This letter arrives carrying too many bags, memories, photos, and feelings… so it might not all fit in the envelope of your inbox. If that’s the case, to feel the winds of change and read the whole thing, uncut, open it directly on Substack.
Hello my dear reader,
I’m writing to you from the edge of change. I haven’t packed a single box yet, but the 27 tabs open on my browser already say it all. I’ve been spending my days scrolling through house listings, with that familiar lump in my throat, dry and hot, that comes when you know you’ll soon have to close one door and open another.
I’ve been speaking with real estate agents, but the one who answers inside me is an old fear… the fear of leaving a home behind.
I’m getting ready to move… again. To a new house, and probably a new city. For someone with a Taurus Moon (which, in astrological shorthand, means I crave stability), moving is definitely not easy… and certainly not enjoyable.
I wish I were someone unattached. One of those people who grabs a little backpack and just goes. Someone who doesn’t ache over not putting down roots — or better yet, who doesn’t suffer after growing them and then having to replant, not knowing if they’ll take in the new soil. Nomadic, adventurous, unbothered.
From the outside, it might even look like I have that spirit. I’ve moved so many times… houses, countries, circumstances…
But… even as a double Gemini (which could mean I love newness), my difficulty with moving, packing, facing the new… it feels like carrying a stone inside my chest, a massive one, that doesn’t fit in any suitcase and insists on getting heavier with every house listing I open.
I’ve rarely moved because I wanted to. My relocations have almost always been the result of someone else’s choice — back when I wasn’t in charge of my own nose or my own desires — or because of life’s circumstances.
When I was 11, my parents had already been divorced for two years — a period in which my father had already started a new family, I got my first period, and was transferred to two different schools (and gathered a modest list of traumas, as you might imagine). Then my parents decided to sell the house where I lived with my mother, and she and I went to live with my maternal grandparents. No one prepared me for any of these changes.
I didn’t want to leave the house at Rua Guaraiúva (in São Paulo, Brazil). That address was my link to a life that no longer existed, where my father had lived with me, and where I still didn’t know what it meant to feel pain, uncertainty, and instability.
Living with my grandparents saved my life, and calling their house “mine” was a kind of comfort. So much was lived in that house — not just by me, but by my whole family. So many childhoods unfolded in that big, wonderful home, filled with laughter, grandma’s food, the best birthday parties, music, cousins and more cousins, friends, a plastic kiddie pool, my great-grandfather in the back annex, an ipê tree, a backyard with a mulberry tree, a hammock, and that kind of time that only exists in the homes of the very best grandmothers.
However… and every story has a however… a few years later, when money got tight, we had to move. First, we went to live in the backyard of that house, while my uncle moved into the main house (I still haven’t quite figured out the logic behind that decision from the grownups back then). Then they sold the house, and a piece of my heart remains buried in that garden… along with two cats, one fish, and the roots of a century-old pine tree the new owner had ripped out.
I definitely didn’t choose to leave that house. And if I close my eyes, I still know exactly how it smelled, how the parquet floor felt beneath my feet, the sun-warmed ceramic tiles of the backyard, the cool marble staircase, my fingers tracing the blue mosaic tiles on the wall… The house on Rua Francisco Dias Velho will always be the place my soul returns to when it wants to smell childhood.
We all moved into a smaller apartment nearby, still in the Brooklin neighborhood of São Paulo. Then the money really ran out and my mom packed her things and went off to live an adventure in Europe, my grandparents moved to the countryside in Rio de Janeiro with our cats (over 500 km away), and I stayed in São Paulo, living through some of the hardest years of my life… crashing at other people’s homes, going through hardship and hunger, and a few other incidents best left unlisted here — because this isn’t what this essay is about. But one thing is certain: that was definitely not a move I chose.
Fast forward to 2010 and by then I had my little rented apartment in downtown São Paulo, on Avenida 9 de Julho. Still struggling financially, but so happy with every hard-won battle.
I met Douglas a year later. And we started a new adventure called love (I learned to be cheesy like this with him). Two months into dating, I had to give up my little apartment. “What if you moved in with me?”, the handsome guy asked. I made him promise me the fridge if things didn’t work out, and since he agreed, I moved in. The rest is almost 14 years together — and the fridge now lives at a friend’s house.
Did I want to move? Partially, yes. I was trusting - more or less - the Universe, this man, and the love we were building. But I was also drawn by the very practical possibility of splitting the rent.
We lived in the neighbourhood of Santa Cecília, on Rua Gabriel dos Santos, where our love took root.
