New Moon Coaching for Expat Women

A small municipality in Boulder County, Colorado, Louisville today has about 21,000 residents. A hundred years ago, it had only 2,000 and, surprisingly, it was considered an Italian town, complete with a neighborhood then called Little Italy and a community of first and second-generation immigrants. Italians had begun arriving in Colorado thirty years earlier, primarily to work in the local coal mines.

Over time, the local history museum has collected testimonies from the descendants of those first Italian immigrants. Many of these are anecdotes regarding the illegal activity of producing and selling alcohol during Prohibition (which in Louisville lasted from 1916 to 1933).

While romanticizing life under Prohibition is a simplification many have yielded to—thanks to films like The Great Gatsby or The Untouchables—the reality for an Italian immigrant in Prohibition-era America was a complex struggle for survival.

The Weight of Being “Othered”

In particular, Italians dedicated to the clandestine sale of alcohol had to contend with the Ku Klux Klan, which had a massive presence in the county. The Klan had declared war on immigrants from non-Anglo-Saxon countries, viewing them as threats to “Protestant culture.”

Louisville was no exception, and the equation of “immigrant equals criminal” was generally accepted by the public. While our challenges today look different, many of us living in international contexts still feel that weight of being the “outsider”—the pressure of constantly proving our value in a culture that doesn’t yet know our names or our history.

The “Hidden Roots” of Domenico

What remains today of this cultural heritage? Many last names, a modest festival, and an infinity of anecdotes. One documented story concerns an Italian “milkman” named Domenico, who walked the streets pulling a small cart loaded with glass bottles he had specially painted with white paint. From a distance, they emulated the color of milk, but beneath the surface, they carried something much more potent, result of a carefully hidden distillation process.

Like Domenico’s painted bottles, we often carry parts of ourselves—our passions, our past careers, our true “spirits”—in containers that look like what our new society expects. We adapt to survive, but beneath the surface, that distillation of our true identity remains intact.

A Legacy of Grit

Every woman building a life in a land that wasn’t originally hers, is not just “settling” in new places; she is reclaiming them and proving that roots can grow deep, even in the most unlikely soil.

What part of your heritage or “immigrant grit” do you rely on most when you feel like an outsider in your current home? Share your thoughts in the comments below—I’d love to hear how you’re “distilling” your own resilience today.