Read the review HERE

I was honored to see my memoir, It Takes a Lifetime to Learn How to Live: An Italian-American Story of Coming Home, recently reviewed in the March issue of The Florentine, an English-language publication based in Florence, Italy.

The author, Alexandra Lawrence, asks the question that sits at the heart of the book: Can the land of our ancestors heal us?

In 2000, when my life was collapsing, I set off alone to Italy to find my grandparents’ ancestral village of Rotondella. There I found the open arms of family, but I also uncovered the lingering shadows of the malocchio, omertà, rigid Catholicism, abject poverty, arranged marriage, patriarchal control, and the Mafia.

Slowly, I began to understand how these forces shaped not only my grandmother’s life, but also my mother’s – and my own. By honoring the courage of the women who came before me, I found the grace to make peace with my mother. And in that understanding, I found peace within myself.

I began writing this story in the summer of 2000. When my mother heard about the project, she was not happy.

“You can write about your grandmother, Missy,” she said. “But you can’t write about me. No one needs to know about my life—not even you.”

Since she was the critical link between my grandmother and me, I set the writing aside.
Twelve years later – just five days before she died – she showed incredible courage and vulnerability. My feisty mom, despite all the fraught and difficult moments we had lived through, said,

“My life would make a good book, wouldn’t it?”
“But you told me I wasn’t allowed to write about you,” I countered.
She paused, then said simply:
“After I die, write.”

And with her permission, I did.

So, to answer Alexandra’s question, returning to the land of my ancestors did help to heal me. And for that, I’ll be eternally grateful.

With my Nonna, long before I knew about love stories

Romantic love may be the love we notice first and the love we talk about first, but it’s not always the love that shapes us or touches us most deeply. For me, It Takes a Lifetime to Learn How to Live: An Italian-American Story of Coming Home is a love story.

It is the love story of a child and her nonna in the kitchen, where love simmered slowly in pots of tomato sauce, filling the house with a sense of peace. It is the love story of a mother and daughter learning, over time, to understand one another, to accept each other, and to find peace together. Not perfectly, but enough. Most of all, it is a love story about coming home – not just to a place, but to self.

The truest love stories might not be about romance at all. They might be about learning how to open your heart to others, to your past, and sometimes to your own imperfect self.

Maybe a love story is simply the story of coming home.

And maybe it takes a lifetime to understand that love was there all along.

My younger son once said to me, “You don’t have to tell us what you think. We already know.”

Curious (and slightly defensive), I turned to my older son. “Is that true?”

His response was clear. “Yes. After all these years, we already know what you think and how you’ll respond. Now we learn how to live by watching the way you live.”

That moment changed me.

I suddenly felt the full weight of my actions. My sons weren’t moved by my lectures, reminders, or sage advice. They were learning from my reactions. My actions. My tone. My patience. My choices. By watching the way I lived – and I’m sure the same was true of their father – they were absorbing what to do… and what not to do.

I remember thinking, when I was young, that I would never say the things my mother said to me. I would never lose my temper the way she did. I would do better. That was a deliberate choice. But I wasn’t always successful. There were moments when I heard her words come out of my mouth before I could stop them, and instantly I wanted to grab them back. I wanted to pull them out of the air and swallow them whole. Too late.

Over time, I learned something even more important: how to apologize. I learned to say, “I was wrong. I’m sorry.” I learned to admit when my frustration spilled over. That, too, was something worth modeling.

The tapes of our youth play in our minds. We can’t erase them. The voices, the reactions, the patterns are imprinted in our brains. But we can become aware of them. We can pause. We can choose differently. We can lower our voices. We can soften our responses. We can try again. Every generation carries forward both wounds and wisdom.

Our children are always watching. And whether we intend to or not, by our actions and reactions, we are teaching them how to live.

The opening lines of IT TAKES A LIFETIME read:

Comfortable as a priest before the altar, Carmela stands at her stove.

Her right arm moves in familiar circles as she stirs rich red sugo with

a wooden spoon—the spoon that never hits me. While she cooks, she

moves her lips slowly in prayer. The scent of her heavenly tomato-

and-garlic sauce quiets me, fills me with peace.

Food was Nonna’s love language.

When I ran to her house with the heavy heart of a child, she didn’t ask questions. She cooked. Linguini with ricotta. Crispelle dusted in sugar. Spaghetti topped with mudika. Falahoni and fresh baked bread. “Mangia, mangia,” she would say, urging me to eat, to take in comfort the best way she knew how to give it.

Her kitchen was her sanctuary. The stove, her altar. The scent of tomato and garlic quieted my fears long before I could name them. I didn’t know then that she was wrapping me in love.

In my own kitchen, I am not the cook she was, but when the aroma of chicken and peppers fill the air, my sons know they are home before they even open the door. Chicken pastina soup simmers on the stove when they are ill. Meatballs, bracciole, stuffed shells, orecchiette remind them of who they are and where they come from.

I understand now what Nonna was teaching me without words: sometimes love is not spoken. Sometimes it is stirred slowly in a pot and served at the table.

