March – about regeneration and the family as the root
"Family is the first school of the heart." - Ion Creangă
There are families who live under the same roof and yet silently drift apart. People who see each other every day, but between them, invisible distances gradually form, made of misunderstandings, pride or things not said in time. And there are, at the same time
Over time, families who end up living thousands of kilometers apart, spread across different cities and countries, but who remain connected by something much deeper than geography.
My family is one of these families.
For more than twenty-five years we have been scattered across Europe, each with their own path, each with their own story. My father never left Romania while he was alive, except to visit us. He stayed there, in the place where he was born and where he always felt his roots were. For him, home was never negotiable. It was the place where he found peace and where he felt that life had a simple and natural meaning. My mother lives in Spain. At first it was a necessity, it was a decision made out of responsibility and the desire to do what many mothers did in those years: to leave in order to be able to offer their family a better chance. Over time, however, life transformed that necessity into a choice. The years spent there became part of her story, and Spain became the place where she continued her life. Cristina built her life in Ingolstadt. There she found her path, her rhythm and her stability. Mariana first passed through Italy, got to know another culture, another world, and today she is settled in Hamburg, a city where she has settled her life in a way that suits her. And I, after almost sixteen years living in Germany, once again took the step of migration and arrived in Switzerland. This time, however, not alone, but together with my personal family, with my own world that I build day by day.
If you just look at the map, it seems like life has taken us in completely different directions. Different cities, different countries, hundreds and sometimes thousands of kilometers between us. Each with their own life, with their own responsibilities, with the people who are close to them every day. But if you look from within, from that silent place where childhood memories live, the values we received from home and the way we were raised, you understand that distance does not break a family.
Distance can only exist on the map.
In reality, what holds us together are the things we learned from each other and from our parents. Simple but essential lessons that weren't taught from books, but lived day in and day out.
We learned to respect our decisions, even when they are not easy for others to understand. We learned that each person has the right to find their own path and that sometimes that path means leaving, starting over, trying again. We learned that we are allowed to make mistakes, that we are allowed to stumble sometimes, to go through moments when we don't know exactly where we are going. Because those moments are the ones that teach us the most about ourselves and about life. We But I also learned something perhaps even more important: not to argue over things that, over time, lose their importance anyway, and especially not to let anyone break the connection between us.
I am grateful to my mother for the effort and sacrifice she made. For the courage to leave when needed and for the strength to move forward in a world that was not always easy. I am grateful for all those times when she had to be strong, even when she might have needed to just be a mother.
I am grateful for the education I received from both of my parents. And here I am not referring to schools, diplomas, or things that can be measured in documents. I am referring to the school of life, to the lessons about dignity, about work, about responsibility, and about respect. Lessons that were not necessarily said in big words, but that were seen in the way they lived, in the way they made decisions, and in the way they took care of their family.
Perhaps the most important lesson, however, was the one that we, the sisters, learned together: to never break the bond between us, no matter what happens in life. This bond has become, over time, almost sacred. Neither people, nor distance, nor the years that have passed have ever taken this away from us. We have remained connected through respect, through care, and through that silent trust that, no matter where life takes us, we are never truly alone. There is no quarrel between us in the sense that many understand it. There are discussions, moments when we see things differently, when life puts us in different situations and each has their own perspective. But we were raised with the idea that solutions are sought together, not against each other. There is no staying angry with each other. There is no pride that is more important than the bond between us. There is only the desire to find a way to move forward, regardless of the circumstances.
Because, in the soul, bonds only break when people choose to let them break.
Family is not just a biological occurrence. Family is also a choice.
We did not choose our family. We did not choose the place where we were born or the times in which we grew up. Life places us in a certain context, in a certain story. But each of us chooses, later, how we live this story and how we contribute to the family we are part of. And perhaps it is precisely when you live far from the place where you grew up that you understand best how strong these roots are. Because they are the ones that give you balance when the world around you changes. They are the ones that keep you standing when life takes you on unknown paths.
Life moves forward, and each stage requires us to learn something new about ourselves.
Sometimes these lessons come quietly, almost imperceptibly. Other times they come through changes we wouldn't have chosen, through breakups, through departures, through beginnings we didn't plan. But looking back, you understand that each stage played its role in the way we formed as people.
Migration is one of those experiences that profoundly changes the way you look at the world and yourself. At first it's just a step. A practical decision. A journey made out of necessity, out of the desire to build something better, out of responsibility towards family or the future. But over time you realize that migration is not just about where you live, but about who you become.
Living in another country, you start to see more clearly the things you previously considered normal. You start to understand what you took with you from your childhood, from the way you were raised, from the values that were passed on to you without you realizing it. You learn to appreciate things that, when you were at home, seemed natural: the way people greet each other, family meals, holidays, the language in which you learned your first words, the jokes that only those from your culture truly understand. At the same time, you learn to adapt. You learn another language, another culture, other rules. You learn to move in a new world and find your place in it. And somewhere between these two worlds, you start to build your identity.
You are no longer just the person from the place you were born, but you also don't become someone else entirely.
You become a combination of your roots and the experiences you live.
For many of us, those who grew up in families marked by migration, this identity becomes even clearer over time. Because, far from where you grew up, you understand better what you received from home and how much it shaped you. You understand that the sacrifices of your parents were not just about money or opportunities. They were about the future. About the desire to create a chance for their children.
And, without realizing it, you carry this story with you. In the way you work, in the way you build your life. In the way you set your goals. Because, for many of us, personal success is not just about ourselves. It is also a way of honoring the path traveled by those before us. It is our way of continuing the story.
