Mother of those who were never born. A young and already adult voice, capable of inhabiting the word as a space of truth. Federica Santuccio – actress, author, screenwriter – published “Heart without a cradle” on Amazon, a book that was born from a wound: an internal abortion that redesigned the boundary between herself and life.
In these pages, loss stops being a taboo and becomes language: intimate, clear, necessary. It is a journey into the unspeakable, conducted with a voice that does not seek consolation but presence. “Writing saved me, it allowed me to give a name to the pain.” It is the phrase that becomes manifest. Here the meaning of the work is condensed: art that is not a refuge and is not an ornament but a vital act, a gesture that allows you to look at the pain without retreating.
The wound that generates voice
The first pregnancy ends without warning. The body remembers, the mind empties, the identity cracks. From that emptiness comes a prose that never raises its voice, but vibrates like a heart that still beats “without a cradle”. Heart without a cradle is the attempt to give shape to silence, to give company to mourning, to tell the reader: you are not alone.
Santuccio gives his experience a political value – in the highest sense of the term: sharing to dissolve isolation, transforming pain into knowledge. “Art was my salvation.” And that phrase illuminates the whole book: the page as an act of resistance to the dehumanization of pain.
Who is Federica Santuccio
Roman, born in 1992, Federica Santuccio was born into art. He sang at the age of fifteen on Rai Uno, then chose acting, until graduating from the Accademia Artisti in 2019. Writing, however, is his secret line: in 2017 he published The Blue Key, an autobiographical novel; in 2021 100 rooms never opened, from which a short film was born; in 2024 You, Artist, a diary that invites the reader to create together with her.
In the meantime, he co-signed the screenplay for the feature film La mia luce with Francesco Marchina and landed on the set of Pompeii – the series (Prime Video), becoming one of the new faces of the second season. In 2024 he received the Vincenzo Crocitti International Award (Vince Award) as an emerging talent for Tu, Artista. His path never separates languages: he intertwines them, puts them in dialogue, each time seeking a new way of telling the truth.
The book: Heart without a cradle
“I always dreamed of having a child and a family of my own. I had met the right man, but we hadn’t planned anything yet. I discovered I was pregnant by chance, and from that moment on I wanted that child with all my being.”
This is what Federica says. But then the darkness. After the abortion and the curettage, what remains is a body that resembles the postpartum one – but with one terrible difference: there is no one in the arms. And there is no place where you can remember, because at nine weeks and three days “this is not allowed”. From that absence a necessary book is born.
A text that returns “the secret pain, the invisible tears, the loneliness that tightens the soul”, but also the light that resists – fragile, but unshakable. It is a pact with women who have experienced loss: an invitation to give voice to mourning, to find company in silence, to cherish the love that continues to beat even when it has no cradle.
“This book – writes the author – is for all the mothers of those who were never born. Because life, despite everything, always finds a way to give us back what we deserve”. Not a therapeutic memoir, rather a grammar of treatment that tries to make private pain shareable, without sweetening it or making it spectacular. With a gloss that becomes universal: The difference is made by the way we choose to react. This is the greatest wish I want to give to those who suffer or are seeking their own inner healing: never give up. Life, despite everything, always finds a way to give us back what we deserve.”
Talking about abortion without veils: the aesthetics of care
From his debut with The Blue Key to You, Artist, Santuccio’s coherence is clear: art as a healing practice. His works do not seek spectacle but proximity: the word as an act of love, as a shared space.
In the short film T’imagina still (2024), written and performed by her, the theme of lost motherhood returns in visual form, a sign that her language crosses every medium without getting lost. “Interpreting that story – he confesses – was like looking inside myself. It was my life, my wound. But cinema, like writing, serves this purpose: to tell the truth.” Talking about spontaneous abortion openly, without euphemisms, is still a revolutionary gesture. With Cuore senza cradle, Federica Santuccio builds a place of recognition, a language for those who have remained silent for too long. There is no fuss, there is precision. There is no mercy, there is presence. Writing – to cross, not to forget. In a world that divides between modesty and spectacle, Santuccio chooses the third way: the cure of language.
His is a literature of closeness, which does not fear the truth and does not seek refuge. A place of proximity, which does not simplify the pain but inhabits it. It is a rare position and, precisely for this reason, necessary: the reader does not receive explanations but company. And perhaps, in that company, healing already begins.
