, her school, the juvenile court, the guardian judge—Stefania lives in a state of extreme danger, even to her own physical safety. Yet despite being very difficult, rebellious, and proud, she shows remarkable inner strength. Somehow she maintains just enough distance from seriously deviant behavior.
The municipal social services, the public guardian, and especially the juvenile court and guardian judge all push for Stefania to be placed in a residential facility. But she insists that if that happens, she will run away immediately. She even threatens to kill herself.
Under these circumstances, no facility is willing to take her—at least not those family-style group homes that operate on trust-based educational models and require some minimal agreement from the young person.
When summer comes, Stefania agrees to spend a month at a convent run by sisters in a seaside town. She finds the atmosphere peaceful and welcoming. She doesn't behave perfectly, but by the end, she admits she felt good there. She won't agree to stay permanently. Yet this experience marks a turning point. For the first time, she discovers she can trust and rely on someone. This happens because of the sensitivity, educational skill, and generous heart of the sister who runs the community.
When the vacation ends, Stefania slips back into her wandering life. Her relatives have taken over her house, so she spends most of her time in a small village where she has friends. She "disappears" for stretches with no word, then reappears wanting to be placed with some family she's stayed with briefly—families in crisis or deeply unstable, people she met during her nighttime escapades. Until one day, after yet another escape, she finds herself by chance at the home of a new friend. This family is stable. The parents, Carmine and Daniela, contact the police and offer to take her in for a few days. But at this point Stefania understands, reluctantly, that she has no choice—she must enter a group home.
While living in the group home, her behavioral problems continue but become more manageable. Carmine and Daniela help by hosting her for holidays and, gradually, for every weekend. Despite frequent emotional outbursts, Stefania keeps reasonable hours and attends school with decent regularity.
She forms a deep, genuine emotional bond with the elderly director of the group home, a nun with a gruff manner but a tender heart who takes to Stefania with obvious affection and special care. One day the sister tells her something extraordinary: in the past, she had taken in Stefania's mother in this same community. She tells Stefania about her mother and shows her photographs. For Stefania, the circle begins to close. She traces her roots. She finds the mother she has only heard denigrated. In this elderly nun, she discovers a kind of indulgent, loving grandmother—like the one she lost, like grandmothers should be. This brings some peace to her heart. She begins building an increasingly important relationship with Carmine and Daniela's family. She starts to accept rules and work on changing her behavior. After a year, they ask the court for guardianship.
Stefania is now a young woman. She has settled seamlessly into her new, large family. For some years she worked various jobs. Later, as an adult, she went back to school and earned a diploma. Soon Stefania will start a family of her own, and she will be able to love her children.
Gianni's childhood shares some elements with Stefania's: a family that isn't there for various reasons, a mother who dies, an absent father, and a grandmother. An elderly, fragile grandmother who, over time, finds in her heart a space of acceptance. That space will give her the strength to welcome a "lost" boy back into her life.
Gianni lived until age ten with his mother and her new husband. After his parents separated, he saw his father rarely. The days he was supposed to spend with his father, according to the judge's order, he spent mostly with his paternal grandmother. His father was almost always elsewhere. Eventually, "elsewhere" is where he finds work and starts another family.
Gianni, however, is a sensible boy. He studies well, adapts to this arrangement, and is fond of his younger half-sister. He doesn't like his stepfather, especially because the stepfather clearly prefers his own daughter. Still, Gianni lives peacefully with him. When Gianni is not yet ten, his mother falls gravely ill. In her final months, he cares for her and handles many household tasks, especially when his stepfather is at work. On the very day his mother dies, he is sent to stay with his grandmother. He never returns home. He even changes schools mid-year. When elementary school ends, his grandmother—now over eighty—feels she cannot manage a boy on the edge of adolescence. She thinks it's best for him to go live with his father. Clearly, the father's new partner doesn't agree. She has other children to care for. And the father himself seems unable to step into his paternal role, unable to offer affection and real welcome to this son who is now alone.
