interview by Irina Voiculescu

 

I learned to be a woman from the woman who loved being women

I can't find you anywhere, Laura Ionescu

Did you end up doing Christmas shopping for the last hundred meters? Looking for a special gift for your mom or the female readers in your life? If the answer to these questions is yes, you've come to the right place.

The book "I can't find you anywhere" is published quite recently by the Publica publishing house and is written by Laura Ionescu, freelance copywriter, journalist at "Decât o revistă" and "Revista de Povestiri", TedEx speaker, writer with works published in the anthology of texts "She. Feminist perspectives on Romanian society", and, in addition to this series of functions, she is a daughter, sister, feminist, a cool woman who managed to fill my soul with joy and tear it in two in just 194 pages .

This book sparked different opinions, tears, laughter, awakened memories from the past that probably haven't been accessed for a long time, people lost and found themselves with the story. It is about childhood, adolescence, simplicity, pain and the strength to rise. Being asked what I think the message of the book is, I chose to say "love...of mother, sister, family, life", some, however, could contradict me. I recommend this book to everyone who wants something real, honest, touching, a story that I think stays in the mind and soul of the person who reads it for a long time.

As beautifully as I could talk about this story, no one can do it better than Laura (luluts) herself. We had the opportunity to talk and how else to better enter the atmosphere of the book and know its depths if not through her own words.

 

Q: You once said that when you started writing your thoughts, you didn't think it would ever become a book. When was the moment you knew you wanted to bring your story to the world?

A: I started writing to see if I could tell this story differently than I told it to myself. The moment I realized I might still be working on a book was after I had already written half of it. I think it took a few months before I realized that what was going to be a text about my mother turned into a series of texts about her;

Q: How did the close ones, the family react when they read the book?

A: My sister was there and when I was writing the book she knew her side of the story, the loss of my mother was something she had lived away from me and something we only experienced together at the time of the funeral. He had never thought how hard it was for me to bear what had happened then. I think it was painful for her to lose her mother again, but it brought us very close, I think the distance between the two of us at this point is the spine of the book.

My cousin also read it and appreciated it, they said that it was a book in which my mother found color.

Q: Did you have any reservations about publishing the book?

A: It seems to me that when you show people a part of you, you also make them open up; if you're the first to give them, you're more likely to get something back. I think the love I felt for my mother was amazing and I think the way she loved me back was amazing too. However, I wasn't sure if the story was really cool or if it was cool because I loved my mom so much, but that question was answered by the publisher, Publica, when they told me "We're publishing you." I was a little scared a few days before publishing, I wondered if I was doing the right thing, but in the end what is the right thing to do when you write something.

Q: Your story has managed to connect people, bring positivity in social media. How did you feel when you realized the impact you had online?

A: To be honest, I didn't expect it. I was taken aback by everything that happened online, even though that's what I do, and somehow, for me, the work on the book didn't end when I wrote it, and I really wanted to fight for it. I gave without thinking that I would get anything back, which is why I was overwhelmed by the stories and messages I received. I am grateful to discover that I was never as alone as I felt.

Q: Are you planning any more books given that this one has been so successful?

A: Yes, I have some ideas, but I don't want to rush. I feel like I kind of rushed the book because I needed to get this story out of me so I could move on to other ones. I've started thinking about a second book, I've written a first essay, but I think I'll figure out when I have a bit of peace in which direction I want to take my writing and who I want to be next.

Q: Have you ever struggled with writing?

A: As I progressed in writing I was discovering other areas of the mother and I think that helped a lot; when you're not living with the pressure of writing a book it flows much more naturally. Being a volume of memoirs, I knew I had no way to change what happened, it was up to me how I wrote about the story I lived. There were times when I needed to step away from the story because it hurt too much, to regenerate between moments and better analyze what happened.

Q: If you had to pick a favorite chapter from the book, what would it be?

A: It is very difficult, when you love a man you love him completely. I think that on a literary level the chapter "Summer School" is good and the story is touching, that chapter was a lesson for me beyond all the lessons I received from my mother. I also really like the chapter with the sea because we were very happy and there is not a moment when I meet the sea and I don't think about it.

Q: A friend once asked me what smell I associate with special memories from when I was little. In honor of Aunt Rica's house by the sea, what do you think would be the answer for you?

