Tiziana Ghiggia - opening horizons
I am forever in awe and filled with gratitude, for all those women who chose to stay. For that too, isn’t for everyone.
Tiziana is a well of knowledge and wisdom - though she would never agree with this statement.
What do I mean by “women who choose to stay”? Well, when the going gets tough when the parents need support & care when all around you you see people who need help & realise you might be able to help them… and at the same time you have your dreams & aspirations that demand your attention… And you choose to stay and help, developing your talents in the scraps of time & cultivating your dreams in pots (nonetheless gorgeous and diverse). This is the story of the magnificent Tiziana Ghiggia…
T: I realise I know nothing about you…
Ti: Oh even I don’t know much about myself… it’s flowing, like ‘let’s hope that I scrape by’ (N.A: she says in Italian io speriamo che me la cavo, citing a movie).
T: OK I’ll start with the only thing I know: Why did you choose - if that was a choice - to take care of others in your life?
Ti: This I don’t know. But think of this, something curious came to my mind the other day, I was 6 or 7 years old and I took my father’s old diary with gone dates that no one was using so I used it as a notebook. I wrote a story, of which I remember only the title: I will save you. I mean I was 6 and a half years old, who knows. I will save you. After, it was chaos: both my parents fell ill. My father’s health with time only deteriorated, from ulcer to chronic bronchitis to hypertrophy of the right heart. Ever since I was little, in my home we spoke about all these illnesses… and my mother too got sick, from ulcer to fibromyalgia. I was always in the middle listening to their pains, moreover, in my early years there was a false saying going around “If one was operated on for an ulcer, he/she’d die” - so I thought I was going to lose both parents.
Then things began to change for me at 20 years old when I fell on the ice and lost consciousness. I think I also lost symmetry because I had a collapse of the splanchnocranium and the natural curves of the spine turned the opposite direction - that resulted in atrocious pain for years, with severe headaches. When I finally took a breathe thanks to massages and alternative healing methods - at the time even my period had disappeared and my teeth decayed one by one - I began to notice on one side I was suffering and nobody believed my suffering because there wasn’t a definitive diagnosis of what I had (they couldn’t name my illness/pain), and on the other side I was seeing that unless your pain enters in the medical canons it doesn’t exist and it gets ignored. I found ease in acupuncture, at the time, and my period came back after 3 years thanks to this practice. That year, my father died and my mother fell breaking the thigh bone - but they put in the wrong prosthesis! And thus began her life of suffering. Meanwhile, I decided to become a military nurse.
As a nurse, I was put in front of patients who’d come to me saying their doctor didn’t believe them. I, unlike the doctors, would write down all their symptoms because I knew they weren’t making them up, there had to be a reason. I wasn’t just listening to patients, but around me, some people weren’t taken seriously in their suffering… thus I began to look for answers outside the medical texts. I spent 11 years in darkness, almost made fun of because everyone thought I had an imaginary illness. After seven of those years, I got fed up with the doctors and the medical system and started to look for answers elsewhere. So I’ve been through it, I’ve also seen how the health system works and how doctors are prepared to tend to future patients - and I learned that if I can do or say something to ease the suffering of someone, why not? Thanks to a smile, saying I believe you, or mentioning another solution they didn’t know of before… I saw patients who wouldn’t get out of bed, or stand up.
Let me tell you of this one woman, whom nobody believed because she was slightly borderline and in a depressive state - but I mean, if you’re unwell and no one believes you, perhaps it’s not so unnatural to become nevrotic! So, she was looking for something and I found dark chocolate in my bag. I went to her and showed her what I had found, all for you! Years later she called me because she remembered it. This is to say, sometimes to trigger people, who are on the cement, amidst their trial and don’t see beyond the horizon, a small gesture is enough. Your healing of five minutes is enough to make a difference and trigger them. The point is, trigger what? You might ask… Well, it’s the body that heals itself and you need to give it a stimulus to react: a future, a horizon, an explanation, anything that triggers a recovery. It can be a bar of dark chocolate. This is satisfying beyond words can tell.
