"I learned the hard way the difference between seeing and looking: now I know that I always saw my son but I looked at my daughter. It is from this dazzling awareness that the story of Mariella Fanfarillo begins, a journey back through her life and that of her daughter Esther, a courageous transgender girl, the second to have obtained in Italy the authorization to change gender without the obligation of the operation when she was still a minor.
Reaching that goal was not easy, but Esther and Mariella have always remained close to each other, supporting each other and facing together the violence - physical, psychological, and even bureaucratic - of a country still unprepared to face diversity and perhaps even, even more, self-determination."
