Me, My Heart, and I

by Melinda Gallo

Wednesday, December 7, 2022
Me, My Heart, and I :: Home, Solitude, Happiness

When I first arrived in Florence for a three-month stay, my meaning of home shifted. One day I was walking around the city to get myself situated and ducked inside the Orsanmichele church. Initially, I didn’t know it was a church because of its rectangular shape and rather inconspicuous entrance. I made my way to the front of the church where a large, white tabernacle framing a painting of the “Madonna with Child” stood. I sat down in the wooden pew closest to the tabernacle and admired the details of them both. After a few minutes, I closed my eyes. “You are home,” a soft voice whispered to me. The voice startled me at first because it was not my voice and also because I had never once uttered those words. As if the voice knew I was unsure of what I had just heard, it whispered them again to me two more times. I released a long breath I was holding unintentionally and let my body gently find its way against the back of the pew.

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Wednesday, March 31, 2021
Me, My Heart, and I :: When a heart breaks, it opens and then expands

This morning while I was contemplating what to write in my bio, the words “my five-year hiatus in the US” kept spinning back around in my head. I have used those words many times over the years to explain my absence from Florence. It was my way of containing the most challenging and yet also the most significant five years of my life. I rarely explained that time in my life because I was still struggling to make sense of it myself.

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Monday, June 29, 2020
Me, My Heart, and I :: Birthing my passion project

When I stopped working as a technical writer four years ago, my plan was to focus my energy on two writing projects: one fiction and one nonfiction. I wavered between the two, unsure about which one to publish first. A writer friend told me to pick only one, but I couldn’t. They both inspired me at different times, tugging me in one direction and then the other. I felt lost and confused when my projects weren’t progressing as I would have liked.

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Monday, April 27, 2020
Me, My Heart, and I :: The Gift of Time

After two weeks* of lockdown in Italy, I feel a great sense of tranquility. Initially, I only saw how disrupted my life was and how I couldn’t do what I did before. Over time, I not only adapted to the lockdown, but I began to revel in it.

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Monday, August 26, 2019
Me, My Heart, and I :: Intense and beautiful transformations

The moment I arrived at the top of Giardino Bardini, I was greeted by a butterfly. She encircled me twice before joining a few other butterflies and bees buzzing around a lavender bush. As I watched the butterfly drink nectar from the center of the lavender blossoms, I thought about her life. It's such an incredible transformation for one being to go through: from being born a caterpillar and to being reborn a butterfly.

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Monday, August 12, 2019
Me, My Heart, and I :: Every photo contains a breath

Recently I walked to Ponte Santa Trinita an hour before sunset. I particularly enjoy watching the sunset from this bridge because of the brick walls bordering both sides of the Arno, the arches of the Ponte alla Carraia are reflected on the water, boats traverse the river in both directions, and ripples on the surface of the Arno change with the shifting of the wind. While the sun is setting and the clouds are shifting in shape and size, the view is transformed: a variety of colors blaze across the sky and are replicated on the water.

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Sunday, January 13, 2019
Me, My Heart, and I :: Experiencing more beauty every day

It’s only recently that I understood how to deepen my experience of the beauty around me. I used to look at something and immediately judge it as beautiful or not. I either focused on it or looked away. When I sit in a garden, walk through Florence’s streets and piazzas, or stroll along the Arno, I try to consciously keep my heart open and breathe my surroundings into my heart. It’s a delight to to revel in the beauty of a single flower, a pathway, or even sunlight beaming through the trees. I am always amazed at how something that pleases my eye can fill me with so much joy that my heart bursts open.

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Friday, January 4, 2019
Me, My Heart, and I :: Reaching for love

For a long time now, I have tried to not write about grief. I thought if I wrote about other things, this need to write about grief would just go away. However, for the last few weeks that’s all that has been wanting to come out. A few nights in a row, I have woken up in the middle of the night with words streaming into my mind that wanted to be written. I would have to open up my iPad and dictate into my Notes App. Yesterday, while I was in the Giardino Bardini I decided to bring a notebook with me. For a while, I hadn’t wanted to have a notebook on me because I didn’t really want to write about grief outside of my home. Often I am inspired to write when I am in one of Florence’s gardens soaking up her energy. I initially didn’t want to pull out my notebook after I sat down on a wooden bench under the warm afternoon sun facing east, but I did.

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Monday, December 31, 2018
Me, My Heart, and I :: Endings and beginnings

As 2019 is about to begin, I feel an excitement and a lightness that I haven’t felt in quite a while. It’s not a feeling that comes and goes; it’s a feeling that is solid within me. I experienced some upheaval these past few years, which initially I thought was a curse, but now have come to realize that it was a blessing. If someone would have told me that my entire life would be turned upside down, everything and everyone removed from it, and that I would rebuild a more solid life based in love, I wouldn’t have believed them. But it happened.

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