I found myself in Rome

Ten years ago, I stepped off a plane and into Rome with a backpack and a shattered name. I was thirty, newly divorced, a mother of two, and no longer sure who I was outside of love, outside of the life I had fought so hard to hold. I thought I was running away. I didn’t realize I was walking toward something.

Rome met me not with romance, but with reverence. Not with escape, but with a kind of sacred silence that made me sit with myself for the first time in a very long time. The air was thick with history and something heavier-grief, maybe, or the weight of finally being alone. I carried it all: betrayal, exhaustion, the hollow ache of starting over. My heart beat in rhythm with the cobblestones beneath my feet-uneven, but still moving.

I wandered the Colosseum first. The arena, the blood-soaked dust of centuries, the ache of survival dressed as glory. I stood inside the shadow of its arches and felt the quiet violence of my own heart-how long I had been fighting to be chosen, to be kept. The Colosseum didn’t ask for my pain, but it made space for it. There was something strangely comforting about ruins that had outlived so much. As if they were whispering: You don’t have to be whole to endure.

At the Sistine Chapel, I craned my neck until it hurt. I stared at the ceiling Michelangelo painted on his back, brushstroke after desperate brushstroke, and wondered if he, too, had ever felt small while creating something holy. I didn’t pray. I just breathed. And for a moment, I felt closer to something-not God, maybe, but to the girl I had buried beneath years of sacrifice and silence.

I lit a candle at the Basilica of San Giovanni. I’m not religious, not in any traditional sense. But something about that space-the hush, the flicker, the weight of centuries-brought me to my knees. I didn’t know the words. But my hands were trembling, and something in me whispered: please. Please let me find myself. Please let me be more than what I’ve lost.

At the Trevi Fountain, I tossed in a coin and made a wish for love. Not the storybook kind. Not the kind that leaves you starving for air in exchange for roses and ring boxes. I wished for love that would see me-not just my light, but my shadows too. I wished for someone who wouldn’t run from my softness, or from the fire I’d learned to dim for the sake of peace.

I watched a painter in Piazza Navona trying to capture two lovers on canvas. He kept adjusting their posture, chasing some invisible thread of truth between their bodies. The sky turned gold behind him. I don’t know if he ever got it right. But in his searching, I saw myself-trying so hard to make love look like something it was never meant to be. Chasing a picture instead of presence.

At sunrise, I found myself alone on the Spanish Steps. The city was still sleeping. I wrapped my arms around myself and watched the light change. For once, I didn’t feel the need to perform. No one was watching. I didn’t have to smile. I didn’t have to explain why I was there alone. I just breathed. And in that stillness, I didn’t feel empty. I felt free.

Rome didn’t ask me to be okay. It didn’t ask me to move on or get over it. It asked me only to be. It showed me statues missing arms, walls covered in moss, temples crumbling but still standing. It showed me beauty in imperfection. Holiness in decay. I began to believe that maybe the broken things were still worthy of reverence.

I walked without a map. Let the city carry me. I got lost on purpose. I ate tomatoes that tasted like the sun. I let red wine stain my lips. I sat through dinners where I barely spoke, and no one filled the silence. That felt like love, too.

Street musicians played Vivaldi outside cafés. Strangers smiled without asking for anything. I wept in public, and no one looked away. I wrote poems I didn’t keep. I bought postcards I never sent. I let the ache breathe beside me without rushing to fix it.

Rome didn’t give me answers. But it gave me presence. It didn’t hand me back my identity, but it let me feel the outline of it again. It reminded me that I was still here. Still whole, in my own way. Still becoming.

Maybe it was God.

Maybe it was the ghosts of women who came before me.

Maybe it was just me, seeing myself clearly for the first time in years.

In every flickering votive, every frescoed ceiling, every stone corridor that had held centuries- I saw myself. Not as a failure. Not as a woman too broken to be loved. But as a story still unfolding.

Rome didn’t save me.

It didn’t need to.

It simply made room for me to exist-without shame, without noise.

And somewhere between the ruins and the rooftops,

the candles and the coins,

I remembered something I hadn’t felt in a long time.

Hope.

Not loud. Not certain.

But soft.

And just enough.