A Memoir of Loss, Escape, and Renewal
Memoir
Date Published: June 11, 2025
Publisher: Acorn Publishing
How does a young woman cope when she cannot speak the truth?
When nineteen-year-old Lenore experiences sexual assault while studying abroad in Italy, her entire world shifts. Survival becomes the focus of her daily life, physical illness grabs control of her body, and no one can free her from her pain. A ghost of herself, she takes the path of denial, believing it’s the only way to protect her loved ones and herself from her harsh reality.
On her journey toward peace, she assumes the expected roles of mother and wife, but a traumatic diagnosis puts her at a crossroads. She must start living the life she wants or roam her days as a victim in the chaos of fear. Lenore’s escape through travel allows her to reconcile the imprisonment she’s suffered over the years.
However, when another family tragedy strikes, Lenore understands she must finally come to terms with the silence she’s kept. But what if one incident that happened decades ago is too destructive, too deep to be excavated? Will she be able to find herself in the rubble? Or will she be lost forever?
Chapter 1: Innocence Adrift
I was nineteen years old and on my way
to a palace.
Walking to school in my red leather
boots with a broken heel, I pondered my life in Italy, entangled with
emotional, sexual, and geographic complications. Running into the parishioners
flowing into Perugia’s San Lorenzo Cathedral for morning Mass, I recalled how
Mom and Dad had always found sustenance in their faith. Maybe I feel so sad
because I never ask God for help.
Seeking solace, on an impulse, I entered
the church to attend the service, though I’d be late for Italian class. Bundled
up in a wool scarf and heavy coat, I entered the chilly and vast interior of
the then 530-year-old Gothic cathedral under towering marble and stone arches. I
joined other celebrants in a wooden pew and studied the massive altar inside a
vaulted nave, illuminated by a morning sun pouring through stained-glass
windows.
Within the magnificence, I muffled my gravelly
coughs, got down on my knees, and began to pray. I begged God for help, please,
and awaited my answer. Within the cavernous stone expanse, no answers came in
the dim amid the worshippers' echoing voices. Why did my life turn out like
this? All alone and living with a wound impossible to heal?
Hunched in the church’s frigid air, I
decided to skip Mass and left for school.
Later that day, I wrote a letter home
in my student pension room. I longed for more compassion from my parents, but I
could never reveal the ugly turn my life had taken over the past two months.
Instead, I wrote about my misconception that Perugia was like my hometown of
Mill Valley, California. “There are dangers,” I wrote. I want to be able to
recognize the dangers.”
I also noted, “I don't feel good, but
I don't feel like giving up and coming back. There's too much to learn . . . about
me or how I’d act in certain situations. I don't know whether this is clear or
not. I hope you can see my meaning or what I've been through.”
No one wrote back for clarification.
But my younger sister, Grace, picked
up on something between the lines. In her letter, she wrote, “From your last
letter to Mom, your tone seemed depressed about something. What is really going
on with you? I really would like to know, maybe I can help. Please tell me.”
I never answered her question. I could
never write down the words anyway.
***
Two months earlier, I had arrived in
Perugia to study, leaving home for the first time to attend the Università Per
Stranieri or the University for Foreigners. The plan was to study Italian, art,
and culture for a year.
Free at last, I was learning to fly.
But I didn’t have wings.
I was excited and nervous after
leaving home for the first time. After landing in this Umbrian hill town,
frustration knocked me. I couldn’t speak enough Italian to navigate daily life.
Snotty salesgirls rolled their eyes as I stammered and searched for the right
words. In restaurants, waiters presented me with a horrific slab of liver or
horsemeat, and my mouth twisted in disgust before gagging. I didn’t order
that, did I?
Grabbing my dictionary, I began
memorizing as many words as possible.
Every day, things scrambled out of
order. After opening a detergent bottle, the smell told me I had wasted money
on bleach. The laundry I hung outside my window to dry in the morning became
soaked by afternoon rains. I fought with ancient, poorly hung Italian doors and
confusing locks, feeling lost and incompetent in a beautiful place.
Italy the infuriating. Though unacclimated to living on my
own, I could easily forgive my ancestral country as the afternoon sun burnished
ornate buildings into gold, as I ate luscious food, rambled on cobblestone
streets, or joined the townsfolk on traffic-free Corso Vannucci.
On my first day of class, I squeezed
past Fiats parked with great anarchy along Via Ulissi Rocchi. Rubbing my eyes,
I had awakened too early that September morning and couldn’t dress fast enough,
my hands shaking with excitement.
Amid buzzing mopeds and the Italian
language filling my ears, my new leather backpack banging against my back, I
swung down the narrow passage. An espresso machine hissed in a nearby café, and
my nose caught the intoxicating scent of a bakery.
I wanted to soak up every fabulous
thing about my new Italian life. I marveled at the simplest details—a
Fiat sign, a woman heaving her market basket, the bantering school kids. And I
ached, wanting to share this beauty with everyone back home.
Suddenly, a car zoomed too close,
threatening to rub me against a rough stone wall—an Alfa Romeo squad car driven
by a policeman. As I spun out of his way, my head just missed two dead rabbits
hanging on hooks outside a butcher shop—an advertisement for today’s fresh
meat. I smiled and shrugged without a care.
About the Author
Award-winning travel writer Lenore Greiner grew up in Marin County where, at thirteen, she began her writing journey as a lifelong journal keeper.
At nineteen, her passion for adventure led her to Italy’s heart to study at the University for Foreigners in Perugia and immerse herself in the language and culture. There, the seeds of her memoir were sown.
Lenore has garnered eight prestigious Solas Awards for Best Travel Writing and was honored in Best American Travel Writing 2013, edited by Elizabeth Gilbert. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Fodor’s travel guides, and three volumes of Shaking the Tree, an annual anthology curated by the International Memoir Writers Association.
A graduate of UC Davis, Lenore married her college sweetheart, and they now call Southern California home. They share two kids, two kayaks, and too many rambunctious grandkids.
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This story is very powerful. It teaches you that we should be kind and considerate and stand up for one another.
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