" L 'Albero delle molte Vite "

On 13th of March 2019 the Oncological Association called "The Tree of Many Lives” was founded, It is an Association of Social Promotion (APS, new definition of ONLUS) whose objectives are informative and welfare types.
Emotional support activities are provided for patients and their families as well as meditation courses; conferences on cancer topics of common interest such as prevention, lifestyles, nutrition, innovative therapies; refresher courses for health professionals and general practitioners; health care, legal assistance, nutritional aids, social assistance.
Acting and dancing courses are organized to make the patient reconcile with his body and recreational activities are promoted such as trips and parties, participation in theater and film performances, with the aim of returning to the dimension of fun and entertainment, apparently denied in the tunnel of disease and treatment, in order to see the light at the end of the tunnel and to keep that light alive even in the "tunnel", until the end.
All these initiatives are born from the awareness that cancer is not only a biological event but it is also a disease which affects the emotional, familiar, social and spiritual sphere of the individual.
Cancer doesn’t only affects people's lives but also their quality of life, whether long or short, but also compromises goals, future and hopes. In this dimension, family members, who are fully entitled to be "co-patients", share anxieties, fears, uncertainty about the future, anticipated emotional bereavements and must be supported on a par with the sick person.
This Association composed of sick and healthy people -most of them are family members, health workers and all the representatives of civil society who wish to show deep and active solidarity with those who suffer- wants to put the person back at the center of the scene allowing her or him to regain possession of the love for life, winning the most difficult challenge that is not defeating the cancer, but not identifying with it: the mantra must be "I'm not my disease, I am and I continue to be ME, in despite of the disease.  
The name of the Association comes from a magnificent painting made by Mrs. Nadia Pacilli, sister of the unforgotten and unforgettable Cinzia, which depicts a tree with beautiful pink flowers at the top made by the marks of many patients suffering from cancer and the roots are the imprints of the hands of their oncologist Dr. Maria Rita Noviello and their meditation teacher head nurse  Marianna Barbara.
In all cultures, the Tree of Life is a very powerful symbol to whom many powers are ascribed: care, healing, rejuvenation, immortality, sustenance. Our three it is represented with roots, to be solid, with the trunk, to be resistant, with leaves and flowers from which, at certain times of the year, precious fruits flourish.
In the Old Testament the tree is the symbol of eternal and pure life in contrast with the tree of knowledge, whose fruit Adam and Eve fed on sinning. Buddhists tree is a symbol of enlightenment, of wisdom and connection with the universe. In Egyptian mythology it is the tree from which Isis, goddess of life and fecundity, and Osiris, god of the kingdom of the death, were born, meaning that the tree is the place where life and death are inseparably enclosed. In the Chinese mythology it is represented by a magic peach-tree producing just one peach every 300 years and whoever eats this fruit becomes immortal. In Jewish exegesis the tree of life and the tree of knowledge were united until  Adam separated the roots.
The Tree of our Association wants to represent how paradoxically and fantastically fertile a disease that so much evokes death can be. Because Life or rather the Lives change, after and during cancer often in personal ways, but they are always characterized by new awareness and new scales of values.  Priorities are diminished, the value of being alive is enhanced and the affections, the real and more authentic ones, are strengthened.
 As the subtitle of a famous book by journalist Pietro Calabrese states: "Suddenly a cancer, suddenly life".