How freelance helped my life

I grew up in a very traditional Italian household.

My father was the one who would wake up early and work long hours to make sure we had everything we needed and my mother, once we my brother and I came along, quit her job to be a stay at home mom and take care of us.

They both did their part excellently, granting us a happy and safe childhood.

I have always wanted to be a real Italian mom, the one that is home to make you yummy food after school and always think that you should eat more because you are too skinny.

When it was my time to move out at 24, move to another country and finally start my own family, I did not have the faintest idea on how I would be balancing my work life with my personal life.

I loved and still love to work in contact with clients, to have human relationships and I was always good at my job with people but something changed.

A few years ago, after the COVID outbreak, I fell into a deep ditch, a dark place called depression. With it came along the agoraphobia, which affected my life so intensely that even going to the supermarket was giving me panic attacks.

I had to quit my job as a receptionist, I started taking medications and going to therapy and I thought, I could never set foot out of my house, let alone work.

When I finally started to heal, I thought about my parents. And I understood, I loved to be a stay at home mom like my mother was but I had the strong work ethic that my father had…so I wondered, could I do a job that I love, from home, that gets me income and at the same time can let me take care of my family?

It took me some time but eventually I found my vocation. I always loved to write and I knew I was good at it, so I started to seek small writing jobs and I was so thrilled, I was in my element! Finally after many years of uncertainty, my path was clear.

I want to write, I want to translate because I am damn good at it and it gives me so much joy! And this joy helped me to find my way out of the depression and agoraphobia, I was a wife again, a mom again and, most importantly, I was again Marta.

Freelancing has given me the freedom of being able to do my part for providing for my family, I can be the Italian mom that cooks meals for her family and feeds every single one of her kids’friends and I can balance my life exactly like I want.

It is not easy, it has its ups and downs but I really love it!