@womenplot meets Elena Pulici

by Erica Surace

Elena Pulici is part of the emerging writers published by Women Plot. “La Cura di Me”, available since June 15th, 2021, is a collection of incredible stories centered around women. It’s about sisterhood, love, respect and education. 

 

Tell us about you and what brought you to write “La Cura di Me?”

I am a married and divorced woman with two kids and a furry one, a cute dog named Ketchup. I’m a woman who has suffered a lot in life, a woman with a lot of facets. The idea of the book came to life from a beautiful quote from the nuns where I went to school. From them I learnt me the joy of life. Joy in life is my spine, is what I wish to everyone and when I see that my book is being read by young women it gives me chills because it means that there is hope for us all. If young women want to learn and understand what respect and dignity, sisterhood and freedom, it means there’s hope for everyone. Sometimes we are our worst enemy. My advice is to open our hearts and minds. The nuns I mentioned before told me this beautiful quote: you stay here, no whining, you do your best. The message is that we have to do our best, because we have a lot to give to ourselves, we have so many resources to help others so we must find them for ourselves. 

The book does not talk about wonder women, every single story could easily happen to each one of us.

In my opinion extraordinary means choosing love. I think that the most important thing about it is that when you choose love, you should not be asked huge sacrifices. My dad told me that the only great love that deserves you is the one that does not ask you to pay a high price. The one thing we should keep asking ourselves is: do you love me? If the answer is yes, then I’ll stay, if it’s no, I will leave. We have to stay where we are loved. Leaving often means taking care of yourself. When I was working in court I saw many women having an hard time leaving, but you need to have the strength, the sun always rises, in the end everything will be okay. We are what stays and how we have been during the journey. 

What inspired you to talk about these women?

Of course, a part of myself is in the book, there is a lot of my pain. I have been loved very much, I’ve had great female role models: from the nuns, to my mom and my aunts. I think it is important to go through life with a tad of selfishness, we cannot be scared of it. My friends have always inspired me and they are the people that have been by my side for my whole life. I don’t think that us women necessarily need a romantic relationship in our life, as long as we love ourselves. If you love yourself it will be harder to stumble upon man that are no good for you. Friends are a big part of life and they are necessary to keep us grounded. Women are the most fascinating being that ever existed, with millions of facets, maybe this is what ruins us, we should be more basic. Friendship often is told with superficiality in books, where more space is devoted to big love stories but stories about female friendship are so interesting and fascinating, because they can have so much truth in them. 

Romanticism is giving ourselves the possibility to believe, because we live in a world that is not easy, we are told to be suspicious, scared, so why do we make the choices that we make? For love or for fear?

Eighty percent of women makes choices based on fear. They are scared they’re not enough because they need to fill in some role that society imposes them. But we all have our own timeline, if we see someone reach a goal at a certain age it does not mean we should be there too, it does not mean that we failing. We still have time to grow, and build and tell stories. Women are often defined with words that can be considered non completely positive. Society raises us with specific ideas of who and how we should be and, as long as we fit the description, everything will be okay. However, when we sew a role around a woman we take away from her the possibility to be free and express herself however she wants and be herself. At the foundation we can always find fear.  

We are born male and female but society teaches us to be men and women. Could there be a compromise between accepting the roles society has given us and still being free?

When they ask me if I am divorced or separated I always answer that I am free, meaning that I was born free. I would like to invite all of the women that are asked this question to answer and to choose freedom. Emotional independence is such a great quality that amazing women have because they are not a weight that needs to be carried around. If we learn to love ourselves men will follow, but it has to star from us. We have some power seats as women but we are still waiting for men to decide for us, because most of the power is still in their hands. 

Do you have a message you would like to share with out audience about how to start writing your own story?

Love yourself, have self-esteem. If you are catholic remember that God put you in this world because He loves us and wants us to love ourselves. If you are not catholic still remember that your parent love you and they gave you this life to be happy. If you don’t believe in anything, believe in yourself, that’s the most important thing. Girls, don’t stay where you are unhappy, you would disappoint who put you in this Earth. Give your life value, do not let anyone stand between you and your ambitions. We have to wear light in order to be seen.