Le Amiche

The sisterhood is alive and well in America and Italy, where Italian women cherish their female friendships and seek to empower one another. When I consider my strong Italian heritage, I am always amazed by the ease with which Italian women take you under their wing and altruistically offer their help and advice. They are drivers of the community, the keepers of traditional family recipes, and the dictators of taste and etiquette. They are a particularly enviable breed: cultured, confident, elegant, and they run the show and look great doing it.   

Most Italian mothers embrace their matriarchal roles of creating a loveable, stable home for their children while maintaining traditions that revolve around culture, religion — and food.   

Mary Ann Mandarino Sacco, Laura Bracca DiFlorio, Mercy Baranello Bilotti, and Anna Nesci Murty lived within a block of each other and have “hung out” for 78 years. That’s quite remarkable, considering  Mary Anne lives 3,000 miles away.

Let’s sum it up this way. If an Italian woman says, “Do what you want,” do not do what you want. Stand perfectly still, don’t blink, don’t say a word, don’t even breathe, just play dead. No matter where you turn or roam, you’ll always return home to your roots in the loving arms of an Italian woman.