Three years and two severance payments later, we bought an apartment in the Liberdade neighbourhood…
That move, I chose. Carefully, with soul, and a measuring tape in hand.
Rua Conselheiro Furtado.
With a lot of sweat (we carried endless bags of sand and cement up to the second floor), with a lot of laughter … but also a torrential downpour of tears, fear, anxiety, and the urge to run away, because in my mind, buying an apartment meant signing not only a financial contract but also a relationship contract, and confronting adulthood for real.
We were intensely, endlessly happy in that apartment. Every wall drilled into, every light fixture installed, every little corner loved. Dancing into the night, just us and the cats, happy and whole. The flat was always full of beloved friends. I’ve never been so happy.
But… and there’s always a but… in 2016, our president Dilma (how I miss her!) was being publicly vilified based on lies masterfully executed by the Brazilian patriarchy, and I had already chewed my nails to the quick from anxiety. The impeachment was being voted on in Congress, and then came that unspeakable scene, that despicable historical moment when the unnameable future president (ugh, I get nauseous just remembering and refuse to write his name) stood up and paid tribute to one of the worst figures of the military dictatorship in my home country, a well know torturer — adding horror to the injury of everything Dilma had endured, she herself a torture survivor. And that disgrace of a man received applause instead of being immediately arrested — which would have been the only decent thing to do at that moment, regardless of political views, simply out of basic human decency.
I went to the bathroom to throw up. If there’s one thing that physically makes me ill, it’s torture… and honoring a torturer.
I told my partner: “We’re going to have to leave. I don’t know if I want to raise children here. I think the dictatorship is coming back. I think that guy is going to be president. I don’t know. Let’s go.”
The desire to leave Brazil had been itching at me for years, more out of a longing to live something new and to travel than because of what happened that day in 2016. But in that moment, it turned into a necessity, something beyond just a want. For both of us.
And in July 2017, I landed - pregnant - in Berlin, Germany.
Did we choose to move? Yes. Could we have stayed and faced everything that happened in my country? We could have. Did we choose the first country that offered a job and not really think through what it would mean to live in Germany? Also yes.
But was it truly a move I chose? I don’t think so. It was an impulse. An escape. A wave of desperation mixed with the electric pull between us to live something new.
And it wasn’t some backpacking adventure. Between comings and goings to Brazil, I’ve brought about 16 suitcases across the Atlantic. You could write a whole play about those bags and the absurd things I insist on carrying with me.
My Taurus Moon + Gemini indecision = attachment and an inability to choose… everything becomes too important to leave behind.
I won’t describe here the xenophobic hell I went through during the four and a half years that followed in Berlin — specifically in the former Soviet neighborhood of Lichtenberg, on Einbecker Str, where we ended up. It’s not worth it, and therapy has covered plenty. But for the purposes of this text, it’s enough to know that if it weren’t for the pregnancy, for having such a small baby, and then the pandemic, I wouldn’t have stayed that long. And no, I never learned German.
And yes, there were good things too. The Einbecker apartment was my safe haven, where I had the best neighbors ever (Brazilian, Argentinian, Nigerian), where I could close the door and leave Germany on the other side.
(From Berlin, I miss a few people, swimming naked in the lakes, public transportation, and the low taxes. The rest…well, it could blow away from the map, for all I care.)
And then we chose our next destination: London. And why London?, you might ask, dear reader. A deep love for tea, Big Ben, and Jane Austen? Not quite.
London was a combination of not wanting to return to Brazil + we speak English + a good salary and a company willing to cover visa costs + we wanted to get out of Germany as fast as possible.
And so, at the end of the pandemic, we moved “blindly.” We rented a house and enrolled our daughter in school without ever having set foot on English soil. We did it all online, once again kinda trusting the Universe, pulled forward by the electric charge of fleeing once more. Of living something new.
We ended up in Uxbridge, which I describe both geographically and emotionally as “the northwestern end of London, but it's still London!”. Do I like Uxbridge, specifically Granville Road? Not really. But I like the house we live in, my daughter's school, the community I’ve built here over the last four years.
I’ve found several local witches, and now I'm part of a coven. I work with women just around the corner from my home. But did I choose this place? Not exactly. It fit the parameters on the map, and the landlord agreed to rent to us even though we weren’t physically in the country.
And this landlord has been raising our rent gradually and greedily. To the point where it’s now impossible to afford. Staying in this area is no longer an option. And once again, the time has come to move. Not because I want to.
This time, there’s another little being — my daughter — who also has a Taurus Moon, and she definitely doesn’t want to move… not from the house she loves, but especially not from the school she adores. My daughter didn’t choose this change.
