Tatiana Știrbu, at the Diaspora Days in Iasi: “I didn’t leave for money. I left for safety. Romania never left me”
For Tatiana Știrbu, returning to Iași for the events dedicated to Romanians everywhere is not just a return to her native city. It is a return to her own roots, to her childhood, and to a Romania she has continued to carry with her since leaving for Italy.
Tatiana’s story, however, begins long before her departure for Italy. It begins in Iași, in 1976, in a large family and in a Romania still under the communist regime. It is a story about childhood, hardship, work, adaptation, delayed dreams, and about a journey that, after more than two decades spent abroad, has kept bringing her thoughts constantly back home.
A childhood in a Romania of queues and shortages
Born in Iasi in 1976, Tatiana Știrbu says she grew up in a Romania where shortages, queues, and humiliations were part of everyday life.
She was one of five children in the family. She remembers the queues for milk, eggs, and food, the clothes handed down from her older sister, and the inevitable comparison with other children who had simple things that were out of reach for her family.
“You could send an eight- or ten-year-old child to stand in line all night for food,” she recalls, looking back today on that period through the lens of adult experience.
School was not, Tatiana says, always a space of safety. Discipline and authority mattered more than understanding a child’s emotions. She remembers the lice checks done in front of the whole class, the favoritism, and the fear of reciting a lesson, even when she was prepared.
Today, she interprets that fear as a form of anxiety that no one back then knew how to name or explain.
Perhaps that is also why, in high school, she grew close to psychology. A philosophy teacher encouraged her to pursue that path. It was her dream, but her family’s financial situation led her to choose something else.
“Back then I chose what was necessary, not what I dreamed of. I set aside what I had in the drawer of my dream,” she recounts.
After finishing high school and her baccalaureate exam in 1994, there followed years in which she worked in several fields. Retail, grocery stores, pizzerias — in a Romania going through a transition in which companies were popping up quickly, and the labor market was, in many situations, unstable.
She experienced fragile contracts, wages and working conditions she considered unfair, and a period in which profit seemed to be placed above ethics and professionalism.
But, she says, it wasn’t only her own difficulties that mattered.
On her way from one job to another, she encountered vulnerable people, elderly people, individuals who were humiliated or exploited, and situations in which the authorities weren’t doing their job.
“Not just with my eyes. I saw them with my heart,” Tatiana says of the people she was never able to ignore.
2003, the year she left for Italy
In 2003, at the age of 27, she left for Italy.
She says it’s important to make clear that she didn’t leave because she couldn’t make a living, nor because she couldn’t find work. Her departure was tied, above all, to a desire for safety and a need to live in an environment she could feel was more dignified.
“I didn’t leave for money. I left for safety” is one of the ideas that best defines her story.
In Italy she built a new life, discovered another culture of coexistence, and learned to constantly compare the two societies.
But Romania never disappeared from her story.
“I have only one country: Romania. And my country never left me,” says Tatiana Știrbu.
She has been living in Italy for more than two decades, yet she says she has continued to come back to Romania, to follow what’s happening here, and to stay connected to the social, cultural, and political realities of the country.
A return to the abandoned dream
After years of work and community involvement, Tatiana Știrbu returned to the dream she had abandoned as a teenager: psychology.
In 2024 she graduated from the Faculty of Psychology in Italy, and she is currently finishing a master’s degree in the sciences of education and sport, with the aim of becoming a physiotherapist.
She doesn’t want to limit herself to a single field, and she also speaks about the possibility of studying strategic psychology.
For her, psychology is not an isolated profession, but a tool that can be used in almost any field where people work together.
A large part of her energy is also directed toward young people. She says she finds them more authentic, more curious, and less “masked” than adults.
Education, in her view, means, first and foremost, the freedom to ask questions.
“But why?” is, for her, one of the most important questions a child can ask.
Why she doesn’t like the word “diaspora”
Involved for more than ten years in humanitarian and cultural projects dedicated to Romanians in Italy, Tatiana Știrbu says the experience of Romanian communities abroad needs to be looked at beyond folklore, traditions, and festive events.
She doesn’t reject these components, but believes there are far more concrete problems: access to consular services, voting, the queues, the situations in which Romanians and their families end up feeling stripped of dignity in their dealings with institutions.
In this context, she also holds a personal position on the term “diaspora.”
