Throughout my life, my mother rarely spoke about her childhood in wartime Italy. In her eighties, during a conversation that forever changed my life, her voice began to tremble as seventy years of silence finally gave way to words.

As she spoke, tears filled her eyes. Watching the woman I had always known for her remarkable strength slowly unravel before me was devastating.

In that moment, the little girl she once was emerged before me, and I understood that these were no longer simply her memories. They had become mine.