The path
How I got here.
A childhood of feeling everything.
From a very young age, I could sense what lived underneath the surface of people. Not just their words — but their emotions, their tensions, their unspoken stories. I felt the cruelty of the world deeply. I didn't fit in. I lost my faith for a long time. And I carried a lot of pain, mostly alone.
I was always bullied. I looked for love in all the wrong places. I had relationships that hurt me — mentally, emotionally, physically. Everything together created a deep abandonment wound. One I still carry today — but in a very different way. Because I decided to take responsibility for it.
Social Work. Breda. The beginning.
The summer before, in 2015, I took a gap year and went to work on a campsite in Liguria — my mother's land. The place where we had spent summers as children, where I knew every path and every corner. I worked there illegally, learned to speak Italian properly for the first time, explored the mountains on a mountain bike in my free time, and had long lunches by the sea. I have always felt deeply connected to my Italian roots. That summer only deepened it.
In June 2016, at 20, I took my first backpacking trip — Indonesia. Java, Bali, Lombok, the Gili Islands. I rented a motorcycle for a week and drove through the whole of Bali alone, arriving at places most people never reach. Something in me had always been like this — climbing trees as a small girl, connecting to animals, running barefoot. Wild, in the truest sense of the word.
That September, I started studying Social Work in Breda — psychology, psychiatry, sociology, motivational approaches. The study was never easy for me. Tests triggered a huge fear of failure. I froze. I struggled.
In my first year, the patterns I was reading about in textbooks were a mirror straight back at me. I fell into a very deep depression. The darkest period of my life. That was when I truly entered therapy — and where I first learned to take responsibility for myself. It took me one and a half years longer than planned to finish. But I finished.
Psychiatry. Travel. Opening up.
After graduating, I worked in psychiatry — in different groups, with different people. I chose not to bind myself to one contract. I wanted diversity. I wanted to keep moving. And between the work, I traveled. I explored. I started to come into contact with my spiritual side — which opened me up to the remembrance of everything I already knew.
I went to Asia with the intention to finally feel safe in the world and within myself. I think I did a pretty good job. Something in me was shifting — slowly, deeply, for real.
I lived for a month on a small island in Thailand. Almost never wore shoes. Swam in the sea between plankton at night, half naked because that was the moment. Felt the salt on my skin all day. Chopped wood. Made things with my hands. Moved by scooter without knowing where I would end up. That feeling of being alive in your body — close to nature, close to instinct — I have never forgotten it. And I have been trying to recreate it, for myself and for others, ever since.
Egypt. The desert. A year with my feet in the sand.
At 28, I followed my Heart to Egypt. I arrived as a volunteer on an organic farm — I was supposed to stay for a week. I stayed for a year.
I lived with my feet in the sand, in the desert, learning farm life in one of the most ancient lands on earth. It was special in ways I still can't fully put into words. But I also missed the water deeply. The mountains. The sea. Something in me knew this was not my final destination — it was another part of the path.
From Egypt, the path brought me here. To Salento. To the sea I had been missing. To this land that felt like home the moment I arrived.
Salento. Il Sentiero. Arrival.
In October 2025, I moved to Salento. I rented a house right by the sea. The locals were curious — why would a foreign woman come here alone, knowing no one? My only answer was intuition. I saw the space and felt I had to go. I didn't second-guess it. I just went.
And then came the moment that changed everything. I was hiking with someone when he said: "Questo sentiero è bellissimo." This path is beautiful. I had always thought sentiero meant feeling — sentimento. But it means path. The path. And suddenly it all clicked. Il Sentiero became the name of everything I was creating.
Everyone has their own path to walk. As I have walked a long path before arriving at this point. A path that exists both inside and outside. This is also why I love spiral and labyrinth symbols — they represent the journey of a path.
