Elettra tells us about her life journey marked by her political activism carried out with a maternal inclination, caring for her community; she tells us about her hysterectomy that gave her the chance to develop her own way to be in this world and about her family history which she tries to pass down with passion.

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ELETTRA: «I don’t have children. At a certain stage of my life that was the problem. Around 40 I thought that having a baby was a way to achieve the ideal of woman I grew up with. Around that time, I had some problems related to my fibromatous uterus. That was something that led me to live and think about the fact I wasn’t carrying out the task people say women are built, thought, and created for. That was a crucial transition that made me realise that Elettra had her own identity, her own ability to live in this world and even do something for it, regardless of her uterus and its product. I clearly remember, back then I was a union official, there was a time I had heavy bleedings and I was always tired. Then something happened: I argued with a woman because of my tiredness and my inability to manage a difficult situation. This made me realise I was risking losing myself and becoming an unpleasant, harsh, and unfriendly person, even non-maternal I would say, if I only kept focusing on the fact that my uterus had to be removed and I was denying that… I suddenly said: “Elettra is more important than her uterus!” I had surgery, I had a hysterectomy.
It was a crucial moment, I’m thinking about it now, both for my attitude towards my body and for my presence in this world. I still think about it. I think it’s human. I still think about the reason why I’m in this world and especially for how long I will be here, but I don’t think it’s something related to biological motherhood. Maybe I would have been … I don’t know and I don’t really care about it.
I know it was a real problem at one point of my life, but I also know that besides my decision not to have kids, I don’t know if it was a choice or if I was influenced by something, not to have children, I had made other choices, political decisions I committed myself. And these decisions excluded the first one. It was a very painful transition because I felt like it was something that was limiting my own identity. The fact that I had to deal with a hysterectomy is like a paradox… because before… I want to talk about it because it’s important.
I had a crucial moment when I find out I had fibromas and I started to see doctors, and make check-ups to evaluate what kind of surgery was needed. A friend of mine, who used to live in this house, came with me to an appointment with a famous Florentine gynecologist in his private office. Imagine the scene. I’m quite careful to details. The nice wooden dressing room, very elegant and refined, was far from the examining table, so I had to undress and walk across the room butt naked, as we say in Florence. He visited me, while he was constantly on the phone talking about his skiing holiday and the people he saw and met, and then said: “at your age, you don’t need a uterus anymore. We can remove it”. I would have killed him. And the expression “At your age, you don’t need a uterus anymore” is stamped in my mind. I know it was this phrase that made me feel awful because it made me realise that until that time, I hadn’t used an essential tool of my body for its actual function, so I could easily remove it. That was just the beginning of a difficult and hard year. I had a woman gynaecologist who explained me some procedures. Besides being visited by her, I realised lots of things about myself, that helped me later on.
Now I’m a woman without children but I feel like I have a lot, both physical and not. I know I’m creative, I like to do things for the others. I was the mayor of my town. I was not driven by selfishness. I didn’t act just for myself or in order to reach partial goals. I wanted to show, in a joyful way, which was tiring too, my devotion for the land in which I was born and in which I wanted to leave a mark. But then, there were some issues with the current political situation, and I couldn’t achieve my goal, which was to be present and to leave a mark on this reality that I love. I know that some results of my projects haven’t been completely understood, appreciated, nor have they matured, I was angry and I suffered, but now I think, just like it happens with children, these arrows released from my bow have to make their own history. I have been there for them, for five years showing my own dimension acting as a mother for my territory, which then takes its own path, its own direction. I see him, I go with it, I’m there, and I like to do it for a little longer, but this child then grows up and choose a path his or her mother didn’t want.
Maybe it’s a coincidence, but the open file on my computer, is an unfinished project I was working on a while ago that I set aside for sometime, that I want to continue now, it’s called “My family myths”. I have two grandnephews who live in France. My nephews have always been very important to me, I forgot to mention it before. Besides the public dimension, and the creative and friendly relationships I have, I have been an aunt and I’d like to talk about how important it is to be an aunt and not a mother. I had an uncle who has been an important male model for me. He was single as well, he was a very different and important role model in my life. I’d say he was a more tolerant figure compared to the strictness of parenting. I’ve never been that kind of aunt that you meet only at Christmas, New Year’s Eve, or during holidays. Not surprisingly my house has been shared in some deep and joyful moments, and even some hard and difficult situations with my nephews and nieces. My nephews in France don’t have the opportunity to hear our family stories, and I had this chance and I shared them with my nephews as well. But these aren’t just family stories; that’s why I mentioned family myths and not family stories. Those very stories that allow you to have legendary role models, that are also the ones you rely on during difficult moments, or even in more joyful situations, and they help and support you. From this perspective, undoubtedly there is the concept of durability, and this element, as the meaning, I’d say the meaning of life. Why am I on this earth? What did I gather for myself and sow for the others? I’ve always liked, even when I was a mayor, to think that I was sowing with the seeds of my own crop, thanks to the experiences I had and the people I met. Now I know life is an ongoing gathering and sowing. If you don’t use the seed, it goes bad and perishes. It is no longer able to germinate, while if you sow it, it feeds and produces elements of great richness for the others. That’s how I feel today.