Food is more than nourishment. It is memory. It is heritage. It is love made visible.

When my mother began telling me her stories, I stayed quiet and, with her permission, took notes in my journal. The longer I didn’t interrupt, didn’t clarify, didn’t rush her toward a point, the more she talked. Details surfaced that I had never heard before – names, places, hurts she had carried without sharing for ninety years. In that silence, something eased between us. We didn’t fix the past, but we found a kind of peace we had been missing for years.

It Takes a Lifetime to Learn How to Live is, in some respects, a love story about family and forgiveness. It tells the story of traveling to my family’s ancestral village in Italy to understand, first-hand, what my heritage looked like and felt like.

This book is not about researching the village on social media or following a trail on Ancestry (although I did that, too). What mattered was being there: talking with villagers, tasting the food, walking the same streets as my grandparents. That physical presence led me to understand, in a deep and personal way, the challenges they faced when they left their home and all they knew to begin again somewhere else.

Social media plays an important role in sharing this book with a wider audience. But a live presentation takes the story where it can be best heard and appreciated in person. Gathering together conveys the intimacy it deserves.

This is a deeply human tale of why understanding my heritage mattered to me – and, perhaps, why your heritage matters to you, too. That idea lives best in conversation, in a shared moment when we are all participating and present. When voice matters. When the nuances of language dance and play. When the room gets quiet, slower, more generous.

This isn’t about rejecting online spaces. It’s about showing up for people who want to know more. It’s about seeing one another.

I would love to see you and be with you on March 5 in Calvert County, Maryland, a community where important parts of this journey took place.

The myth of spaghetti and meatballs being “Italian” has seduced the world. In reality, you will not find spaghetti and meatballs on menus in Italy. This iconic plate was created by Italian immigrants after they arrived in the United States.

Meatballs (polpette) are absolutely common in Italy, but they are served as a main course, not piled on top of pasta.

In December 2025, UNESCO awarded Italian cuisine one of the world’s highest cultural honors: Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. It was the first time an entire national cuisine received this recognition. The award celebrates not just recipes, but Italian food as a living cultural practice — family meals, shared tables, and traditions passed down through generations.

Food historian Alberto Grandi, author of La Cucina Italiana Non Esiste, wrote in The Guardian: “The real history of Italian food is turbulent: a saga of hunger, improvisation, migration… and sheer survival. Those who left Italy did so because they were hungry.”

Many of us romanticize Italy and Italian food, but the real story behind many dishes beloved by Italian Americans was shaped by necessity. During the great diaspora, our ancestors boarded ships for New York, Buenos Aires, and other ports, fleeing hunger. They carried memories of the Old Country and did their best to recreate those flavors when they finally had access to ingredients and abundance.

So no, spaghetti and meatballs isn’t served in Italy, but it brings comfort to many of us as we simmer gravy or sauce for Sunday dinner. And that, perhaps, is exactly what UNESCO’s award honors: intangible cultural heritage – the meals, the memories, and the shared traditions that bind families together.

Now please pass me another meatball.

Mom and me

Both my nonna and mother dodged my questions for years. When I was young and asked Nonna how she grew up in Rotondella, she answered, “I have no good t’ing to say. T’ey are no good stories.” And she refused to say more.

When I asked Mom the same questions, I was met with silence – or feistiness. I remember clearly the day I asked her why I couldn’t find her marriage certificate to my dad in the Allegheny County records. She looked at me as if I had slapped her. Then, turning away, she stayed silent for what felt like a long time before finally telling me where to find the documents. It was only later that I learned she had been married before.

My reflection: I remember my own silences, especially when people asked about my older son and his addiction. How’s Jeff? Some questions felt compassionate; others, intrusive, as if to remind me that my child was sick and theirs were just fine.

Something to think about: Sometimes silence protects us. It can be a coping mechanism, a way to avoid opening old wounds and causing ourselves pain. At other times it boxes us in and stifles our growth. The stigma and shame of addiction kept me silent for years. I feel certain that for my mom and nonna, the shame of past traumas kept them silent for even longer. What a sadness.

Hands: Mine, Jeff, Jeremy, and Iysa

Finding Your Roots on PBS is now in its 12th season and has become one of the network’s most beloved programs, drawing more than 18 million viewers.

Why does it resonate so deeply?

Perhaps it’s because so many of us have questions about who we are and where we come from. We ask ourselves: What happened in my family’s past? What did my ancestors endure to arrive and build a life in the United States or elsewhere? How does their story live on in me? What shared human experiences connect my history to that of others?

My reflection: For all of these reasons, I chose to research my own past. I found important documents, located the town my grandparents left, and traveled back to Rotondella, where I found family – people who looked like me and embraced me. I wanted to follow the footprints my ancestors left behind and understand what they faced, and how their courage and struggle across generations helped shape my life and the lives of those I love.

Something to think about: Discovering our roots fulfills a fundamental human need to understand who we are, where we belong, and how we connect to history. Today, there are more tools than ever to help us trace those stories. It was an important search for me. Perhaps it will be for you too.