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by Gabriella D'Italia (Author)
While the story will forever be fiercely hers, Getting Dressed in the Dark opens a mirror or portal between D'Italia and her reader, inviting in all those attempting vulnerable journeys of discovery and creative birthings of their own. In each faceted chapter, D'Italia varyingly weaves or unweaves tendrils of her life's attempts at unbound meaning making. She writes from a commitment to bearing witness to our memorial identities housed in the keepsakes, wall coverings, table scratches, sent and unsent letters, kitchen utensils, fuzzy sweaters, worn paths and meals of our lives. Her narrative is sometimes devastating, but always important: a series of blazes along a path of truth and beauty. Even for those who tend not to notice resonances of their embedment in their surrounding worlds, this memoir will spark moments of recognition of our role in weaving narratives into and through our environments. For those already sensitive to these interweavings, the book will feel like a fortuitous lightning strike, providentially awakening new commitments within one's own journey of creativity and living well within life's complexities. A memoir through and through, this text simultaneously summons a chorus of those dedicated to human meaning making. D'Italia's words and practices honor the vital importance of living life with ecstatic honesty, and she writes for those-including herself-whose voices are necessarily fragile and yet which sing potently in creative relation with other forces-people certainly, but also those of our material and spiritual surroundings, and always of our own precious embodiment. The memoir reminds us that we are always participants in crafting choruses of meaning even if at times our voices are capable only of lip syncing or, alternatively, of sobbing screams. It also reminds us that our journey here is forever unchartered in advance Pick up this book and listen. There is no way to emerge without discovering some vital tune you've been humming without notice beneath your many layers. It is a call for mutual recognition and the responsibility to oneself and others that lies therein. Kirsten Jacobson, Ph.D. Professor of Philosophy, University of Maine
Getting Dressed in the Dark is a raw and evocative memoir that explores the complexities of love, betrayal, and the healing power of art. When Rob confesses his affair with Gabriella's young friend, shattering their decades-long bond built on radical honesty, her immediate reaction is a punch to his mouth-a moment that unravels the life they had so carefully constructed.From their youthful days spent smoking in café corners, intoxicated by conversations about art and literature, to two decades of living an unconventional artist's life in a converted 19th-century schoolhouse in rural Maine, Gabriella and Rob created a world rooted in creative exploration. Their polyamorous relationship in the second half of their marriage was just another layer in a life defined by openness and experimentation. But Rob's betrayal rips apart not only their marriage but the foundation of their shared life's work.Through the lens of this crisis, Getting Dressed in the Dark journeys through the aftermath of devastation, reflecting on the meaning of art, trust, and identity. With poetic insight, this memoir contemplates what remains when the story you believed in most collapses-and how, for an artist, the material world becomes a path back to wholeness.