And there’s also my inner child and my inner teenager, who carry traumas from past moves: traumas deeply entangled with divorce, abandonment, financial loss, bullying, and death… and they are afraid. And if I let them take the wheel, they tell me my daughter will also be marked by this move, wounded in a cruel way, that it will become a trauma that will take years to heal — if it ever heals at all. That this is too hard, and then… tears, anxiety, despair.
In those moments, I take a deep breath. I take care of them first, saying: “I’m the adult now. I’ll handle this. You don’t need to worry, my daughter isn’t living the same things we went through. You can rest.” It sounds simple, but I’ve been having this conversation with my wounded parts every day since we made the decision to move. Sometimes they speak louder than anything else and I need quiet time alone with them to calm them down. Other times, it’s easier — the adult in me sits down, looks at rental listings, weighs the pros more than the cons, and takes care of what needs to be done.
What I can do, as a mother, is choose differently. I can bear witness to my daughter’s pain, knowing that her pain is not the same as mine was. That I’m not here to fix her pain, only to witness and hold it.
The mother I am, and the father she has, we are fundamentally different from the parents I had as a child. Her experience is completely different.
So we sat down with her and told her the move would happen sooner than expected. And she cried — deeply, the way only a seven-year-old can cry — long, aching, almost howling. I didn’t lie to her. I didn’t say it was going to be okay. I didn’t tell her to stop crying. I told her it’s hard. That she doesn’t have to like it. That she can and should cry, because it hurts. And it’s going to hurt more. And that I don’t want to move either. And that we’re not moving because we want to, but because we have to. That this is part of life. That there will be good parts too, but before the good, it’s going to be hard — and I’m so sorry.
And that mom and dad are here with her, for her.
We cried together.
The three of us held each other.
Then we picked a house to go visit.
And then we danced in the kitchen.
The next day, I gave her a stone to hold whenever she feels sad, anxious, or upset… or simply whenever she wants. Like a portable altar. The stone read “Be Brave.” Her little eyes filled with grateful tears. I got one of those breath-stealing, rib-crushing hugs. And I told her once more, as I do every day: “I’m always here for you. What matters most is that we’re together.”
She took the stone to school — and inevitably, lost it. The crying that followed, at bedtime, was the most piercing I’ve ever heard from her. The loss of the stone layered itself over the anticipation of the move. I know that feeling well, in a different scale.
I know how the symbolic pierces the concrete. I know how a small object can carry the weight of the world. All I could do was hold her. All I could do was tell her that courage lives inside her — and that’s something she can never lose, no matter what happens.
Because true courage means having fear, and doing it anyway.
That the stone was just a reminder… and that she, in her wholeness, is the reminder itself. I said it to her with tenderness — and to myself too, with the same urgency.
Am I choosing this move? No. And yes. This time, we’ll take a step and at least visit the place we’re moving to before actually moving. That’s already different! (laughs nervously).
I have no idea where we’re going. I only know we’re staying on English soil, and that this land has been good to us. I feel connected to it. I’m placing my hope in that connection, trusting that I’ll find the people who will support me in continuing my work with women, who will offer friendship and a network for my motherhood, who will open their arms instead of closing their doors. If we have to move, then may we find what — and who — nourishes us. This is my prayer, already written here.
My Godmother Goddess card for the year is Iansã. Eparrei Oyá! She who dances with lightning, who sweeps away what no longer serves. So we go… not without fear, but with a certain trust in the invisible hands that guide us. There’s electricity in the air, that crackling hum that says: something new is near.
May Iansã carry away what needs to go, and may whatever comes find space in me, space with warmth and safety and room for however many suitcases I end up bringing.
May the new house — wherever it may be — become home simply because we are together. And may these writings be my offering of faith.
If what I've written touched you, please tell me in the comments. I want to know how you navigate life’s changes… What you negotiate with, what you’ve had to leave behind, what you’re still trying to carry. The village grows when we share the path.
Your writing is so tender and honest ❤️🩹. It really touched me.
Moving many times since I was little made me feel out of place, like I didn't belong anywhere. But with each move, I let go of more and mode baggage. I still remember one time I moved alone and tried to carry the furniture myself. I hurt my leg and it was awful. I was rushing to take on the role of a man, thinking I could do it all.
But now, I'm no longer afraid of moving, because I've learned how to do it in my own feminine rythm. Wherever I move, I can feel at home inside myself, carring less and less baggage each time.
this is so beautiful…. ty for sharing this part of you 🙏🙏🙏