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A Relationship Not Made In Heaven
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Hi, I'm Tina Silicini with the Diva Sec Care Network. I'm here interviewing Adriana Gabbasoni. She is an author. She has written a part in Candace Gish's book. Adriana is a Brazilian author of a trilogy named Hidden Motives, Behind the Door Number One, Lara's Journal, The Brilliant Game, and the Where the Road Goes series, Sketches of Life and Life Has Other Plans. Her first book, Behind the Door, Adriana won four gold medals, the Golden Book Award in 2017, The Reader's Choice Book Excellence, the BRAG Medallions in 2019, and Elet Book Awards in 2019. Adriana has been a lawyer for 32 years, a former professor of law, and a writer of novels and legal books. But she is also a ferocious reader. She speaks four languages English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish. When she is not practicing law or writing, she enjoys many interests and is very active and a very active person. She loves to dance, the tangle, and work out. She loves to travel, loves good wine, and has been studying astrology for 20 years. She paints and loves to cook for her friends. She also has two poodles, Charlotte and Bridget, and loves all animals. Welcome, Adriana.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, Tina. Thank you very much for having me today.
SPEAKER_00I'm very excited to hear about mothers and daughters and their relationships. Am I right?
SPEAKER_01Oh that was a wonder yes, it is, and it was a wonderful invitation Candace uh did to me, so it was a pleasure to take part in. But it was also like a stars because I finally put on the paper my relationship with my mom. And it was great for me, psychologically including. Yeah, so can you tell us a little bit about that? Uh well, um I wrote a story about my life with my mom, and uh it was always a complicated relationship. My mother was always criticizing me while I was growing up. Uh it seemed um I could never please her. She was always saying I had to lose weight, I had to talk more, I had to talk lower. So it seemed to me I was not the kind of daughter she really wanted. And that didn't improve with the time. Uh, we discussed it a lot. Uh we have different points of views. And when I decided not to have kids, uh psychologists started to blame that relation. So the chapter in Canvas book is all about that. Uh, how I was querying about the reason I didn't want to have kids, and uh the relation uh that decision was my relationship with my mom.
SPEAKER_00So you're yeah, it sounds like your mom had uh extremely high expectations of you.
SPEAKER_01I don't know if she had high expect expectations of me or won herself through me. Uh, but she had uh uh uh um positive about that, a notion of how a perfect daughter should be. You should be someone of good manners, um a nice voice, soft, and I'm nothing like that. Uh I'm a tough I'm a tough lawyer. I shout, I'm really Italian, I have Italian world, I'm passionate about things, so I'm always communicating in a high tone of voice. Uh I can't avoid fights. I'm always in the middle of worlds. Really, I wasn't the kind of idea. I didn't realize uh uh I was not the kind of daughter she had in mind, I think.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I think well as a parent myself, I think it's hard to accept when you imagine what your daughter or what your son is going to be like, and then they don't turn out that way, then we want it it we don't think about it. It's not like we plan it. But we we keep trying to make that happen, right? So I I mean, I don't know how you feel with your mom today, but I I don't think that she was trying to hurt you. You she just wanted to mold you into what she thought you should be.
SPEAKER_01No, uh nowadays our relationship is better. We are still working on it. But I think all the time uh in her mind what she was doing was trying to improve me. And I'm I'm so thankful. I realized that I'm I'm tough, uh I'm a strong woman, I'm uh a person who knows her own way and who did it her own way. Uh just my mother I was not the kind of mother who would approve everything I did. I had to fight for every idea, for every decision I had. So that made me what I am today. So I I'm really thankful to my mother. I don't think a softer mom would make me the way I am today.
SPEAKER_00And I'm proud of myself. That's good. Does your mom tell you that she's proud of you?
SPEAKER_01She says, she says, uh last Easter I was with my parents. They are they are getting old, they are both 79 now, and she hugged me and she said, Oh, I'm gonna miss you. You are so far away from me, and you do so many great things, and you are always helping us with your you are always giving your little help. Um I'm really proud of you, mama, daughter, and I love you. And uh during my whole life, I've never uh heard uh my mother tell me she loved me. It was a different time, I don't think uh that my parents were taught how to express their feelings. So uh it was even surprising for me that she said, Oh I love you, my daughter and Anacio. It was and I think it was tough for her to express herself in that way.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it sounds like it was. And like you said, they weren't taught, right? And I mean they they come from a generation where feelings were not talked about.
SPEAKER_01No, no uh uh they were they didn't have any rights back at home, I think. For what my parents described, uh my grandparents didn't allow much opinion for them. Uh they were kids, they were not to be listened, they were there to obey orders, and that wasn't us. So uh they made huge progress uh raising us uh I have two siblings. Uh and they have to learn, they also had to learn how to behave in another way.
