OReach of us carries a suitcase, loaded and heavy. There is all the past, the previous, the built. And he tires us along the way. How to get rid of it? Maria Beatrice Alonzi, writer and scientific communicator with two million followers, helps us in You are not your parents (Sperling & Kupfer). A useful book to clarify yourself, gain awareness of one’s own history and the choices of “those who ruined our lives” (even if they didn’t want to), and move forward more lightly.
Maria Beatice Alonzi. Photo by Alessandra Pecchia.
«It’s not so much about freeing ourselves from conditioning but from something deeper, what we have internalized», says Alonzi, who will be present at the L’Eredità delle donne Festival on Saturday 25 November. «The point is defenses, how we defend ourselves to survive. Let me give you an example: if I talk to you and you don’t believe me, I can react in various ways. If I am a centered person, I live it peacefully: maybe I didn’t explain myself well. But if I take it badly, perhaps it’s because deep down I don’t feel like I deserve other people’s trust. For what reason? Perhaps because, in my family, no one believed in my worth. Or because I grew up in a chaotic environment, and since children cannot conceive that their parents don’t love them, then they give the love. And as they grow up, as adults, they don’t believe they deserve love.”
All the problems we carry with us about how much we believe or don’t believe we can love and be loved depend on our experience. And they are often not easy to accept. Maria Beatrice Alonzi does not like certain family rhetoric that prevails today: «The messages I receive of abuse are many, Generation Z is the one starting to talk about it. On the other hand, I myself, born in 1983, had my grandmother who stretched out my legs every time she cuddled me, because I was little and would never find a husband. What teaching could my mother have received from my grandmother?»
The cover of Maria Beatrice Alonzi’s new book, You are not your parents (Sperling & Kupfer).
Looking clearly at your parents and your choices helps you not to feel wrong, not to feel like “the problem”, incapable of being happy. Always dragged by a suitcase that is too heavy. Maria Beatrice Alonzi accompanies her readers through the traumas, which we blame ourselves for, and which each of us removes, and helps us understand which defense strategies we implement to survive. «If your defenses are rigid, you can’t be happy“, claims the author. “If instead we understand what the trigger is, the mind releases emotions that are always valid. We shouldn’t try to change but understand who we are.”
In the end, the conclusion is, «only you can throw the wreckage out of the suitcase, only you can close your eyes and breathe, only you can open doors, climb, learn to swim. Only you can choose. «A book for all children, for all parents and for those who don’t want to be parents», says the author.
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