As a nurse I didn’t position myself somewhere above the patients, rather I always tried to stay close to the ground to understand and be understood. When I’d notice a change, it made me so happy - oftentimes, no one else knew or believed it was me who triggered a patient’s sudden recovery. It’s not important others knew, I went home happy. On those days when things went well in my ward, I could work another 8 eight hours after my shift because I wasn’t tired. Perhaps assisting the ill with such criteria, does more good to me than to them, for it brings me pure joy.
T: OK so it’s a mix of circumstances and choice.
Ti: Mmm I chose it later. Partly because I wanted to help those who found themselves in a situation I had already experienced, feeling abandoned by the medical system, thinking back it’s almost comical how throughout the first 7 years after my fall on the ice, doctors tried to attribute my cessation of menstruation to a fight with a boyfriend that I never even had… Then when I took my health into my own hands and went to the TAO Centre in Turin, the Chinese doctor told me not to worry and that they would return within 2 days following the acupuncture. I did not believe him, impossible I thought for they’d been missing for 3 years. And I did get my period back after 2 days. That day changed everything for me, I understood there exist other worlds yet to explore. It sucks I had to go through an illness, but I guess it was part of my journey.
T: You don’t only tend to the ill, you’ve been writing and publishing books too. Would you define yourself as an intellectual? Or how would you describe that part of you that’s a writer and a scholar?
Ti: No no no, not intellectual. The writing… it’s the same thing really, it’s like assistance. Because of my physical problems, I was always looking for the truth. I default to searching for answers, and explanations, to how things are. Even before knowing Michela - with whom I write books around spiritual matters - I used to write articles as a journalist putting a lot of effort in digging the truth behind what was being presented as such. Otherwise, there’s no point, what do you communicate? You must give people data for them to conclude.
Intellectual. What does it mean to be intellectual? That you use the intellect, so use it for real! Use the intellect and the intelligence - intelligence as a discriminative faculty, go, search, evaluate, weigh, and communicate.
The opportunity offered to me by Michela is pure gold, how do you dig in history and mythology books full of lies and mended versions according to the period when they were rewritten? We can call this, too, a service. It’s not about being an intellectual, it’s a service to the community. If two people read me these years, good for them! To write searching for the truth is another form of assistance, a gift for humanity. A gift made of drops that might bring you to change your attitude, to save your life, to relativize many things, and to raise your gaze upon a broader horizon. Nowadays what we have around us wants to lead you to despair, but rest assured that your current horizon is a Truman show - an artificial horizon tailored to make you suffer.
T: I’d like to ask you a personal question, you never had children, did you?
Ti: No, no natural children. But I’ve got many on other planes. I don’t miss having children humanly, at the time I was so overwhelmed by tribulations that the last thing on my mind was to have-a-boyfriend-a-husband-make-a-family-have-children. I barely had any breath to go forward on my own. Anyway, I won’t go into details or else I’ll end up like Alda Merini.
Nonetheless, we live a life that’s normal only on the surface. If you want to fit your life into the normal canons do it at your own risk, just try to leave a small opening of childlike wonder. We need to stay open like the children who play pretend.
T: You know, what you do with your books is also important for giving words back their true meaning and power. Today, magic is in everyone’s mouth and used even in ads and campaigns. Yet, it’s devoid of Magic because rarely do these people who use or speak this word believe in it or know what it is. This doesn’t happen only with magic…
Ti: I think that comes from the marketing people who scan what’s trendy and resonates with as many people as possible, and then they use it in their campaigns. I don’t think they deeply think about what it means what they do, for them it can be transformed in money, in a market. Ah, the real mages… How can you tell a real mage? They won’t tell you. The real mage will never disclose it in Instagram's bio, at least I don’t think so. There are “mages” who ask a lot of money to help you win the lottery or cast love-binding spells…
Mmm free will, I’m unsure how much free will is left to human beings. If, with words and with rituals, you move energies that will influence people unbeknownst to them, and perhaps also to their detriment, to do, think, and accept something that without your manipulative influence they would’ve never done, thought, accepted. Those who egoistically act on behalf of paying clients, they’re technicians rather than mages. Technicians who have discovered a handful of the laws of the Universe and appear as mages to people who don’t know any - to know magic is to know the laws of nature of where you are. All is magical, the perfume is magical, the moment is magical… to sell. But I think the real mage, won’t tell you.