Gianni begins to act out. He becomes restless, unmotivated, and difficult at his new school. So difficult that he causes serious problems both at home—with strongly oppositional behavior—and in class, where he rejects his teachers and peers. The unprepared, makeshift "parental" couple's solution is to send him back to his grandmother, but she has no answers for a boy who is doubly hurt—by the loss of his mother and by his father's withdrawal.
Consider too that Gianni has never been able to express his grief over his mother's death. He has found no one to share it with, no one to comfort him. Even his few relatives on his mother's side have stayed away because of old family disputes.
Gianni withdraws into himself, affecting indifference. He never speaks of his mother or his life with her. Slowly, he puts on a "tough" mask, unable to show his feelings or his hunger for affection and attention. His rebellious, oppositional behavior becomes increasingly critical and sometimes violent—especially at school, where he cannot sit still, is utterly indifferent to the rules of civil life, speaks disrespectfully and crudely to students and teachers, and comes and goes as he pleases in the evenings. His grandmother and father decide he should go to a group home. His father begins to wonder whether Gianni acts this way because his mother gave him a bad upbringing, or whether he has some psychiatric problem. Gianni enters a group home, stays for several months, and then—despite having built a decent relationship with the director—is asked to leave because of his rude and aggressive behavior. This is another serious trauma for him. He wants to stay, he begs to stay. But circumstances force him out. He tries two other brief placements in other communities but is quickly removed from each. His behavior is now "intolerable" in a therapeutic community where other troubled teenagers live. But for Gianni, each rejection is literally devastating. He can barely bring himself to go to school anymore. The mere thought of it sends him into a rage. It seems no one is willing to offer him a "place."
How does a twelve-year-old boy feel when no one seems to want him? Perhaps like a hunted animal—pursued with rules and demands, yet driven out by the indifference of those who should carry love for him in their hearts, and even by those whose job it is to care for him.
Yet his elderly grandmother, despite her repeated insistence that she cannot manage him, is the only one who shows him affection. She keeps him with her after each "expulsion." She seeks help from social services, trying to find a proper solution, even though she understands that Gianni prefers to stay with her.
One day Gianni is placed in a day center for troubled adolescents. He has a chance to try different workshops. Then he discovers a passion for computer classes. He begins to socialize with other "difficult" peers. Most importantly, he starts to trust adults again and lets them help him. He develops a strong bond with his group's counselor. Only with her does he begin to speak about his mother, sometimes letting his emotion show. After three years at the center, Gianni has returned to school and earned his middle school diploma. Now he is taking a vocational course in computer operation and plays on a volleyball team. He lives with his grandmother, behaves well enough, and shows he still has a great need for his father's presence and interest. His father, relieved of direct responsibility and daily involvement, has tried in his own way to maintain steady contact with his son. But he has remained very much on the sidelines of his son's growth. For an adolescent boy, this is a serious problem.
I chose these two stories because they had positive outcomes. They are painful stories, sometimes almost unbelievable. They are true stories that challenge each of us. These teenagers live near us. They attend school with our children or sit in our classrooms. Many of them never recover that gift life took from them. They feel they belong to no one. They are convinced they were rejected because they were bad children. As a result, some develop a negative identity with antisocial behavior. In others, the wound to the heart and loss of self-worth lead to regression and emotional and relational blocks that push them toward mental illness or social deviance. Like Ettore, who at fourteen was abandoned first by his father, then by a mentally fragile mother, then by grandparents who could not bear his rebellions and his fierce, strange demands for attention and love. Today he carries a serious psychiatric diagnosis. Or Luciano, who lost his mother at thirteen, was cared for by an elderly, ill grandmother, left at the mercy of a selfish and dangerous father, and has already known prison. Or Rosalinda, who at fourteen entered an institution because her mother took back the father who had sexually abused both her and her sister.
There are children and teenagers whose lives are dramatically marked by the death of a parent. But often the real tragedy is not the loss itself. It is the rejection and indifference of everyone else. There are so many children and teenagers with painful stories, lives of suffering, because at some point that fragile thread connecting them to someone important in their emotional world snaps. Someone who could have or should have given them the foundation that makes life possible for any of us. The gift of a family's love.
R.M.A., 2008