Before Portugal: When Starting Over Became a Necessity

Little by little, the place that had seemed like a chance for a better quality of life began to turn into a very difficult season. Because of a toxic manager, the job that had taken my husband to Belo Horizonte became an unbearable environment for him.

At the same time, my own return to the job market — which I believed would happen quickly, after all, I had experience — became much harder than I had expected.

I was studying, trying to keep myself busy, but I began to feel sad, unmotivated, and out of place. Loneliness arrived quietly. People did not open up easily to new friendships, and I missed my support network, my mother, my friends, the familiarity of São Paulo, and a place where people knew my work.

At home, things also began to get harder. The accumulated stress started to affect our relationship. As a couple, we slowly stopped truly talking to each other.

And in the middle of all of this, there was our daughter.

She began to show signs of emotional exhaustion. She felt excluded by some classmates at school, and little by little, it became clear to us that this fresh start was not becoming what we had imagined.

It was painful to admit that.

Because moving to another city had already cost us so much. It had cost me my job, our closeness to family, our emotional stability, and the sense of belonging I had in São Paulo.

And still, it felt as if we had chosen the wrong path.

Around August 2017, a friend introduced us to the possibility of moving to Portugal with a work visa, through an opportunity connected to my husband’s field.

That was how Portugal entered our story.

Not as an old dream.
Not as a romantic choice.
Not as an easy decision.

Portugal appeared at a moment when we were trying to understand whether we should go back to São Paulo or follow a completely new path.

We talked a lot. We weighed the pros and cons. On one side, there was the possibility of returning to a city we knew, close to family, friends, and my professional network. On the other, there was an opportunity outside the country — uncertain, challenging, but also full of possibilities.

What weighed most in our decision was remembering why we had left São Paulo in the first place.

A life with no time to breathe. The hours in traffic. Jobs that consumed too much. The feeling of insecurity. The fear of going back to the same starting point and realizing, a few months later, that nothing had truly changed.

That was what made us keep going.

During the visa process and the interviews, we faced another scare: my husband needed emergency surgery to remove his gallbladder. We were far from family and had to deal with everything almost entirely on our own.

Shortly after, when he returned from medical leave, he was dismissed.

The toxicity of that workplace had won.

But inside us, the path had already been decided.

We organized our things, gave notice that we were leaving the house, dealt with bureaucracy, endings, and pending matters, and returned to São Paulo — but this time with a departure date already set.

It was no longer a definitive return. It was a passage. A long goodbye before crossing the ocean.

In the time between the decision and the flight, I did countless searches. I joined Facebook groups, tried to speak with people already living in Portugal, looked for practical information, real stories, and guidance that could help me understand what was ahead.

But it felt like walking in the dark.

There was so much scattered information, so many conflicting opinions, and very little guidance that was truly useful for a family with children trying to emigrate. I missed having someone who would say, clearly and honestly: “Look, it may be like this. Maybe you need to prepare for this. Maybe this is the part no one tells you about.”

The goodbye was painful.

There were many tears, so much uncertainty, and the weight of everything we had already lived through in that first attempt at starting over. But there was also a kind of quiet courage. Not the beautiful kind of courage people talk about in polished speeches, but the tired courage of someone who looks at her own life and understands that continuing the same way is no longer possible.