Laine B Brown lives in Norfolk with her basset hound Basil and Italian cat, Munchkin. Laine spent four years living in the heel of Italy where she penned her personal memoir, Finding Myself in Puglia.

Listen to Laine's podcast with RadioGorgeous @Radio_Gorgeoushttps://www.mixcloud.com/radiogorgeouscom/finding-myself-in-puglia-by-laine-b-brown-with-josephine-pembroke/

https://audioboom.com/posts/7046408-finding-myself-in-puglia-by-laine-b-brown-with-josephine-pembroke

Laine gave up my job as a nurse, sold her home and gave away most of her belongings. She had three desires bubbling at the heart of her choice: to write a book, paint a picture and climb a mountain before she died.

A man with a van took most of her remaining belongings, along with her basset hound Basil, down to the heel of Italy over 1,500 miles away, where she would spend the next four years. If it all seemed like a folly, then she was willing to take the risk. She moved to a house that she had only spent a week in the year before. She knew no one and yet she had surety in her resolve. She wanted to feel fully present in feeling unsafe and comfortable with the not knowing.

And so the journey began, a new language, a new life laced with humour and laughter under the warm southern Italian sun.

Come and join her…

'The strange thing is that in Italian, being alone and being lonely are the same. Sono sola, I am alone, I am lonely. Clearly, the differences have been lost in translation. Or maybe it is because the Italians are rarely alone and are, in general, surrounded by a loving family. Or at the very least part of a community where someone will be looking out for you; a bridge and a connection. But this doesn’t answer the question, how some of us have felt entirely alone in a room of people. Whether it is about the need to belong or the lack of self-connection; lack of self-love and acceptance, or a combination of all of these things.'

An extract from Laine's memoir Finding Myself in Puglia where she learnt to value silence and to be alone and not feel lonely.