Over time, you also learn that life is not a straight line. There is no perfect path and no plan that remains unchanged. There are only stages, decisions, people who appear in our lives exactly when we need them and others who leave when our path goes in a different direction. Sometimes these separations hurt, sometimes they come with a peace that you only understand later. But life has its own way of arranging things. It brings people to our path who help us grow, who challenge us, who show us new perspectives. And sometimes, with the same discretion with which it brought them, it removes from our lives people we cherished.
Whether this is correct or not is not in our power to judge.
But what we can choose is how we move forward.
We can remain anchored in the past, trying to understand why certain things happened. Or we can accept that each stage had its role and that life moves forward. And when we choose to move forward, we discover something important: that every experience, every path we have traveled, every person who has passed through our lives has shaped us in one way or another. It has made us more aware of ourselves and of what really matters. Maybe that is why family remains that inner place to which we always return, even when life takes us far away.
Because family is not just the place you leave from, it is the root that reminds you, wherever you are in the world, who you are and where you started from.
March is a month that, for me, symbolizes exactly this.
For us Romanians, March means Martisor. The red and white thread that speaks of the beginning of spring, of hope, of the balance between life's hardships and its simple joys, of that delicate moment when winter begins to slowly retreat, and life makes its way back into nature. It is also the month in which we celebrate the woman, the mother, that silent force that keeps families together even when life gets complicated, that discreet presence that sometimes doesn't say many words, but manages to keep the balance of an entire family through small gestures, through patience and through a love that asks for nothing in return.
After so many years abroad, this year I felt for the first time, in a very profound way, something that reminded me of those simple times back home. The times when you sincerely enjoyed every martișor, every flower offered from the heart, and every small gesture truly made from the soul, without calculations, without haste, without the feeling that everything had to be perfect. It was that simple joy that came from the fact that people were together and that each gesture had a sincere intention behind it.
On March 8th, I was surrounded by Romanians. I was invited to the Leute Book Club in Augsburg as a special guest to talk about my evolution over the years, about the path I have taken, about the way life shapes us when we leave the place where we were born and start building our lives in other countries. It was a moment that I experienced with great emotion, because when you look at your own path from the outside, when you tell it to others, you begin to understand even more clearly how many stages, how many changes and how much transformation there are behind each step.
We received flowers, wore martisors and ate Romanian dishes lovingly prepared by the participants, dishes that were not only familiar tastes, but also memories, because each of them carried with them a part of our culture and soul. We sat together, talked for hours about migration, about the challenges of life lived between two worlds, about the different paths that each of us took and about the way each experience shaped us. But what stayed with me the most were not just the discussions or the words spoken, but the atmosphere. There was a warm silence between people, a form of understanding that did not need long explanations, because each of those present knew, in one way or another, what it means to leave, what it means to rebuild your life in a new place and what it means to carry two worlds within you at the same time.
We didn't complain.
I did not criticize the systems we live in or politics.
I didn't look for explanations for everything that was difficult.
We talked about life, as it is, with its stages, its challenges, but also with those moments of light that appear when people choose to remain open and look forward.
We listened to poems and quotes from Romanian books, words that, although written a long time ago, had a deep resonance for each of us, because they speak of identity, of longing, and of that invisible connection we have with the place we come from. We spoke of identity, of longing, of the power of starting over in another country, and of how, although life takes us on different paths, certain things remain unchanged within us.
For me it was a meeting I wish I had had many years ago.
Maybe because back then I wouldn't have had the right words to fully understand it, but today I can clearly see how important it is to have such spaces where people can tell their stories without fear, without judgment, and without the need to prove anything.
I am deeply grateful to Paula Ciupag for the invitation and, especially, for the fact that through her I had the opportunity to meet equally sensitive and valuable people. People who understand that our stories are not just personal memories, but fragments of the history of a generation that grew up between two worlds, between longing and responsibility, between departure and the desire to build something new.
That meeting once again confirmed the vision I have for this blog.
Stories are not just texts.
Stories are experiences.
They are emotions, experiences, memories that have shaped us and that are worth preserving not only for us, but also for those who come after us.
They are worth telling, preserving, and sharing with the people in the countries we live in today, the countries that welcomed us, where we grew up personally and professionally, where we built new lives, and where we try, each in our own way, to contribute to the society we are now a part of. Because only through these stories can we truly understand what migration means to some of us and the sacrifices it entails, but also the strength we discover within ourselves when we choose to move forward.
Today is Sunday, March 15th.
After three days of rain, I look out the window at Erlenpark (Basel) and notice how the green is becoming more and more intense. It's as if nature itself remembers that spring always comes, even after the grayest days, and that it too has an extraordinary capacity to regenerate itself. And then I realize that life is like that too. After hard times, after years in which we carry sadness or unanswered questions, there is always the possibility of blooming again. Sometimes it doesn't happen right away, because certain answers only come with time and the maturity we gain through living. Sometimes it takes years until you understand the meaning of some things, but life always gives us this chance.
Just as trees keep their roots even when they grow in different directions, we also carry within us the family we come from. And this root gives us the strength to move forward, to build, to succeed and to make ourselves heard in the world we live in. And perhaps this is one of the quietest, but also the most powerful forms of gratitude towards our family.
Let's not forget where we come from.
And let us choose, wherever we are in the world, to flourish.
Image credits
Photos: personal archive
Materials: Leute Magazin – https://leutemagazin.de
Book: Sinidisis, Laurian Graef
Looking at the words from Sinidisis by Laurian Graef, I realize that, beyond the paths that life opens or changes for us, what truly remains are the connections between us. Roots, love do not disappear with distance, they accompany us wherever we go. - Thank you.
