Me, My Heart, and I

by Melinda Gallo

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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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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Wednesday, June 1, 2016
Me, My Heart, and I :: My five-year hiatus to the US

In my last blog post, I mentioned my “five-year hiatus.” It’s a term I use to describe the time I spent in California after being an expat in France, England, and Italy for a total of ten years. I packed up all my belongings and moved back to the US a week after my mother called to tell me she was diagnosed with cancer. Ever since I made the decision to live overseas, I had always known that I would only ever move back to California to take care of my mom if she ever needed it. Nothing could have ever prevented me from being at my mom’s side.

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