Women's Portraits

Paola di Renzo

The light at the end of the tunnel

Separated from her husband, Paola lives alone in a beautiful house with a nice tawny setter and a cat.
She is a lively, nice, good mixer, art lover woman, who paints with success, even from an economic standpoint. She also works with the English school she founded.

Paola is a mother and grandmother always present. She is engaged in a lot of activities and maintains a number of social relationships.

Biographical notes

She was born in Chieti, Abruzzo, in 1940. She has been living in Sassari since 1969. She grows in a tidy, honest and multi-generation family: maternal grandparents, parents, a brother. The most reminiscent things she remembers about her childhood are: her mother's illness, suffering from multiple sclerosis since she was 8 years old, and obedience.

She studies with profit and would like to do medicine, but her father is opposed because this choice commits her much and diverts her attention away from looking after her infirm mother. Paola falls back on the diploma and then on the faculty of foreign languages.

She gets married in 1961 at the age of 21, then moves to Sicily because of her husband's work and starts working as a teacher, making great efforts to integrate into a community still very closed and conservative referring to the role of women in family and social contexts. Her three children were born in Sicily.

In 1966, her husband's job leads them to Sardinia, in Sassari, where in 1982 she decides to leave school, because of family and personal problems: Paola and her marriage are in a deep crisis, but a serious illness of her husband convinces her to stay with him in order to save their relationship. Paola recalls those years as an intense but exhausting period, characterized by a difficult relationship with her husband, a self-centered and dominant man, who wants to centralized upon himself all his wife’s attentions and energies.

In '86 she opens a school of English, the English Center, that is very successful. In 2000, Paola puts an end to her difficult and painful marital relationship, which was in a deep crisis for a long time.

Hard times

At first her mother's illness, then a long, very long, troubled marital relationship. Her husband is a handsome, well-educated and charming man, with an extraordinary powerful delivery and a "vocation" for the abuse of power and destructiveness, which stem from a difficult personal history. He wants to convince her that she would not exist without him since she is his creation, a satellite that shines only by reflected light.

The work and her children and husband’s care, often sick, do not leave time for herself. But, in the meanwhile, the psychic pain and a feeling of inadequacy increase, threaten her balance, she feels she cannot go on in this way.

Her children, now grown-up, are all equally underestimated and overwhelmed by a father too self-centered to think of others. Paola would like to separate but her husband is ill, seriously this time, so that she decides to keep close to him again. She cannot leave him, but she needs help to survive. Paola undergoes analysis for 5 years and starts studying psychology. She wants to learn how to communicate with her husband, to "regain" him, but also to become aware of their relationship.
In 1986, she opens an English school, which is very successful. This event makes her husband more and more wicked. He has quitted his job and, even after his full recovery, is not concerned about anything anymore. He cannot stand the comparison, steps up efforts to demolish his wife psychologically and tries to avert his wife from their friends. He isolates himself and wants to cut his wife off.

Paola seeks comfort and an escape from hell in painting, her old passion.
But it is not enough. Her children are grown up, she realizes she must leave her husband in order to save herself. In 2000 she puts an end to her marital relationship. 

Her present

You can define it the light at the end of the tunnel. Today Paola is a happy, active, woman full of interests. She works and, finally, loves and even rates herself highly.

In the morning, after a walk with her dog, she goes to work at the school of English; in the evening she likes painting, doing yoga, meeting friends, taking care of the garden. Paola follows the events and the current problems with close attention. She has been part of "My City”, a political-cultural association, for several years. As an artist she has participated in numerous national and international competitions, receiving excellent awards (some of her works can be found on the website http://www.absolutearts.com/paoladirenzo/).

She has exhibited successfully in Italy and abroad, loves her job and finds it rewarding. Paola uses her computer to keep abreast of the times and communicate. She has very good relationships with her children: her first daughter is a teacher and has 2 children; the second one is a musician, lives in Bologna and has 2 children; the third son is a skipper and goes round the world. She is a thoughtful and heedful mother and a grandmother, educates her grandchildren with various forms of art, brings them to the theater and she often crosses the sea to help her daughter in Bologna.
And when her husband is in need, there she is, after all.

With these premises, the old age does not scare, it is just a time of life.

Maria Agnese Molins, Franca Battelli