SPEAKER_00Right, absolutely. Did has your mom read your your part of the book?
SPEAKER_01None of my novels, but okay, I'm not going to say because they are mine. Uh my mother hates books. So just just my father read all my novels, but not my mom. My mom never was a fan of reading or writing. Uh she's basically a mathematician and she works with numbers. So uh she doesn't love a fictional world. Uh I think she loves uh more rational things she can touch and and experiments. That's almost funny. So your dad read them? My dad read For My Shame, yes, because my first trilogy, uh my novels are psychological and erotic thriller. So you can imagine your father reading Eurotica from you. It's a little bit of shame.
SPEAKER_00Wow. Well, what was his reaction to what you wrote about your relationship with your mom?
SPEAKER_01Uh no, I never I never read uh that chapter for them. Oh, so he they don't really know what you've written. No, not yet. Uh uh I'm I really need more courage to translate that chapter for them. Do you think you'll get there? I don't know. I don't know. I I'm going. Maybe I have to work more on my feelings because it was uh I I really barred my chest with that chapter. So uh for for strangers, for readers, there is no problem. But when it comes to your parents, uh I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. So I'm really thinking about that. I I don't know that short.
SPEAKER_00I I understand that. I really do understand that. But I I feel and I I mean I I'm not one to tell you, you know, what to do or give you any kind of advice, but I feel like that generation um they don't realize the herd that they put on to us, you know, because of their teachings, what they were brought up to believe and what they were brought up to bel like to feel. So when if if you were to tell your mom, you know, a little bit about you what you wrote, maybe she would be like, Oh my goodness, I would have I had no idea.
SPEAKER_01She has some idea uh about my feelings, about hers. She knows as she she's conscious that we have a complicated relationship, that our relationship is the kind of relationship we need to work uh and not an easy-going situation. Uh she she knows, she knows, she knows. She knows, she knows.
SPEAKER_00Now you have a brother and you have a sister. Did they have the same relationship with your mom?
SPEAKER_01No, my brother was that kind of favorite son, the only boy. She was always soft, uh, she was always telling me I should give him examples and take care of him. But I'm just one year older than he is, so you can imagine. We yes, uh and I always felt responsible for him because she she was always uh telling me take care of your brother, uh he listens to you, you have uh to be a good example, and things like that. But it's impossible when you are one year older, have that kind of responsibility. It's so much for a kid, but her relationship with my brother is just perfect, she was always taking care of him, she treats him like a baby, but she's 53. So he commits mistakes, she goes there and and she finds the solution for him. It's not healthy. In another different way, is also not healthy, because if you don't uh allow people uh to solve their own problems, they are never going to grow up. So I'd rather the kind of mother I have because I can survive. I don't know if my brother can. As for my sister, uh they are friends. My sister has the ability to understand my my mother better, and I think she is the model of daughter my mother was like. Uh she's delicate, uh she's lovely, uh, she's not in a quarrel all moments of her life. She uh is reasonable, she made a family, she had a kid, uh she she's the good girl in this family. But as people say, um good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere. So I'm the bad girl in the rather know.
SPEAKER_00I don't believe that at all. I do not bel I think that you know you were just you're you're living the journey that you were meant to live. I don't believe that you were you and your sister are good and or bad. I don't believe that.
SPEAKER_01No, no, I'm not I'm not saying I'm a bad person. I'm just saying I really pursue my goals and no matter what, I'm going to reach them and I'm going to be the person I want to be, not the person others want me to be.
SPEAKER_00That's perfect. Thank you. Thank you so much for saying that. Uh is there anything from the book that you would like our listeners to know? Or maybe if you have some advice that you could give to our listeners.
SPEAKER_01Uh I think when uh we are talking about mother-daughter relationships, uh, we always have to try not to judge too much as I did in the past, because our parents uh they they were raised in another time, it was a different uh a different uh time, uh no technology at all, uh just rules and uh they are doing their best from the background they have, so we can't judge them so hard. But also we need uh to try to improve relationships accepting moral parents. We don't know how long we are going to have them, so we have to enjoy what we have from them and um erase the idea that we deserve that or that kind of parent. That's the parents we have. At the same time, uh uh parents should do the same. They have com to completely erase the idea that I want a son or a daughter that is going to be this way. People are unique. Uh and that's the beautiful, the beauty of life, that uh no worry is equal anybody and the personality is some something so rare that it must be respectable.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. Thank you so much. It was so great talking with you, Adriana. I love your accent, by the way.
SPEAKER_01Oh, I hate it, but it was a great pleasure to think to talk to you, Tina. I would love to read of my accents, but it seems impossible.
SPEAKER_00No, no, it's beautiful. I think it's so beautiful. Thank you again. It was nice chatting with you, and I look forward to seeing your books.
SPEAKER_02Thank you very much, Tina. Have a wonderful day.