🇬🇧NEW SERIES: Reminiscences of an adolescent #1📝 - Every first Wednesday of the month

Every first Wednesday of the month

May 01, 2024

🇬🇧 Hi, I’m Annalisa. I am a writer and an unconventional mindset trainer. I talk all about personal development here at A Glimpse of Life, by sharing my thoughts and experiences. All I want is to live a happy, meaningful and simple life, my goal here is to build a community of like-minded people who want more from life, as I do too! This is a safe place to share and feel part of a big family ✨

🇮🇹Ciao, sono Annalisa. Sono una scrittrice e formatrice del ‘mindset’ fuori dall’ordinario. In A Glimpse of Life parlo di sviluppo personale condividendo i miei pensieri e le mie esperienze. Ciò che desidero è vivere una vita felice, semplice e piena di significato. Il mio focus qua è di costruire una community di persone con lo stssso approccio del voler di più dalla vita, come me! Questo è un posto sicuro per condividere e sentirsi parte di una grande famiglia ✨

Click here for more / Per saperne di più visita la pagina 👉🏻 Annalisa Caminarecci

Created by Annalisa Caminarecci with DALL-E

🇮🇹Per la versione italiana clicca qui: VERSIONE ITALIANA

🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧

Good afternoon my lovely readers.

Exciting news! I'm starting a new series of posts today, which I'm thrilled to share with you. These posts will be published every first Wednesday of the month. Once a month, I'll be sharing one of the many diary entries I've written since I was 12 years old. I will revisit my teenage and early adult life and share my thoughts from back then, commenting on them with a more mature perspective. It will be interesting to see how much I've changed since then and if there are any lightbulb moments (spoiler alert - yes!!) that come up from looking back on my past after all these years. I will try to make this as spontaneous as possible, although I am a bit scared as I do tend to forget things, so .. who knows what I will find in those diaries. 😅

Consider subscribing if you want to receive this new series straight into your inbox.

For the first piece in this series, I was hoping to find an entry dated around the 1st of May, which is May Day in Italy (Labour Day in the US). When I was younger, I used to live in Pisa and on this day, my dad and I would go cycling together in the countryside near Pisa. I remember those moments as very special because my dad was often busy and we didn't get to spend much time together, just him and me.

A few days ago, a fellow writer

Lisa Mabberley

posted this note about the Beltane Gaelic May Day festival, traditionally celebrated every year on the 1st of May. Reading her post reminded me of this memory, and I wanted to thank her for rekindling it in me. In our exchange of comments, I also experienced a beautiful synchronicity event between us. This made me realise that I am on the right path to fulfilling my goal of reaching your hearts and souls through this series.

Yesterday I asked my mum about the bike tours, to see whether she could remember any details. She mentioned that we used to go for half a day, sometimes bringing a snack, but we always made sure to be back home in time for dinner. Her exact words were: ‘You both liked to eat with your legs under the table’. 😂 OK then, no picnics, that’s a pity, they are so lovely!

Anyway, having checked all my diaries (twice!) unfortunately I did not find any diary entry related to bike tours 😐 However, I believe that the lack of information is also a type of information. Therefore, here are my thoughts on the matter.

I did not give enough importance to these trips back then, but I cherish the memories now. Now that my dad is not here anymore, now that I believe a trip in nature is the most beautiful thing to do in spring, now that I’d give everything I have to spend an hour with him again. Losing him only at 20 years old and experiencing a challenging almost-breakup only 9 months later created a fertile ground for the seeds of “enjoying the little things in life” and “focusing on the present” to sprout within me. I am deeply grateful to Tina1, a woman who knew my then-boyfriend and his family. Despite being in an awkward position, she picked up the pieces of my heart and taught me the basics of positive thinking, the law of attraction, and creating my own path.

My adolescent self used to write all about problems. It seemed like my diaries were a dumping ground for all the problems in my life. This goes hand in hand with the previous point. I used to focus on what wasn't going well, like love problems, discussions with my parents about basic education matters, issues with my school or sport mates, and so on. I felt like I was just standing there, waiting for life to throw problems my way and reacting to them with whatever emotions I had at the moment (and, spoiler alert, the results were NOT great at all). This makes me think about how crucial it is to focus on the positive things in life, to act consciously upon what we can control and do not waste our energies on what we cannot (external events, or how people treat us). In other words, let’s channel our efforts towards the things that matter most. The thing is that we are not born with this knowledge inside us. We have to learn it and pass it on to the next generation. To me, this is one of the keys to a successful life, at least on a rational level. Emotionally, it is good to feel, but it’s also important not to let those feelings rule our lives. There has to be a balance. Well… I could go on and on about this, I have so much to say! But I do not want to digress now so I think I will write a separate piece on this in the future 😁

After reading some sections of my diaries, I felt a memory of a vague sense of fearing a lack of privacy, and I wanted to put it out there… to all the mothers in the world (not just the nosey Italian ones hihi): please do not read your kids' diary! I don't recall my parents reading my diaries, but I do remember the fear I had that they might. I think it's important for parents to establish healthy relationships with their kids instead. They can teach them that communication is key, that there's no shame in whatever happens to them and that the right thing to do is to not keep it inside, but to tell someone about it (a therapist for example, if the event is traumatic). It can be difficult, but it's not worth losing your kids' trust by reading their private things, and to be honest, not everything they write is worth betraying their trust.

With the fragmented memories I have from my childhood, I have to thank my middle school teacher who introduced me to ‘Anne Frank’s diary’. Through her, I got the idea of writing a diary, which I still have 23 years later (although now it has evolved into a bullet journal - a topic for a later newsletter :D). Now I would feel a little lost without that extra help in recollecting what my days looked like when I was a kid. Thank you.

How about you, my lovely readers? Did you have a diary when you were a kid? And how would you feel if you read back some of the stuff you wrote? Do you think you would learn something new about yourself? Alternatively, if you never had a diary, do you wish you had one? Are there things you only partially remember from your childhood? I would like to extend an invitation to share your own experiences and thoughts in the comments below. Together we can build a community of support and understanding as we navigate these challenges and celebrate our unique nature. Remember to be gentle with yourself and embrace the changes and phases of your life. We are here to support each other! ☺️

A Glimpse of Life 💫

Discussion about this post