Hi there! I’m Monica, Momi as I have been known since I was a baby. My passions? Sailing and writing! As I live in Milan, I’m always planning a travel. I split my life between the city with my grown-up children and travelling around the world and sailing with my partner.
As the phoenix cyclically regenerates arising from the ashes, in my life every end has turned to be a new start. Yin and Yang.
My first life began as a, so called, model daughter and student in Milan, where I graduated. I married the perfect man, had a life of ease with two wonderful children, a boy and a girl. But perfection is non possible in this world, is it? I have cried a river of tears, begun therapy and then I coped with the end of my marriage.
I’ve always loved going to sea. When I was a child with my father, who loves speed, we sailed on motorboats. I discovered sailing boats with my former husband, when I was twenty. We rented a sailboat with the same old friends on every vacation, weekends and holidays. I have been learning to be a sailor following orders from my Captain, and on a Laser, that capsized many a time, I cut my teeth ….and sustained many a bruise!
Then the second part of my life started as a single, working mother. It was a life that I never feel like I was in the right place, but luckily you are never alone; you live always with guilty feelings. I Don’t Know How She Does It, Allison Pearson‘s book, do you remember it? This book reminded me that I wasn’t alone, not only me during the nights, when finally, the children were asleep, found the time to read, to write, to take care of myself. For years I looked more like a zombie than a woman. When my elderly friends used to tell me that I was so lucky to have had children when I was young because I would enjoy life when they are adults, I thought they were joking. Instead, they we right!
Our girlfriends are our anchor, even when we disagree.
My children have grown up, I’ve paid my mortgage, I’ve raised my head and I’ve seen that I’m still alive! But I didn’t recognize myself in that moaning and lifeless woman. Thanks to a course to re-invent life, I have learnt how to get rid of those bloody comfort zones that do not allow you to be yourself; I’ve found the power to leave a stable but boring job; I ended a love story where there was no love left, I looked at the woman in the mirror and told her: “And now think of yourself!”. Maybe menopause has to do with these choices, or even a midlife crises. Yes, it doesn’t occur to men only!
So, finally free to listen to my needs and desires only, I have accepted the invitation to leave on a sailboat on October 2019 alone, with a man I have known for many years, if only by sight. I haven’t been on board for years even if it is one of my greatest passion. In my life I’ve travelled a lot, and I’ve always had the dream to buy a sailing boat to spend the last part of my life sailing the world’s seas. Destiny has reshuffled the cards, I don’t know how my old years will be, so…carpe diem!
My entire life my leitmotiv has been “as soon as I can, I leave”. For so long, I’d been longing for the feeling I get from sailing, so much so that I did not hesitate to spend a few days in the middle of the sea with an almost stranger, a man I didn’t know; even my good friends were trying to advise me that it couldn’t be safe.
I didn’t know yet, but it was the beginning of something new.
This blog tells how the re-discovery of the Sea, of Me, of Freedom, take me to live from time to time on a sailing boat, even if I’m always wandering, sometimes only through my mind. Home is now in Milan, Italy, with my children but tomorrow, who knows…
In the meantime,… I’m back on board!