Can you hear yourself calling?

My story kicks off in Brooklyn, New York ~ where the sirens and the street vendors made their own kind of symphony, and the Italian immigrant rhythm was the soundtrack to life. That’s where I made my grand entrance. A little early, a little creaky, and definitely not on the doctor’s schedule ~ he was running late from a Fourth of July party. So, picture this: fireworks in the sky, my mom on the operating table, and me finally arriving by C-section into their arms at Long Island College Hospital.

I was a month premature and spent my first month in the ICU, basically starring in my own hospital musical. My parents sang Stevie Wonder’s Isn’t She Lovely over my incubator while doctors scratched their heads about my odd creaks. Turns out, it wasn’t music ~ it was mutated collagen. Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. A connective tissue disorder that would shape a lot of my story. But all I knew at the time was: life started with noise, drama, and a lot of wondering. Even my baby brain was already asking ~ was this going to be a comedy or a tragedy?

Now, let me tell you about my parents. They were a 70s movie couple if there ever was one. Both from Downtown Brooklyn, grew up two blocks apart, pinching cheeks, sneaking kisses on stoops. Real rom-com stuff. My mom ~ she was stunning, Kardashian-beautiful before Kardashians were even a thing. But life wasn’t easy on her. Asthmatic, brittle diabetic, allergic to everything with a scent ~ my dad thought she was the cutest thing alive.

But me? I worried about her all the time. I worried she wouldn’t always be there. And that wasn’t just kid-paranoia ~ she had stories. And when my mom told a story, she didn’t skip the suffering. Like the time she got hit by a car on Fourth Place, and my Grandpa Angelo’s longshoreman buddies lined up to donate blood to save her. Or the Christmas Eve she spent in the hospital because her uncles and aunts smoked so much the whole house was a nicotine cloud. The doctor was literally puffing a cigarette while asking, “What could it be?”

That was my mom: fragile but fierce, tragic and funny, beautiful and complicated. And those stories? My little body absorbed them like secondhand smoke. I felt them, almost like they were my own.

And then there was the family. Oh, the family. My parents’ families tangled together like the perfect Sunday sauce. Dads and uncles working on the docks, cousins everywhere, fruit stands turning into candy stores and brownstones, and everybody calling everybody “Cuz.” I had twenty-one cousins on my mom’s side alone. Ten more on my dad’s. Family gatherings? Forget it ~ they were chaos, an episode of The Bear before The Bear existed. But I loved every second of it.

Even when we moved upstate, Brooklyn followed us. Every weekend we’d go back for pasta bowls bigger than your head at Grandma Teresa’s, or to see Grandma Lucia at Simone’s Beauty Shop ~ yes, the one with the slot machine in the back, where I won $50 at six years old. I strutted down the street with old ladies parading me around like I’d hit the jackpot. Because I had. That’s what it felt like growing up in that family: like you were always rich, even if you weren’t.

And when we finally stayed put upstate, our new place became the new hub. Two acres of land, a brook with frogs and crawfish, a beaver dam feeding into the lake. Dogs barking, cousins in high heels trying to keep up with me barefoot and wild. It was a childhood stitched together with laughter, chaos, family, and that endless stream in the backyard.

Upstate life was a different rhythm. Dirt roads instead of stoops, brooks instead of hydrants. I was a classic ADHD overthinker, oblivious to my own beauty, loud and curious, always with a scrape or bruise to show off. My Brooklyn accent faded into the mountains, but I stayed the same kid: riding my bike with wild joy, collecting rocks, pulling crawfish from the brook, and showing off my dislocating shoulder trick like it was a party favor.

School, though ~ that was a mixed bag. Middle school had all the neon of the ’80s—Trapper Keepers, shoulder pads, big hair ~and also the sting of cruelty. My diaries filled with secret poetry were stolen. Older girls made me their enemy. I couldn’t understand it ~because the truth was, I was sweet. Silly, fun, quick-witted. Boys liked me, but I didn’t know what to do with that. Girls resented me. And all I wanted was to float outside the labels, to let people be who they were. But society loves its labels. And once they stuck you with one, you wore it like a scar.

High school was no easier. I got pulled into the wrong crowd ~the drinkers, the drifters—when what I really wanted was theater, music, art. Instead, I clung to my first boyfriend like he was a lifeboat. He broke my heart, and I swore the world had ended. My parents had a love story for the ages~why didn’t I? In that teenage despair, I even thought about ending it, stepping in front of a car just to stop the ache. Drama, sure. But it was real to me then.

College should have been my fresh start. Instead, I dove headfirst into rebellion. I studied Communications but gave just as much energy to chaos. Spring break? I was there. Leopard print on leopard print? That was me.

That’s when I met him. A guy from New Jersey at a beach bar. He loved my fire, and he had money~lottery winnings, family business connections, a beach house. It felt like a movie: first-class tickets, Vegas weekends, wardrobes I didn’t know what to do with. For a girl from a family of longshoremen and pasta bowls, it was dazzling.

But it was also suffocating. Like slipping into a gorgeous dress two sizes too small. The seams stretched, and I stretched with them~until I didn’t even recognize myself. I married him anyway, because that’s what you do when you think you’ve found your forever. But forever isn’t always what it looks like.

That “forever” turned into paranoia, manipulation, and silence. I lost my voice. In my twenties, I should have been thriving. Instead, I was curled inward, shrinking smaller and smaller in someone else’s shadow. Until one day, I couldn’t anymore.

Leaving wasn’t glamorous~it was survival. I left everything behind. Didn’t tell anyone until after I was gone. I moved back in with my parents, a twenty-something divorcee. My Italian family barely had a word for that. They sent me to the priest to request an annulment, like I could just erase what happened with a signature.

But that return home? That was my reset. I picked up a guitar. I wrote poetry. I went back to school for Psychology and Philosophy. I got tested, learned I had ADHD and learning differences, finally got the support I needed. I joined Psi Chi. I got certified in Yoga and Mindfulness. And slowly, I found my own voice again.

For the first time, I wasn’t chasing someone else’s path. I was carving my own.

Of course, life wasn’t done surprising me. At a Murder Mystery party—I was in my glory~I ran into my high school nemesis. The guy who once called me a “princess” while my grandmother was dying of cancer. That comment had burned a hole through me for years. That night, I finally let him have it.

One drunken argument turned into a walk in the woods. Which somehow turned into us being inseparable. Life’s funny like that.

Six months later, I was pregnant. And there it was again~chaos, demons, struggles that weren’t mine to fix. He wrestled with alcohol, moods, shadows. I wrestled with myself, trying once again to disappear into someone else.

But this time, I had a daughter. And when she was four, I chose differently. I chose light. I chose leaving. Not just for me, but for her.

Now, with arthritis in my joints and clarity in my heart, I raise my daughter with one promise: she will never lose her voice the way I did.

I tell her: listen for it. That small voice, even when the world gets loud, even when love knocks you sideways. Listen for it. That’s you. That’s the thread you never let go of.

My life isn’t polished. It’s jagged, messy, loud, full of comic timing, absurdity, heartbreak, resilience, and too much pasta. But it’s mine.

And it began with a creaky cry in Brooklyn, fireworks overhead, and the question that still follows me: Can you hear yourself calling?

~ Jessi #bio