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I was born and raised in Brasil, the country mostly known for its very warm and welcoming people, samba and football. I challenge you to vocalise the word “Brasil” as I write it with the “s” instead of the usual “z” as this is the americanised way of writing it; and so when you vocalise it, you will see that the pronunciation with the “s” sounds the same.
My father was also born in Brasil, having his heritage line being a mix of Belgian and Italian which is very common in Brasil due to the intense European influx to the country during the 19th century. Now, my mother was born in Lauritsala, which is a former Finnish market town in the South Karelia region and it was closed down in January 1967 and incorporated into Lappeenranta. My grandparents were born in Åbo and my youngest aunts were born in Jakobstat. In other words, my whole mother side is Finnish-Swedish; their mother tongue is Swedish as well as my whole family which remains divided between both countries and Brasil. Growing up with my mother and my aunts, I got used to have the famous Kalles Caviar and knäckebrot as well as Moomin stories, trolls and forest gnomes; let alone the famous knitted wool jumpers which my mother tried to earn some extra income during winter time and I was her favourite model on wearing them for one picture to be taken to show its real size.
Nevertheless, for all my growing up time in Brasil I’ve had the feeling that I never fully fit in, and I knew deep inside that one day I’d have to come to Finland to search for this piece of puzzle missing inside me. The constant feeling of “how much Brasilian” I am had grew with me and as I became an adult, I realised that the tug of war inside my mind was constantly challenging me in a way that I struggled to feel fully at home when living in Brasil.
In 2014, when I was going through a rough professional and personal time, I felt the call that it was my time to start seeking the pieces of my puzzle and leave Brasil. I firstly had in mind on heading to Finland; and trust me, I was very open to even join the army if that would’ve been my only option at that time. However, as I started facing a deep professional identity crisis, I decided to move to London as I have found some interesting study options and I knew that it was a better strategy to sharpen up my English language skills too. What was supposed to have been a quick stop, ended up being seven years living in the English capital. Within the years living there, I realised with the time that I slowly had to start adjusting myself to the new overwhelminly multi-cultural city, as well as facing the challenges of being a Brasilian woman living abroad and what dos it entitles to in terms of my cultural representation elsewhere. Slowly, the feeling of deepening my inner connection with the European lifestyle, even though London is very unique in its own representation of a diversified cultural background, has stated to take over my understanding of feeling blended in.
On the same year when I moved to London, in 2014, I came to visit a cousin in Turku and some other relatives in Åland and Helsinki, for the first time ever. It was strangely homely for me. It was Christmas and New Years’ season, and even though the extreme cold felt scary, I was in awe experiencing the whole snow, sauna, frozen lakes and darkness. When in Åland, a relative showed me that it wasn’t dangerous at all to step and walk on a frozen lake. That was way too much for my Brasilian mind, and I was mesmerised.
I finally moved to Finland in April 2021, when the Covid pandemic and its curfew times were still ruling the world. As I have already mentioned the long lasting professional crisis I was having since I left Brasil, I flew away from London with a burnout and assertive that the only place in the world where I wanted to be was very far away from any human being and the idea of isolating myself in a cabine — which later I learn that in Finnish is called mökki — in the middle of a forest was the most soothing next step for me to recover. I didn’t have the money neither the logistics to do that, but my boyfriend at the time, who’s Finnish, was living in Pori for work and so I moved in with him. Besides the fact that I learned later about this city’s reputation around Finland as it is a weirdly deserted, quirky and unpopulated place where I was much in need to reset my mind.
From Pori we moved to Turku, which I was so proud to be finally living in he city where my grandparents were born and a big part of my family’s cultural and intelectual contribution to this country are still very relevant and documented in books. I ended up living in the very same street where my grandad and some other relatives had lived long before thinking about moving to Brasil.
Finally, it has been almost four years since I made Finland my home and moving to Tampere by my own, as well as becoming a student, had been essencial in terms of completing my inner puzzle. I found the missing pieces. I am a believer I was born with the famous SISU as I am confident that my explorer side was an instinct call for me to keep up building my resilience and don’t easily settle just to accommodate. I learned that sauna practice feels natural to me and the benefits of avanto — my Brasilian friends and family can’t really understand how we don’t die when doing it — have been building up my body and mind’s resistance to the extreme cold.
Lastly, the feeling of fitting in has been much stronger as I truly feel that a big part of me found the sense of longing within the culture, mindset and lifestyle. The combat between the warm Latin blood with the quietness resilient colder blood is an endless dilema in my brain, but I am extremely grateful that my grandfather decided to move to Brasil in the early 70’s for work and made my family hop on a ship across the Atlantic to start over a new life under the warmth and tropical Brasil. //
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