New Moon Coaching for Expat Women

I have known Drina for nearly twenty-five years. A few weeks ago, we sat down for a conversation to launch my brand-new series, New Moon Pioneers: Interviews with Expat Women from All Walks of Life. Drina was born in Chile and forced to flee her homeland for safety in Italy during the mid-1970s, following Pinochet’s coup and the brutal persecution of political dissidents. Hers is a journey of profound trauma, injustice, resilience, and ultimate rebirth. She was incredibly brave and gracious in sharing some of her darkest, most terrifying moments with me. Her older sister was a socialist who was hunted by the regime’s police, and her father was a desaparecido for two years, during which he was held prisoner and tortured. Yet, while these events are only part of the horror she witnessed, I have chosen not to focus on those details here, as clinical trauma and therapy fall outside the scope of my coaching practice. Instead, I want to share her experience as a teenager who suddenly found herself on a completely different continent, immersed in an unfamiliar culture, and navigating an unknown language. Drina’s story offers invaluable wisdom for any woman currently experiencing her own uprooting and finding the courage to start anew.

What was it that helped you, especially in the early days in Italy, to reclaim your own identity, to feel at home again?

I believe it was love—love for life, and love for life meant choosing the life of my son. I took my high school graduation exams while pregnant. Even though I had been active in promoting the abortion law, and despite how difficult it was to raise a child at such a young age when I had plans to go to university—and, above all, despite my past—it was hard, but it was beautiful to see this new life being born. And I was with this guy, Lele, who was my son’s father and loved me so much.

You arrived in Italy at 17 years old and found yourself at school with 17-year-olds from Milan who hadn’t experienced anything of what you had lived through. How did you find relating to them, considering they came from a completely different background?

Let me start with my first day of school, which was traumatic. Coming from a middle-class Chilean background, I found myself in a working-class neighborhood in Milan. I knew everyone would look at how I was dressed, and in that moment, I longed for the school uniform that makes everyone equal. I remember when I left the house, I had to arrive at a different time than the others to be placed in a class; I had to go to the principal’s office first. So when I entered the classroom, the lesson had already started. It was a philosophy class. On that first day, I opened the door (there were no immigrants at the time) and everyone looked at me. I looked for the teacher, who wasn’t at the desk but was sitting on a window sill smoking a joint—and the joint was passed right into my hand.

I was terrified because I couldn’t comprehend that I had gone to school and the first thing in my hand was a joint, when I came from a country with a dictatorship, with uniforms, with repression, where life hung by a thread and you could be taken away for any reason. And here I am holding a joint… What do I do? I take a puff. And I pass it along. Then I sit down. During the next hour, the math teacher looked at me and asked if I was Sardinian. I didn’t know what that meant. “No, I am Chilean.” His curiosity and welcoming nature were incredible. There was a lot of solidarity with Chileans; people showed so much love. That’s why I say what saved me was love, because the welcome was truly something incredible.

Integration happened very quickly for my sister and me. For my brother, it was harder. During recess, we would speak Spanish, and it was immediately forbidden; no one wanted us to speak Spanish at school. Until one day, Miriam came home crying and spoke only in Italian. We were all left speechless, and since then, my sister has only spoken Italian. She never spoke our original language again. We speak in Italian, and I think I’m the one who speaks it the worst because of my accent, because I wanted to cling to it somehow. I looked for Latino and Chilean groups; I always tried to maintain my roots. Even in cooking—even though nowadays I actually cook more Italian food, I know how to make Chilean dishes that reconnect me with the other part inside of me. When I go to Chile, I feel like I belong there too. When I speak, I always say “we,” referring both to us Italians and us Chileans, as a Chilean friend of mine pointed out to me. This made me reflect. It means I have achieved this integration, and I claim both identities with so much love and conviction. I cannot not be Italian, just as I cannot not be Chilean. Wherever I go, I carry them both; they are both part of my identity.

I am interested in how language influences thought and personality: do you find differences between the Drina who speaks Italian and the Drina who speaks Spanish? Are there certain aspects that emerge more easily when you express yourself in one language over the other, for example, humor or anger?

In my case, no, I am always myself. At the beginning, I rejected Italian and would mangle the words I learned because I wanted to remain anchored to my culture. My father insisted that we learn the language perfectly because perhaps our stay in Italy would be longer than we initially expected. He wanted us to integrate, and that helped us. Among my siblings, Miriam is completely Italian—she is my Italian sister; Patty is half and half; Guido is Italian; and Luis, who is the youngest, is more Central American, which is where he lived. When we are together, we speak Italian.

What is one piece of advice you would give to a woman going through a transition to another country—not necessarily as traumatic as yours, but finding herself rebuilding a life and an identity in a completely new country?

I believe the first thing is to believe in yourself and to have the will to believe that things will change for the better. To have a dose of optimism. Even when I saw everything destroyed, I always thought there was a way out and that I had to find it. There is a light for everyone, and you have to let yourself be guided by that light. I think we all have a soul, and for our soul to be clean, we must not be afraid. I have always been a challenger, someone who questions things, but I have always expressed my convictions with empathy. We should all have the same opportunities, and I try to fight so that everyone has them—to be able to surface and do what they think is most appropriate to do.

Like you, who believe in your project, and that allows you to expand it; you will find yourself with people following you, making you realize that it is right. Because the core of everything is believing in ourselves, and when we believe in ourselves, we can move forward, adding good, positive ingredients—because only then can you manage to make something good. Just like in the kitchen. I spend a lot of time in the kitchen; I look for the best ingredients, and I am happy when I offer something positive. I believe this has to start from each one of us. I have always believed deeply in what I was doing. You put yourself to the test because the failure can be huge—you change countries, language, you change everything—but that is where the essence of being human lies: in the capacity to change, to find oneself, to believe, to plan, and to love.

To discover more about Drina’s story and the Chilean coup, watch this short promo video for Le parole di Drina. This powerful monologue—produced by Comteatro, written and performed by Laura Laterza, and directed by Claudio Orlandini and Cinzia Brogliato—brilliantly brings Drina Bavestrello’s deeply personal and searing testimony to life.