A: I would say a lot of food and flowers: cherry sponge cake fresh out of the oven, that smell of Christmas sardines when we couldn't wait for mom to bring out the pot so we could eat, a perfume that I got as a gift from my sister in the first package from Canada, the baked corn since we went to the country, thistle and the Hand of the Mother-of-the-Lord

Q: Looking back, do you have any regrets?

A: I had nothing more to do than I did and I am firmly convinced that my mother would have forgiven me for all my follies. I benefited from her freedom and trust, I chose who I was and I chose to be a cool person I think my mother would always be proud of me, that I didn't get lost and that I didn't find excuses to I lose, that I kept the promise I made to myself when I was a child who wanted to write. From that point of view, I have no regrets.

As far as classic regrets go, I wish I'd told her I love her more often, there was a time when I screamed so loud at my mom that I loved her that her clothes would have jumped off her, so I did now

Q: Do you think losing her made you stronger or realizing you've always been strong?

A: I think the death of someone so dear makes you realize that you are stronger than you thought you were. I don't know if at 17 I would have talked about myself as being strong, but I think what my mother's death made me discover is that strength doesn't mean you have to go through things alone and that being really strong means, now for me, and two other things beyond the fight you are fighting. Being strong sometimes means knowing when to give up and knowing when to ask for help, reach out and hope someone catches you. Yes, this moment showed me that I am stronger than I thought and turned my definition of strength upside down.

Q: Do you have a favorite song that you used to listen to with your mom?

A: "Somewhere over the rainbow". He may try to tell where I will find her at some point. Maybe that was the answer to "I can't find you anywhere."

Q: When did you know it was time to end the book, to write the last chapter, and how did that feel?

A: For me, writing this book was a very intuitive process. A lot of people say that it was a therapeutic process, but the truth is that I needed therapy before, so that I could constructively place this moment within myself. I know that in the end I had an epiphany and I said to myself "Yes, I've confused love with pain for so many years" and it's very wrong because love is something simple. At the time I realized that, it just made sense for it to end this way. It's a conclusion that's a bit further from the relationship between me and my mother, it's actually the relationship between me and my mother after she was gone. I realized that if I had written more, I would have diluted the message of the book, a message that, by the way, everyone sees differently, and I think that is the beauty of the book.

Q: Is there anything you would say to your mother now?

A: I would thank her for always teaching us to love women and not see them as competition and I would scold her that she should not be ashamed that I wrote a book about her because she deserved this book. I would tell her that as she loved us more than we loved ourselves, so we loved her more than she loved herself.

Q: What about something you would say to your 17-year-old self?

A: You won't even think that these things you don't want to talk about now will be the things you'll be talking about in 10 years, only this time more people will listen to you. I would also tell myself that "You are right in everything you believe" and that time managed to find a good place for those emotions, so that they don't hurt so much anymore. When my mother died, mourning and losing her was all I was, but in the time that has passed I have become so much more around that mourning, now it feels like a smaller part of me.

Q: What is the best piece of advice your mother gave you or one that has stuck with you in many situations?

A: "Stop walking around with those empty shawls!", "Eat what mom cooks", that it's not about being in first place, but about giving your best just so you don't live with the regret of having could have done more than you did. The fact that he encouraged me to always be independent, curious, to work for what I want. But mainly "Stop walking around with those empty shawls!"

Q: Finally, do you have a message for the mothers and daughters who are reading this article and are going to read your book?

A: I would tell them that it is important to stick together, to fight together for a safer world for all women. I would tell daughters that mothers are right more times than they would like to believe and mothers that in the rebellion of daughters actually lies the chance for a better and less obedient future for all girls. I'd tell daughters not to roll their eyes when their mothers call and ask if they've eaten or if they're dressed well or if they're out and about, and to mothers that even though daughters don't talk as much as they used to when they were small, the mother remains the center of the universes, you return to the mother when you are in pain. Beyond any dramatic moment or desire not to look like your mother, lies the search for one's own identity and that there comes a time when we, as daughters, realize how much we are, in fact, like our mothers. I hope they will say what they feel, whatever the emotion, so that they never live with a lot of things left unsaid.