Photo: Stefania Lucchetti
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Love and Chaos and a room of one’s own
Love and chaos is a poem by Stefania Lucchetti included in Coffee Stains On My Books (English edition of Macchie di caffè sui miei libri, Albatros 2024)
A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf is a groundbreaking, wide-ranging essay first published in 1929. It originated from a series of lectures Woolf gave at the women’s colleges of Newnham and Girton, two institutions of the University of Cambridge. The central thesis of the work is that, in order for a woman to write fiction (or meaningfully devote herself to artistic creation), she must have financial independence and a personal space of her own—hence the title A Room of One’s Own.
Virginia Woolf wrote that in order to create, a woman needs a room of her own. And yet, it is not always easy to find such a room. Private spaces aren’t abundant, especially for someone like me who has children (three of them). And it is especially difficult during summer months when kids are not engaged in school and ongoing sports activities.
A large family is a complex environment. Physical space is a luxury, a boundary that must be continuously redrawn between noise and silence, between the needs of others and the need to listen to oneself. Finding not only the time but also a physical place to cultivate one’s thoughts is difficult, and often that space must be found within, in an interior place.
Without the possibility of carving out a truly isolated physical space, I have learned to create one with the help of technology: noise-canceling headphones to soften the chaos, a physical spot, and some panels that provide a minimal level of mental privacy. In this way, in the midst of daily clamor, I sometimes manage to find my own room of one’s own, not made of walls and doors, but of invisible boundaries that I can trace whenever I need them. Still, I will not deny that the best work happens during the months when the children are at school and I have a few hours to focus solely on my work. Virginia Woolf was right, there is no point in pretending otherwise.
What I have had to learn and accept, often with effort and pain, and that too should not be denied, is that in a broad and complex life, there are moments of chaos and moments of solitude. That alternation does not always follow the timing we would prefer.
One cannot always escape chaos, nor can one always retreat from it when one wants to, but one can learn to live with it, transforming it into a resource. Noise can be an obstacle, but it can also be raw material to be shaped. The lack of physical space can, within certain limits, become an opportunity to build a deeper and more resilient mental space, an incubator of projects and energy to be tapped later.
From my point of view, Woolf’s “room of one’s own” symbolizes creative freedom, emotional and intellectual autonomy. The real challenge is not finding it, but recognizing it when we are already in it, even if surrounded by the noise of the world.
“Whatever you’re meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.” — Doris Lessing
The value of care
Since 2019, when I left my office job at large law firms to become an entrepreneur with my own legal practice, and later a writer, I have spent most of the long Italian school holidays by the sea with my children. It is one of the most demanding things I do. It is exhausting to take care of the house and three children without pause, to climb up and down the steep path to the beach for weeks, and to carve out work in the early hours of the morning or in the tiny gaps of the day.
In the photographs I sometimes share on social networks, you can see the breathtaking beauty of the place and the happy children. What you don’t see is the hard work, the discipline, the organization, and the personal sacrifice required to create this kind of life. When people say that you can have a large family and a corporate career, it simply isn’t true—at least not without significant support and resources at home. Maybe it can work with one child, but certainly not with three, and certainly not in Italy, where logistics are not work-oriented and school holidays last three months. I didn’t have the kind of help that would have been necessary to make that choice sustainable. And perhaps I wouldn’t have wanted it anyway.
Because, as difficult and sometimes completely exhausting as it is, this is the only life I can imagine giving my children. The fact that, finding myself in the same circumstances again, I would still choose this path doesn’t mean there are no second thoughts, no pain, or no burnout. It means that trying to impose rigid expectations on women and families fails to account for the reality of what a family is, what it really means to care for children, what a consuming career entails. It means that there is no point treating every phase of life as equivalent to the next, or attributing more value to one type of work over another. It also means that the financial and professional balance within a family is not always fair, equal, or easily measurable.
The truth is that having children requires dedication and choices. It also requires support from institutions and society as a whole, especially from those who choose not to have children. Instead, all I hear are criticisms, judgments, and selfish demands for “child-free spaces.”
Despite everything, I remain grateful to have had the chance to choose this path, even when it tests every limit I have. I want my children to see not only the joy of these summers, but also the truth of what it means to care deeply for others, to make space for them in a world that too often refuses to do so.
What I hope for is a more honest conversation about what raising children really demands, a conversation that acknowledges both the beauty and the cost. If we could regard care as real work, worthy of respect, and build systems that support families rather than penalize them, we could create a society where choosing to have children does not feel like a private burden but a shared responsibility.
If we want families to thrive, we must go beyond easy slogans and genuinely invest in the structures that make care possible. It is time to ask ourselves what kind of society we want to be: one that honors the work of raising the next generation, or one that turns its gaze away from its own future.
Pomeriggi di Amore Sospeso (Published by Italian publisher Albatros) bilingual book) and its English edition Afternoons of Suspended Love (English edition) are now available
Stefania Lucchetti is a CONTEMPORARY ITALIAN POET. She is bilingual (Italian-English) and writes in both languages, curating her own translations.
Her bibliographical profile is listed in the prestigious Italian Poetry Org. Stefania Lucchetti’s books have been tagged as “the message of the times” and regularly defined as “life changing” by readers. Born in 1975 in Verona, Italy, she saw her first poetry published at 13 while living in the US with her family, marking the beginning of a long journey as wordsmith. In adulthood, Stefania pursued a remarkable career in international law, traversing through Milan, London and Hong Kong as a respected international commercial lawyer. While during her professional years she authored business books and essays, she is now back to her first love: poetry.
Lucchetti is author of the poetry collections: La poesia è cyberpunk (Albatros, 2025) – bilingual, Pomeriggi di amore sospeso (Albatros, 2025) – bilingual, Macchie di caffè sui miei libri (Albatros, 2024) – bilingual.
She also published: Women Breaking Though Leadership (Hong Kong, 2012); The Principle of Relevance – The Essential Strategy to Navigate Through the Information Age (Hong Kong, 2010); Ideas in Reality (Hong Kong, 2011); Dinamiche relazionali e decisionali dei gruppi di lavoro virtuali (Milano, 2024).