When We Were Girls. The Extraordinary Power of Women

"We women have, so to speak, emancipated ourselves; we have won the freedom to choose in work, love, and life. But at what price? Are we really happier? And above all, do we make the people entrusted to us happier? Could it be that feminism, the sexual revolution, and the battles for equality have ultimately left us lonelier and sadder? To answer these questions, we must free ourselves from the patterns of grievance and understand what a great privilege it is to be female, destined by nature to welcome life, bending over it in whatever form it appears at our door. And what a great adventure it can be for us to become wives and mothers, alongside the man with whom we can become one flesh. I am not talking about the 1950s housewife: the many women I have been fortunate enough to meet - women who were often fulfilled in their careers as well - have traveled difficult, even dramatic paths, and yet emerged from them extraordinarily capable of living, capable of hope against all reason. They taught me that being happy is possible, but requires work; that we can indeed go wherever our heart leads us, but then we must call on the brain to come and retrieve us and take us to a secret place, where a more fruitful and fuller life begins." (Costanza Miriano)