Granai della Memoria

Alessia is an anthropologist who works as researcher, after working as a teacher for seven years. When she is 28, after about three of marriage, she decides together with her husband that it is their 'turn to become parents'. Alessia, who is therefore consciously pregnant, studies approaches to motherhood in depth, attends two antenatal courses, reads lots of books, but at the moment of the birth of her first-born, she feels that what she has learned and what has been explained to her is far removed from reality. She experiences intense post-partum depression, at times not understood by those around her, all of whom are astonished that motherhood destabilises her.

The path between mother, father and daughter nevertheless continues without major difficulties and the moment of despondency is overcome. The baby requires the breast a lot, she has some colic, a small problem with digestion and needs to feed constantly. As the hospital midwives had suggested, 'the more you breastfeed, the better', advice that Alessia decided to follow to the letter, dedicating herself totally to that 'liquid love' made of milk, looks and contact that is breastfeeding. Tiring but necessary, an important moment of affection and bodily union, with its symbiotic gestures and rituality that society struggles to understand: an all-embracing caring that creates a bond, that leaves a trace in the skin and in movements. On the strength of this awareness, Alessia decides to breast-feed her second daughter in the same way, despite the memory of the fatigue and pain that had driven her to buy a good dose of powdered milk 'in advance'. Which in the end she would never use, except after several months of exclusive breastfeeding.