From Crisis to Citizenship: My Italian Adventure
Overcoming life's challenges and rediscovering passion through an unforgettable Italian journey. A Story by Jim O’Keefe.
Ciao, today we’re in for a special treat, our first guest post and case study on Coffee Secrets. Jim volunteered to write this post because he just got back from Sicily and has some insights he wanted to share about traveling to Italy and learning the language. I first met Jim in the summer of 2021 when he joined my retreat. Since then, we’ve worked together other times but mostly, we manage to meet again in Gaeta, when he returns to Italy. I consider him a friend as I do most of my retreat participants. He’s recently started his own wonderful Substack. Gennaro, which I highly recommend. But now, I’ll leave it to him.
Hi folks, my name is Jim and I’m taking over Elfin’s blog for a moment to tell you about my experience with her Gaeta retreat.
First, a little about me. In 2016 a major medical crisis took me out of the flow of life and gave me some time to think about how I wanted to spend my time on Earth.. The answer was “More intensely.”
I needed to focus on what matters and give 100% to that, and eliminate the rest.
I looked at all the hobbies and other activities I participated in, all my goals and dreams, and put them on either side of the fence. “All In” on one side, “Done” on the other side.
Printmaking? Done.
Vegetable gardening? Done.
I don’t recall how or why “Italian Citizenship got on the “All In” side, but I was all in.
To be honest, genealogy bores me. Growing up we went to my grandparents’ house every Sunday for a big meal with all the aunts and uncles.
It is that experience of everyday celebration that I was chasing. I fired off letters to town clerks, Departments of Health, tracked check lists and tried to capture canceled appointments at the consulate’s office in New York. Finally, at the dawning of the new year 2018, my Italian citizenship was recognized.
My Italian journey began
In 2019 I took my first trip on Italian soil as an Italian citizen, with my wife, to Le Cinque Terre. We hitchhiked through Italy in our 20s without enough Lira ( *Italian currency before Euro) for coffee.
It was a bit of a triumphal return. We could rent cars and eat in the stylish cafes that lined the piazze.
I had been studying Italian for a year. YouTube was my classroom and Italki was my practice studio. I could say simple things simply, and I was the new King of Italy. I’ve always been willing to speak right up in Italian, my personality is much bolder. If for no other reason go to Italy to find out who you are in Italian!
In 2020 we were all afraid, and no one was going anywhere.
In 2021 we were still afraid, but feeling like we couldn’t live like this forever. I had been studying Italian through various programs online, doing fine, meeting the internet version of many people, but feeling quite claustrophobic.
Why I felt the need to join Elfin’s retreat
I wanted to get back into the world, but I was afraid. There were still people dying.
I wanted to connect to real people, di persona, I wanted to ask the lady in the laundromat “How late are you open?” and “Where do you put the money?” But again, I was afraid.
Elfin gave us a structure to attach our courage to. Signing up for the retreat was a commitment. It wasn’t like putting your card down on some airline tickets that you could chicken out and cancel.
You trust her and she trusts you and you walk out there together, something you would never do on your own. It’s a dance. Sure it’s risky but sitting on the sidelines is riskier.
We all came because we needed to come. To support each other, strangers, in a lonely quest, which for a few days was not lonely.
For a few days we made a family. We cooked together, we ate together, we wandered around Gaeta together. All in Italian.
At first, I was apprehensive about practicing my Italian with non-native speakers but I found it invigorating to learn from each other, not grammar or vocabulary, but that we had all studied Italian in different ways and reached different results.
Some had better vocabulary, others better pronunciation, etc… The night before the retreat I was transiting through Napoli and I would catch a train for Gaeta in the morning. I got a text from another retreater, also an American, asking if I wanted to get together for dinner, for Pizza. (it is Napoli after all).
I said yes and we spent the evening having dinner and conversing with the darling young boy who was our waiter at this family restaurant. All in Italian and not part of the retreat.
We were going to be speaking Italian for five days, so why not start now? Just one example of how socially, conversationally richer the experience was.
Can you just travel to Italy and speak Italian?
Since that time I’ve been back to Italy every year, at times with my wife but mostly by myself.
My thinking is that by going by myself I will not have anyone nearby to speak English with, I will be more outward-facing, embracing the Italian world that surrounds me.
But in reality, as a solo traveler in a foreign country, I could spend a day not talking all that much in any language.
Living in Italy could be the same way. There are people who have lived for years in Italy and barely speak Italian.
That won’t satisfy me. I’ve come to realize that I need to do things, with other people, in Italian.
I think that will provide the language-rich experience I am looking for. It’s not so easy to arrange for yourself.
I have come to realize that Elfin’s retreat provided that once and it has become time to return.
I have come to love Elfin’s Gaeta, Gaeta through her perspective.
I return there as often as I can. I love to see Elfin with her friend Iole who runs the B&B that hosts the retreat.
They are as different as two people can be, yet friends for life. I even look forward to seeing Iole’s mom, a very elegant woman.
Gaeta has become a home to me in Italy thanks to the bond I have formed with these women.
A spiritual home so far, but maybe a physical home in the future. For now, I’m happy wandering…
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