“Four years ago I got a shot. Mario, my newborn son, had suffered a stroke. While he was on my womb? During childbirth? I don’t know yet: it happens to two or three children in a thousand, and all report damage to the brain. In his case, forty percent of the right hemisphere was “burnt”, probably the left side of his body would be paralyzed. The statistics, now I understand, are like they tell you only what you can not do. What we can do, we discovered it a little at a time: so much physiotherapy, at home and at the hospital, and an experimental program for the activation of Mirror Neurons. But it wasn’t enough. Because Mario did not look at the exercises, he looked at us parents, so focused on teaching him the autonomy that we had forgotten to transmit to him the joy of living. Then we changed perspective: if we wanted the best from our son, we had to give the best of us. We began to do with him the beautiful things that we liked before his birth: travelling, listening to music, reading, attending events with friends. And he, step by step, literally, he set himself up and became the smiling child he is today. Our story is not a miracle or a fable: it is an example of what curiosity, courage, love and science can do. That’s why I wanted to tell it in a book, as my husband and I told it at the TED Global in 2013, and from there it went around the world. Preface by Saturnino . Afterword of Giacomo Rizzolatti .
— Fight and smile Francesca Fedeli”