T: Nowadays the trend is manifestation. Suddenly thousands of people teach you how to manifest a better life or a life of your dreams. What I notice is that the underlying energy is that of manipulation…
Ti: Eh when it doesn’t implicate just you but it also involves others, yes. It may stem from a defence mechanism - if you feel under attack, if you’re surrounded by people who want to prevail, then you try to manifest a defence more than wanting to harm others. On a planetary level, if you are shown a future disaster it’s because you can manifest to discharge an event. Personally, instead of trying to act on other people, I try to shield them.
You know what was my turning point? … During that period of my life, I told you about before, I went to my droghiere, grocer, and that morning he had a visit from the Hare Krishna followers, who left him the Sri Isopanishad. He didn’t know what to do with it, and I was there buying tomatoes. He asked me if I wanted the book, I thought it looked beautiful with Krishna on the cover with all the cobras, so I took it - at the time I didn’t know it was Krishna. I put it on the shelf, where it lived unopened for two years. When I reached the limit of my desperation, I took the Sri Isopanishad, read it and a world has opened. I started laughing hard, the founder of the Hare Krishna's got an amazing sense of humour. Thus began my ascent. In other words, being a publisher and publishing certain books can save someone’s life, it can make a difference. It’s a service, Saibaba calls it seva - the service, not that you change the world or become the Archangel Michael but maybe you raise a little bit your vibrational level and many illnesses won’t jump on you. I want to say that reading this book, a little vibrational jump there was and pain began to decrease. Anyway, what was your question?
T: I forgot too. Never mind, it’s actually what I love the most about my interviews when I ask a question and it only serves as an incipit to talk about that which simply wanted to be said - related or unrelated. Is there anything you would change about your life?
Ti: Certainly it would be normal to say yes, but everything I lived and went through led me to here and now. I got to meet Michela and I got to meet you. What would I change? Nothing. This happened to be my faith, and perhaps I could simply start earlier the research instead of rocking myself in empty hope. Anyway, this is it, this was, and this is what I accepted. One must accept, that’s the secret. If you accept, you’ll experience it. If you’re always trying to avoid it, the experience will keep running after you to bite your ass. No matter how ugly, face it. The sooner the better.
Later as I was editing, I decided to write to her another question…. relating to manifestation.
Ti: In regards to the Manifestation/Manipulation… I think… I manifest what I am, what I emit: that something that can imprint itself around me. So I manifest what I am. But what am I? Do we know what we are? We have a vision of ourselves, just like we have of others. We think we are one way, but then we manifest something completely other because we don’t know ourselves. The invitation of Delphi Oracle to know thyself wasn’t just a lightheaded message. Manipulation is an ambiguous word, yet we too manipulate energy if we manifest what we are, that thing that gets out of us manipulates what it finds outside of ourselves. I manipulate energy for either the highest good or as a shield, as in I manipulate to have a whole shield around me to not be touched by other people’s agendas - like the lotus floating on water or the duck that doesn’t get wet. The human desire is that to manifest, to manifest its desires. However, we don’t know ourselves - and as Michela always says, we emit things and do other things without really an awareness or knowing of what energies we’re waking up both internally and externally.
PS. Tiziana Ghiggia is one of the writers I publish, and her mentioning of Michela Chiarelli is because they often (not exclusively) co-write books. You can read a very brief intro to them here.
