“Diversity is rejected in the family. After so much pain, my daughter is now serene”

Udine, September 14, 2020 – Anna Masutti, 46, nurse in Udine and mother. She has three daughters aged 11, 16 and 18. The oldest, Maddalena, is a lesbian. Years of suffering before coming out of the closet. Shock news: in Naples, a thirty-year-old man beat his sister to “teach her a lesson”, he was having an affair with Cyrus, a trans. Maria Paola Gaglione she died at 20, said: she was infected.
“I’m honest, this brother also made me very sad. Victim of a deep and widespread ignorance. Especially among the young ”.
However, they themselves should be more prepared to understand.
“But no, especially in certain degraded contexts. And that worries me a lot. That is why it is important to go to schools, to the streets, to certain neighborhoods. Show that we are normal parents with very normal children, who are well. We are. doing like Agedo, the association of parents of gay boys. Families do not talk about homosexuality and violence. Above all about homosexuality. Also because they do not have competences. In the end they always think that it is up to others “.
She has always been by her daughter’s side.
“Maddalena suffered a lot, she couldn’t understand how she was different from her sisters. That they were more feminine. ‘Normal’, according to her. She felt different.”
How did the people around you react?
“A lady made me think a lot. One night, at the initiative of Agedo, she said to me: did she really also have a homosexual daughter? She seems so pretty, so normal …”.
Does shame prevail?
“I have been chatting with a mother for a year and a half. I have never seen her face, she does not even want to meet me. She is afraid that when she sees me having coffee with her at the bar someone might associate.”
Let’s go back to the concept of infecting?
“In 2020 too many think so.”
You have painful years behind you.
“In fourth-fifth grade a switch was tripped, I always say it like that. Up to that moment Maddalena had been a happy girl. She was beginning to withdraw into herself, to pale, to fade.”
What did you think of your family?
“Two years before I had separated from her father. We blamed him. We were not looking for another cause. She climbed the trees, dressed as Zorro at the Carnival. We always treated her like a child, what she wanted. We parents” . , grandmother, uncles. We all accept this behavior. “
The most difficult moment?
“In high school the situation got worse. Maddalena went to school with a sweatshirt and a hood on her head. Everybody went to the gym, she had a panic attack, every time he left work and took her home. I couldn’t get into the gym. a supermarket, because there were people. “
How did it help you?
“I started taking it everywhere. Psychologist, psychiatrist, but also homeopathy … The most absurd things I can think of. I tried them all. From fifth grade to first high school. In the end, neuropsychiatry followed.”
Did you find an enlightened doctor?
“Absolutely not. They told me I had depression to treat it with drugs, but I have always been against it. We have lost years of life, not only my daughter but also the sisters and me. Those who lived in the shadows, all my energies were for Maddalena. Only us, an open family, with the cultural tools to understand, without financial problems. “
Did you have moments of failure?
“At one point I had resigned myself. I repeated myself, well my daughter is like that. She has a depression, she will have no future, she will stay home with me. And finally the clarification has arrived ”.
A specific day?
Oh yeah, it was October 11, 3 years ago, release day. Maddalena first talked about it with friends. They convinced her, you have to tell yours. She was pale, sweaty, nervous. We said it together. Since that day we have celebrated two birthdays ”.
But when the lights go out, what is life like? How does Maddalena live today?
“Maddalena is serene. We had also labeled her a lost child. We had parked it in a professional institute to understand how to make it have a minimum of future. It had this tag stuck on it. Instead, the school. it made a big difference. “
The professional center.

“Maddalena arrived with a respectable resume, she had a neuropsychiatry folder three inches high. I would rather not mention the name of the school, otherwise we will download everything and more to you. When they saw her arrive they said mamma mia. , What do we do with this? She doesn’t speak, she’s mummified. In the end she had a great time. She had teachers who recognized her talent. In all these years of closure, of a life away from society, she has always read and studied. She says, She lived inside a bubble. When she came out of this bubble, she showed us the wealth she had cultivated inside. “
He talks about these years of pain in a very lighthearted way. But have there been dark returns?
“My daughter says no, I believe her. She went to live alone, to another region. She has a girlfriend. If I think she couldn’t even go buy a liter of milk …”.

Is she an activist like you?
“No, he doesn’t want to get involved in the association, he just started making his life. I go out every day.”
What does that mean?
“That when my daughter arrives with her girlfriend, I present her like this. So I am the mother of a homosexual girl. I am a fairly well-known person in the area, I work in a medical office. I do not hide. Without going to shout, you give her rights to our children, but simply providing information. “
You have to be prepared.

“What happened to my daughter also requires knowledge. I had to study, read, understand what world I was moving into, what world I was giving Maddalena to. And it was deep work. The parents from Naples could not do it.”
Understanding is a job.
“Knowing our children takes a lot. Many times it cannot be done alone. That’s why partnerships are important. I would tell this mother to cry together ”.
Isn’t homework scary?
“Not me, my husband would say yes. I expose myself because I think: if people see me talking, they see me walking with my daughter, with my daughter’s girlfriend … I have to move something. I couldn’t help Maddalena when Yes I would have met someone, a doctor, a mother, to show me a way … I had never met a homosexual, we never talked about it at home. We had no opportunity to confront each other. Which now I always try to do. Maybe too much. When they invite us to dinner, before or after the speech, it falls there. And my husband, right, again? “