About-What We Carried With us

What We Carried With Us, was born from memory, family, and the quiet fear that some things, once lost, may not return unless we speak them aloud.

My parents were born on the island of Ischia, Italy. In 1953, my father immigrated to Canada, carrying little more than hope and the traditions of his childhood. Years later, through photographs and letters, he was introduced to my mother. They wrote across the ocean for two years before marrying in Italy in 1963, and my father brought my mother to Canada to start their life together.

I was born in 1971 in New Westminster, British Columbia, the fourth of six children. My childhood was shaped by family, the outdoors, and the quiet rhythms of home. I learned through helping my mother, observing, and working alongside my father on landscaping projects — traditions lived rather than announced.

Later, life’s changes — marriage, motherhood, and blending cultures — pulled me away from these practices. Raising six children, much of what I had absorbed as a child fell quiet.

It wasn’t until my second marriage that I felt a pull back to my roots. At 42, I returned to study art, earning a double bachelor’s in Art Education and Painting & Drawing, graduating with distinction. My artist practice, which began in 2021, is an extension of the same journey that drives this blog: a space to relive and honor childhood memories, family traditions, and the rhythms of home, past and present. Through painting and drawing, I explore the smells, textures, and stories that shaped my family life, giving them new life while keeping them alive in my own experience. Since then, I’ve been recognized by my peers, inaugurated into Corkin Gallery, received a Canada Council grant, and was nominated for the Sobey Art Award.

This blog is a companion to that practice — a place to gather family traditions, recipes, and homemaking practices that shaped me — not because they belong only to the past, but because they can still live today.

This is how we lived — maybe it can live again.