Connections

Several years ago, 13 or 14, I met a lovely, young woman at a conference for entrepreneurs. I had started to attend these meetings five or six years before, and I fell in love with the energy of it all. I was starting up my own coaching/consulting business on the side, but what I really adored was all the wonderful people I met. I suppose they were like-minded souls with a sense of adventure and a curiosity about building and becoming more. I made so many friendships in these gatherings -- mostly women and some men from all over the world. The one I'm introducing you to is a delightful Irish woman who has made Italy her home for many years. I've spent time with her in multiple locations in the U.S. and Europe. Just recently I was part of a retreat she co-facilitated in Ireland. She recently wrote the following article, and I knew I had to share it with you. She has articulated so beautifully what I also believe in ... leaving the hustle and bustle behind and connecting. Meet Grace Kelly, and I hope you enjoy her outlook as much as I do. 

The Clarifying Art of Aperitivo

How one daily Italian ritual teaches us to slow down and return to self

By GRACE KELLY

When I moved to Italy, I stumbled into something I hadn’t been looking for,  a daily ritual that quietly changed the way I relate to myself and others. It was the aperitivo. At first it seemed like drinks before dinner. But the more I settled into Italian life, the more I realised it was something else entirely: a pause, a breath, a signal that the working day was over and something gentler was beginning. In Ireland, where I grew up, going for drinks tends to mean one thing: drinking. The food is an afterthought.

In Italy, it’s almost the opposite. Drinks arrive with food — always. The aim isn’t to get drunk, it’s to open up. In fact, the word aperitivo itself comes from the Latin aprire (to open). Quite literally, to open the appetite, yes, but also to open yourself to the evening, to the people around you, to the pleasure of simply being present, and why not—also to possibility. That distinction matters more for our mental health than we might realise. For in a single sip we can actually come back to ourselves, perhaps for the first time in our day. 

Something we rarely talk about when it comes to mental health, yet it sits right at the heart of bar culture is social connection. Because, afterall, we are social creatures! Connection regulates our nervous system, lifts our mood and gives us a sense of meaning. When we connect, something measurable shifts. Oxytocin lowers stress and creates a felt sense of safety.  Serotonin rises. Even brief, light-touch interactions,  the kind you have with a familiar face at your local bar, have been shown to boost wellbeing meaningfully. 

Science has begun to catch up with what Italians have known instinctively for centuries. Modern life makes it increasingly easy to go an entire day without real human contact. We work alone, eat alone, scroll alone — more digitally connected than any generation before us, and quietly lonelier than ever. Harvard’s longest-running study on adult life, spanning over 80 years, found that the greatest predictor of health and happiness wasn’t wealth, status, or diet. It was the warmth and consistency of a person’s relationships. Loneliness, the researchers found, damages our health as much as smoking 15 cigarettes a day (read that again, fifteen!)— raising cortisol, disrupting sleep, weakening the immune system. 

Neuroscientist John Cacioppo, who spent decades studying loneliness, described it as a signal,  the same way hunger tells us we need food, loneliness tells us we need people. The ritual of aperitivo answers that signal beautifully. It connects us not only to others, but back to Self.  A single sip renders us present. In that moment, our focus narrows to taste, perhaps to the beauty of the glass in hand, the color of the cocktail.  Our senses come alive again after a day of running, mentally or physically.

And as we become present, something else rises with it: a quieter, deeper intelligence we’re normally too busy to hear. Fast and busy, we miss the nudges meant to guide us toward the solutions we’re already looking for. Slowed down, connected to our senses through whatever we’re sipping or eating, we see more clearly what’s needed next. Many mistakes get avoided this way. Many regrets, put to bed. This isn’t dependent on alcohol either, but on the ritual itself. I have clients who experience the exact same return to Self over a non-alcoholic cocktail. What matters isn’t the liquid — it’s the inbuilt ability to let go of thought and reconnect inward. But let me take you back to where my love of, and awakening to,  the ritual began. 

As a deeply social creature myself, my fascination with cocktail hour started young. I remember being obsessed with Dallas and Dynasty, endlessly intrigued that the characters would simply lift the phone, place an order, and have their five o’clock cocktail delivered by the butler. Growing up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, one could only dream of such glamour.

But when I was eleven years old, a luxury hotel opened forty minutes from my house, and my parents surprised me with an overnight stay,  I think we were among its first guests. I remember the thrill of it, like Dynasty had landed on my doorstep. I had made some new friends down the hall and invited them back to my room while my parents went for a walk. And exactly as I’d seen it done on television, I lifted the phone and ordered Fanta, Coke, and crisps for a little “aperitivo party.” My parents returned to find a room full of delighted children, and my father, bewildered, asking where we’d gotten it all. “From the butler,” I told him. 

I found this same ritual deeply healing years later, while navigating grief after my partner Francesco suddenly died. I was helping his family through the worst of it, living inside my own loss. The one moment each day I felt I came back to myself was in the sip of a good wine,  sometimes with friends, recounting better times, my heart lightening just slightly.

What I have come to realize is that the aperitivo is, in a way, a permission slip. Permission to slip into a gentler pace. Just a glass of something good, a little food, whoever happens to be there. In that simplicity, something healing happens, every time. When you pour that glass, a shift takes place, but most of us give the drink too much credit. What’s really happening is simpler: you’ve decided, even briefly, to let go of what was driving you.

Chronic, stressful, anxious, busy thinking.  Most of us live inside that noise all day, every flavor of thought interrupting our connection to Self and to our own guidance. By letting go, we become present — and in presence, we hear our true Self, not the voice of judgment or dread, but the one that actually knows the way. It’s not unlike forgetting someone’s name: you stand in front of them, straining to recall it, and it’s only once you’ve dropped the effort entirely that the name surfaces on its own. The capacity to release, to return to the present, has always been in us. Sipping simply gives us a doorway back to it.

Many of my clients in the US and Canada meet this idea with quiet resistance at first. Slow down? I’d get nothing done. I understand the resistance — I lived at that frantic pace for years myself, as a burnt-out schoolteacher, moving at great speed in entirely the wrong direction. Back then, a sip was more of a gulp. What changed everything wasn’t a technique or a tool. It was simply noticing — becoming aware of when I was so deep in thought that I’d lost myself entirely.

Like a light switching on in a dark room. Suddenly, I was back. Almost without exception, my clients discover the same thing once they try it: a gentler pace doesn’t cost them productivity. It unlocks it. My hope is that this inspires you to create your own version of aperitivo — wherever you are, whatever you’re drinking. Not to rush through the glass, but to actually taste it. To let a single sip be a moment of coming back to yourself. That, I’ve come to believe, is good for both mind and soul. 

^{Grace Kelly is a transformational coach living in Puglia. She specialises in reinvention for entrepreneurs through life’s most challenging circumstances. Her work is built on a single belief: that what feels like an ending can become the most powerful beginning of your life — and a whole new chapter for your business. Through online programmes and immersive retreats, Grace helps entrepreneurial women move from simply surviving to truly thriving, in life and in business.}

gracefulcoaching.net

Sending Sparkles and Love Your Way!