Dead Letters: The Things My Nonna Tried to Warn Me About

The woman who loved us honestly

always sounded harsh before life proved them right.”

There are certain voices

death does not fully take.

My Nonna still lives inside small moments.

In the way I fold towels.

In the way I touch basil before cooking.

In the instinct to lock pain behind my teeth

instead of handing it to strangers.

And sometimes

most painfully

she lives inside the echoes of warnings

I was too young, too hopeful, too wounded

to understand.

Dear “To the woman who saw through everyone,”

You used to tell me:

Be careful how much of your heart you hand people.

Not everyone who comforts you is kind.

Not everyone who says I love you arrives with clean hands.

I thought you were too suspicious then.

Too guarded.

Too severe.

I thought love alone made people honest.

God, I was naïve.

You understood something I didn’t yet know:

Broken people become easy territory.

There is a certain look wounded women carry.

Predators recognize it before kindness does.

The hunger to be chosen.

The desperation to feel safe somewhere.

The unbearable need to believe someone finally means well.

People sense it.

And some of them

the cruel ones, the empty ones, the selfish starving ones

will drink from your softness

until there is nothing left in you

except confusion wearing lipstick.

You warned me.

You saw how deeply I loved.

How quickly I forgave.

How I mistook empathy for obligation.

I wanted to save everyone.

Even the people drowning me.

Especially them.

You used to look at me with those tired Sicilian eyes,

eyes that had already survived war, grief, betrayal, poverty, men, silence

and you would say:

Not everyone deserves access to your heart.

I understand now.

I understand after all the nights

I gave loyalty to people

who only gave me convenience in return.

After all the times my kindness became permission

for others to overstep, manipulate, disappear, return, repeat.

They saw my wounds

and called them weakness.

But you never did.

You knew softness and weakness were not the same thing.

That’s why I miss you so violently.

Because the world outside your kitchen

was colder than I expected.

People smile while calculating what they can take from you.

Some hold your broken pieces gently

only to study where to press harder later.

And the cruelest thing?

I kept believing people loved like I loved.

Openly.

Completely.

Without strategy.

You tried to protect me from that illusion.

But I had to bleed through it myself.

I had to learn that some people are attracted to broken women

because broken women apologize for asking questions.

Because broken women over-explain.

Over give.

Stay too long.

Because wounded hearts sometimes confuse being needed

with being loved.

I wish I had listened more carefully.

Not because I regret loving deeply

I never will

but because I regret how often I abandoned myself

trying to keep others comfortable.

You always carried strength differently.

Quietly.

Like a blade hidden beneath silk.

You fed people.

Prayed for them.

Helped them survive.

But you never let them make a home inside your suffering.

That was your wisdom.

You knew boundaries were sacred long before people turned them into therapy language.

And now that I am older,

I feel your lessons inside me like inheritance.

Not bitterness.

Discernment.

There’s a difference.

I still love deeply.

Still cry too easily at beautiful things.

Still believe tenderness matters.

But now

now I also watch patterns.

Silences.

Half-truths.

The way someone behaves when they realize you are hurting.

Because pain reveals character faster than comfort ever will.

You were right, Nonna.

About so much.

About people.

About survival.

About dignity.

And perhaps the hardest truth of all

you were right when you said:

The world will try to make a kind woman ashamed of her softness.

I almost let it.

But not anymore.

Now I carry my softness carefully.

Like you carried your pearls.

Beautiful.

Earned.

And never thrown before people incapable of recognizing their value.

I miss you every day.

And some nights,

when the world feels especially cruel,

I still catch myself wishing

I could sit beside you one more time

while you quietly reminded me:

You do not owe your light

to people committed to darkness.

—A.

The older she became, the more she realized her Nonna’s warnings were not fear—they were survival wrapped in love.

© 2025 Alessandra Graziella Di’Stefano. All rights reserved.

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