Greetings from the shiniest city ever!
👋🏼✨

I’m back in my hometown and I need to say that this time, this trip, has been… a trip!

A trip of emotions and lots of healing that I did not see coming.

Ya see, I always LOVED my hometown with all my heart. I never meant to leave.

But, as sometimes goes, life had other plans and my mom’s illness took me away from my dearest hometown to a small mountain countryside town.

{My mom ended up passing from that illness and I wrote a blog post here about grief and healing from it}

But of course, me being me, I made the best with what I had and what I knew at that time, and truly ended up loving living in that small town as well.

After a couple years without ever going back {to live} in São Paulo, I left to USA.

But my dear hometown never left me.

There was always this lingering feeling of wanting to experience what I couldn’t at that time. Being back to just enjoy it, see it, feel it and most importantly to make peace with the way I left {pulling teeth! sinking my nails to the floor while being dragged out of it! **picture the cartoon image of it 😀 }, leaving behind a career, friends + people I loved just like that.

So this time, this trip being able to see it and experience it through the lenses I always wanted to, has been the most healing experience.

So unexpected and I’m so grateful for it! I truly love Sao Paulo and who **I** was here.

And I love even more NOW to be able to look back and see her {me back in the days}, who she was and who she became. Holding her tight and letting her know that really, really, REALLY hard years were ahead of her, and that there would be many of those years. Two full decades actually!!

Yet, giving her the certainty that she’d find her way, that things would make sense eventually, things would fall into place and even when they didn’t as fast as she wanted, how proud I am of her for having the strength to find little joys in the smallest things everywhere and anywhere she was, during some dark moments specially. How proud of her for trying her BESTEST every single damn year, persisting, knowing that something better was always ahead.

Persistently persisting during all those years.  Finding the best she could on each moment even when she felt like quitting. Multiple times.

It has been so sweet and beautiful to observe now, how I experienced my hometown as I did in my 20s and now again in my 40s, completely anew.

Anew yet….. they were always there, THIS version of me and THIS version of São Paulo. We were always there, but hidden, not yet seeing or visible.

Because truly, my love... places and people can and will always be there for us. The way we look at them is key to changing the experience we have with and through them.

I can’t express enough the huge gratitude I am feeling right this moment for my hometown, for myself and all that we both were when I left 20 yrs ago and all that we both are right now.

At the core, the same. Yet completely anew.

🤍Feeling grateful🤍

👉🏼 What about you, love? What kind of love letter, love note or pet-on-the-back would you give your younger self?

What about your current self? Never ever forgetting that the one experiencing life right now will be the younger version in years to come. Take care of her now. Give those pets and extra love your past self and current self need.

Many Smooches,