I deal with not having lived motherhood, but not in a rancorous and hostile way like, “If I’d had children, I would have been a perfect mother” or “I don’t want children, I can’t stand them. Parents should be able to handle their own kids.” I think that’s an important dimension. I think it’s important to be present for the others and for the world, and not only for ourselves. There’s a continuous, constant, and strong interaction. As time passes, and now that my mom is gone, I feel a strong connection between us. I feel, and I see, that sometimes I have some twitches, smiles, and gestures that were hers and not mine. I feel this sense of maternity in me. I feel it strongly, I say feel as if it was on a physical level. I feel like I am her, although I am very different from her, we argued many times, I grew apart and then reconciled, but now I feel that to some extent she’s inside me. I feel sorry that no one will feel me inside her or him. They will feel me next to them, it’s also nice to guide people.
I would say all people… “You don’t have children. You’re not a complete woman, or anyway a woman who has filled this void doing something else. Poor woman”! There’s a difference if a judgment, or a comment is made by a man or a woman. There’s a difference of meaning in the sentences “poor woman” and “You don’t know what you’re missing”. Sometimes women, especially women I love, say to me: “You’re not a mother, you can’t understand”. I know that since I’m not a mother, I don’t have this deep connection, I would even say this extrasensory bond. I feel a connection with my late mother, and I can only imagine how strong this bond is
when you have a baby in your womb, who then lives in this world and then it’s not a part of you anymore. These comments still affect me somehow, and I say: “That’s true. But it’s also true that I had something different”, and I developed the inclination to guide rather than say “It’s me that …” I still have the inclination to accompany many men and women, up to today I’ve never lived this linearity in which I give birth to you, but I have a different perspective that sometimes allows you to discover something more, both for the ones you accompany and for yourself, who are guiding them, than in the other dimension of interpenetration that is the deep connection between a mother and her child. In one reality there’s something immeasurable, and I say so because I’m not able to measure or live it, but I know there’s something equally immeasurable even in the dimension of accompanying someone.
We separate the family culture from the local culture. In my life, that has been something that influenced me and that has probably contributed to my decision to not have children and be a woman that chooses a different path. My parents decided I had to study, so at 11 years old I used to take the train from Vicchio to Florence. I started to be a commuter in 1955 at the age of 11. It was an hour’s train ride from Vicchio to Florence, from the countryside to the city.
I explored the city when I was 11 and I did it all by myself. I come from a farm and rural culture, but in my life, I’ve soon discovered the other world. The problem and the struggle to affirm myself and make myself understood was that I was chosen because I am a woman, but I wasn’t accepted because I acted like one and not like a man. Let me explain this quite difficult thought. Those who submitted my candidacy and helped me become mayor, and the politicians of five or six years ago, were happy to affirm: “we present a woman as a candidate, we are a new wave. We want a more open and welcoming society that integrates everybody”. They had to deal with such a strange woman, who took care of her mom and showed to be a good daughter and not to be indifferent and uncaring towards her family. At the same time she didn’t have her own family and didn’t act or accept the rules and the language that were expected in a male-dominated context. It was like, “you’re a woman, you have been chosen by men in a male reality, so be a woman but act like a man. Accept the rules and these behaviors”. One of the sentences they used the most was: “What does she mean?” and I replied: “Exactly what I said!”, “But what does she really mean?” I had to deal with people that used their own signs, languages, and codes I didn’t accept and want, because they weren’t mine. Furthermore, I had some behaviours in managing my role caring more about the direct relation with the school kid or with the weird person that doesn’t want a house, who lives in the woods but needs a shelter during winter, I’m mentioning two cases I’ve worked on and that left a mark on me, or rather than the relation with the small local authorities, dealing with: “In that hamlet. that one will help you with the votes, the other one is very important and if you don’t put the trash can where he wants, he’ll make sure you pay.” And I did pay for it!
I can give you my own perspective, because I felt it very much mine. I have told you about when I was 40, and my fibromatous uterus, I went through very difficult moments, I struggled to look at myself. A few months after surgery I took a trip to Madagascar with the agency “Avventure nel Mondo”. It was a very difficult trip, with lots of problems and issues, but I felt good, full of energy and vitality, even at a physical level: I didn’t have anemia anymore. I didn’t have this feeling of heaviness anymore. At a physical level, my body was reacting and recovering very well, and I felt like a tree that had been pruned in winter and then blossomed in spring. I want to tell you another story that’s related to what I said. While I was recovering in this house, a friend of mine used to bring me groceries because I couldn’t bring up heavy stuff. On a winter morning, because I had surgery in autumn, she brought me a very tall and dried weeping fig that she had found in the trash. And she said: “Look, someone threw it away, but with your green thumb, you can help it bloom again. See what you can do, there are some leaves left”. I hated her at that moment. How could you bring a dry plant to an exhausted person? But I took it, trip it a little and then put it aside. I didn’t really take care of it. Maybe I should use the “her” pronoun. One evening, after a few months, another friend of mine said: “This plant wants to live, it wants to flourish”. I stared at it lovingly. It lived with me until two years ago until it died, because its time had come. It also became a plant that needed to be put on a terrace. I talked to it, it talked to me. In the same winter, it bloomed again and became wonderful. This is another story of a dead branch that can flourish again if it knows that all it takes is a strong root inside it.»

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