“For me, the diaspora doesn’t exist. There are Romanians outside the country. We are siblings.”
She believes the term can artificially create a separation between those who left and those who stayed in Romania.
Instead, she sees Romanian communities abroad as a resource for the country: people who can bring professional experience, skills, working models, best practices, projects, mentorship, and connections with the societies they live in.
But, she stresses, change shouldn’t be made “for the diaspora” or “by the diaspora,” but together with Romanians in the country.
“There aren’t two Romanias”
This is one of the central ideas of her message.
Tatiana Știrbu doesn’t believe there is a Romania of those who left and a Romania of those who stayed home.
There are Romanians, regardless of where they live.
In her view, Romanians abroad need to take part more in the decisions concerning the country, not only through voting, but also through the professional and civic experience they’ve accumulated.
In Iasi, she says, she discovered people who, like her, have built projects in various fields.
“I think the time has come for us to firmly commit to building Romania” is the message with which she views this gathering.
For her, the fact that Iasi creates a space where Romanians from the country and those from abroad can meet also carries an emotional dimension.
She compares this homecoming to a bandage placed over older wounds.
From civic activism to the People’s Power Party
In recent years, Tatiana Știrbu’s path has also led into politics.
Before her involvement with the People’s Power Party (Partidul Puterea Poporului), she talks about her work with associations and about the projects carried out together with other members of the Romanian community in Italy.
Among the initiatives she mentions are the efforts to improve voting conditions for Romanians abroad and the collection of more than 10,000 signatures to relocate the itinerant consulate, which currently operates in Trieste, to the heart of the Veneto region, in Padua, northeastern Italy.
After the experiences she gained in the civic sphere, she says she reached the conclusion that change cannot be made only from outside the system.
“I’m not saying I chose this party. I’m saying I built it,” explains Tatiana Știrbu.
Today, she is listed as a member of the Standing Bureau of the People’s Power Party. In its public documents, the party commits to principles such as participatory democracy, transparency, meritocracy, and citizen involvement, and its political program also places emphasis on the contribution of Romanians living outside the country.
For Tatiana, politics needs to be a tool, not a personal destination.
“I’m not looking for a title,” she says. She wants the experience she has gained in Romania and Italy to be put to use for the benefit of the community.
At the center of the project she describes are people, education, transparency, and involvement.
Politics begins, in her view, with education
Another important element she promotes is civic education and continuous training.
She speaks about communication courses, personal development, financial education, civic and legal education, and about building an academy-type component within the political project.
The idea is for members not to be merely participants in a political structure, but people who learn, specialize, and put their skills to work on concrete projects.
“Diplomas aren’t enough. Experience and action matter much more,” says Tatiana.
For her, politics needs to move beyond the stage of promises and speeches.
“If we stay only at the level of words, we won’t solve anything.”
The dream of returning to Iasi
Beyond politics, civic projects, and the years spent in Italy, there is, however, a personal dream.
One day, after retiring, Tatiana Știrbu says she would like to return to Iasi.
Not to a crowded center, not to a sophisticated space, but to a green corner, perhaps near a forest, in a house with large, transparent windows.
And to write.
To write a lot, perhaps even “entire encyclopedias.”
Because, after a life spent between two worlds, she says she would like to leave behind authentic stories for future generations.
And perhaps this is, in the end, the thread that ties together all the stages of her life: the child who grew up in the queues of communist Romania, the young woman who worked in Romania’s years of transition, the woman who left for Italy in search of safety, the Romanian who kept getting involved in her community, and the political figure who says she wants to build things together with those back home and those who left.
For Tatiana Știrbu, distance has not meant a break from Romania.
It has meant a different perspective on it.
And the return to Iași, even if only for a few days, seems to also be a return to what has remained constant throughout this entire journey: the feeling that, no matter where Romanians live, Romania remains home.
Translation from the video:
Dear Romanians, wherever life has taken you, I have learned one simple thing: if you see a problem that affects people, you have to try to do something about it.
You know what it means to leave, to build a life far from home, and to carry Romania with you wherever you go.
Today, I want to tell you this: let us bring together our experience, our energy, and our desire to do good, and put them to work for Romania.
Let’s not just talk about change; let’s get involved and build.
I invite you to join us in the national project, Puterea Poporului, because the Romania we carry in our hearts can become the Romania we build together.
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