Tiziana, aka Babazuf, met in Siena in 2011, tells us of her process of personal growth which led her to choose not to have children. Opening up about the great pain caused by her mother’s death, Babazuf believes that not being born is the only way to avoid the pain of the certainty of your own death and the death of your loved ones.

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BABAZUF: «I chose not to have children. It was a spontaneous choice I made when I was a child. Then, when I got older, I decided not to have kids. But it was not because I had an unhappy childhood, because it was a beautiful phase of my life. I was always playing and my parents really loved me. But maybe… I don’t know.
The desire to become a mum, when you’re adolescent you talk about it with your peers… I’ve never felt that desire.
Then, when I grew up, it became a deliberate choice probably made by my mind. By my mind and my ideals.
I’m happy to be alive, but if I were asked if I’d like to be born again, I’d say I wouldn’t. I think two great misfortunes happen in our life.
Besides the fact we can’t decide to be born, these are when we die, and when we experience our parents’ death.
And the death of our dear ones. It’s hard to understand your death considering you hadn’t decided to come into this world.
And I think… Maybe that’s why when I grew up I’ve never felt the desire to become a mum, but that probably comes from your mind. And not wanting to be born again, although… I mean, we are alive, we need to fight, but moments of happiness are just a few. Everything else is dullness and great misfortunes.
My mum died when I was already an adult, my dad is still alive. The idea you’ll have to separate from the ones who gave birth to you…That’s what human beings should understand. But you lose your loved ones, those who gave you life, thus we are bound to suffer their absence anyway. You don’t get to choose, as for our own death. It’s not something you can decide but that will happen. I can’t process it, despite everything. I get and I understand it, but I can’t process it. As much as it’s worth living, if you weren’t born, you wouldn’t… you wouldn’t have experienced life, but you wouldn’t have suffered either. You wouldn’t have lived a dull life. As I said before, the moments that are worth living are just a few.
I’m an atheist. It’s a path I choose when I was around 14 and it was a real eye-opener. I used to teach Catechism, and I was very close to… I used to attend church and at the age of 14, I realised there were too many dogmas and thanks to certain scripture readings I understood that believing in God is just a weakness. So I chose to believe in science, in human intelligence, and not in God.
I don’t know because I don’t have children either, but I don’t think it’s possible to transfer the love for your mum towards your children. These are two completely different things. You miss the person who brought you into this world, who gave you life and taught you how to live. In my family we had a good relationship, extremely open, and we could talk about everything. They didn’t always agree with my choices. They were open-minded but still attached to certain ideals. For example, they didn’t agree that I was an atheist and that I made certain choices, like living with my partner without being married. Anyway, she has never opposed me, she thought everyone should make their own choices. I knew she supported me although she didn’t agree with my choices.
My current partner was more affected by our choice to not have children even if he agreed with me, otherwise we could have parted ways. I believe, and I’m sorry for that, that if he had met another woman who wanted to have kids, he would have had them. No, I don’t feel guilty because he’s free to do whatever he wants. I made it clear from the beginning. When I choose to talk with someone, I completely open myself up. So I told him from the beginning what I thought about it and what my ideals were.
I had an abortion when I got pregnant at 24, but I didn’t want to have children. I’m sorry about it because I was a little bit superficial, There were ways to avoid abortion. But I’m ready to protest and manifest if abortion will become illegal. It’s a right for everyone. It’s something you can do or not.
I support freedom, especially freedom of opinion, but the real freedom is when you can decide whether to do something or not.
I had to justify my opinion with the current society, with… with the society of Siena, which is very small, and you are compared to other people every day, but that’s something positive. But they see me as a unique and weird person, who went beyond the common opinion.
That happens with other things and… If you believe in freedom and you respect people, unfortunately, in the current society you’ll have to fight. And I had to fight within my contrada, my quarter, which is a reality typical of Siena, that is divided into 17 quarters. There are very loving people, it’s like an extended family, but as in every family you can’t choose their members. So you must stand up for your ideals and fight for them. Your ideals are unique compared to what the standard is.
Whatever that means, maybe something normal, maybe what most people do. If you want to be accepted as a person, and support your ideals, you should expose yourself and speak up. Mainly, you should let people know that as you respect them, they should respect your choices and everyone around them, besides their appearance or their studies. They must accept them as people.»

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