No, no, what are you doing?
What are you doing? No, come on!
I said no! I said no! I said no!
No, please! No, please!
What are you doing? No! No! No! No! No!
I was just 16 years old, and at that moment, my soul detached from my body and died forever. I became a rubber doll. He looked at me, smiled, and told me it was my fault because I was too beautiful. I was petrified.

For years, as if nothing had happened, I smiled on the outside, but inside, it was a desert. My life slowly crumbled. Wrong loves, wrong friendships, failing school. I started to hate myself, to hate my body, everything about me. I was angry, very angry, even with God. Lord, why did you abandon me?

So food slowly became my only source of pleasure, an obsession, my religion. And the monsters, anorexia, bulimia, binge eating, entered my body and my wounds for over ten years. But I was hungry, so hungry. Not just for food, I was hungry for truth, hungry for tenderness, for a caress, for a hug, hungry for love. I was alone, I couldn't take it anymore. I didn't ask for help because I had the illusion of control. I can do it alone. I have nothing, I'm not crazy, I said. I am strong. But that black hole, that cancer of the soul, was slowly devouring me until I sought death. But I am here, I am alive, I survived. And I look you in the eyes. It was a slow, painful journey. I fell and got up, fell and got up, fell and got up. They took me by the hand, and I finally let myself be taken by the hand. And despite the filth and stench I lived and had inside, for the first time in years, I felt loved, seen, they restored my dignity as a person. And slowly, that black hole filled up. I was healing. I found faith again and asked, Lord, if I save myself, if you save me, I will dedicate my life to those in the dark like me. And so it was.

I founded a small organization, Donna Donna Onlus, to give back all the love I received. And even if it was for just one person, I said, it was worth it because that person had been me, I had been taken by the hand. And I managed to do something that still moves me to tell. I called him, my tormentor, and told him, crying, "I forgive you." From him, silence. "And thanks to the filth you did to me, I am a new Nadia. Thanks to the filth and hell I lived through, a small organization was born that I am sure will do a lot of good." And he continued to be silent. Maybe he was afraid, but it doesn't matter. At that moment, I was finally completely free, free inside, because I had not only forgiven him, I had also forgiven myself, I let everything go, everything behind me. So, here I am, I look you in the eyes, I smile at you to shout with you that I love myself, I accept myself, with all my imperfections, and I look at myself in the mirror without fear, though with a bit of trepidation... sometimes. And I smile at myself and embrace my being a woman because being a woman is an extraordinary adventure. Being a woman is a gift. Because every woman is a masterpiece, every woman is a work of art, unique and unrepeatable.

So, I ask you to join me, to join me, together to shout our yes, yes, yes to life, because a woman's body is life, so yes, yes to every fragility, yes to every dawn that paints the sky with new colors, yes to men who love and celebrate women, yes, yes, yes, yes to life. Because death, pain, and violence will never, never have the last word, because good always triumphs over evil.