Since November, the new Ombre e Luci website has been live (www.ombreeluci.it)! As we mark the magazine's 35th anniversary in 2018, we thought the best way to celebrate would be to make 130 back issues accessible on the site by year's end. Recent issues will remain available in print—we're not abandoning that format—but subscribers and supporters of the magazine will also have access to PDFs on request.
We'll be sharing our progress regularly, highlighting articles that still feel relevant (and there are many) and that move us most deeply across our social channels (Facebook and Twitter). If you'd like, you can send us your email address to receive our newsletter.
Rereading every issue of Ombre e Luci slowly and completely—hunting for inevitable typos along the way (please let us know if you spot any)—has opened my eyes to so much. I keep stumbling upon the good sense, honesty, and empathy of all the people who have known disability firsthand or through deep friendship, and who wanted to share that knowledge with others through our magazine. I find the faces of so many friends in photographs chosen with such care—always to bring out the best in each person, even those who don't fit the usual definition of beautiful.
And in all of this, I remember Mariangela Mazzarotto Bertolini.
There were no social media platforms as we have them now. But there was a fierce desire to stay close to one another, to stay informed. So Mariangela and others—Guenda, Rita, Anna, Tea, and others whose names I don't know—started with a simple duplicated newsletter called Insieme. They were certain that suffering demanded at least companionship. They drew inspiration from the French experience of Friquette, a mother like Mariangela whom she had met at Lourdes, and who had restored her joy.
From that seed came a vision: to reach other isolated families. In 1983, Ombre e Luci was born, with the precious support of Nicole and Sergio, later Natalia and many others. The mission was to share reflection and information, to offer meaningful and practical experiences—always with the firm conviction that people with disabilities, especially intellectual disabilities, and their families must never feel wholly, entirely cast to the margins of society and the Church.
Discouragement must have swept over us many times. It was certainly never easy. Yet here we are in 2017—thanks above all to the constant and vital support of Fede e Luce onlus—still trying to carry this work forward. We have made real progress, taken long pauses, and, sadly, stepped backward in a world we had hoped would by now be truly inclusive.
Now we are trying, in honor of their commitment and Mariangela's legacy, to truly share this precious treasure of experience, testimony, and reflection. The passing years are felt most keenly in the language—terminology that now jars against our ears. We have chosen not to alter the texts, unwilling to betray the context in which they were written.
In times like these, it helps to refresh our memory and ask ourselves: how far have we come?
With the hope that all of this might add even a single drop—we trust a good one—to the vast ocean of life and history that belongs to each of us.
Cristina Tersigni, 2018