The date looked both ways. So did I.

Jacinta stands on a scenic overlook in Lisbon, leaning against a railing with red rooftops, a church, and the Tagus River behind her. She is wearing sunglasses, jeans, and a green top, looking out across the city on a bright day. — One year in Lisbon. From six bags to a life I actually love

The anniversary started arriving before I named it.

Yesterday, I was in Portuguese class, still fighting for my life with verb conjugations and pronunciation, when I realized it was Thursday.

A Thursday. The same day of the week I landed in Lisbon one year ago. I arrived on June 26, 2025, alone, with my six bags and no soft landing. I did not know a soul here. I did not have a community waiting for me, a cousin with a guest room, or somebody’s auntie ready to pick me up from the airport with foil-covered food in the backseat.

I should have been scared. I wasn’t. That’s how I knew.

Then today, at an event, I wrote the date down the way my American brain still does:

6/26/26. A palindrome.

Forward and backward, the same. And I laughed a little, because of course the date would make me look both ways; back at the woman who arrived, and ahead at the woman writing this from a life she really loves.

A street scene in Chiado, Lisbon, showing Jacinta walking down a sloped cobblestone street between tall buildings. The image reflects the neighborhood where Jacinta first landed in Lisbon and began finding her way into daily life there. — Chiado, where I first learned my way into this life.

The Woman Who Arrived

The woman who arrived was tired in ways she did not fully understand yet.

Not unhappy. Not broken. Just carrying the rhythm of a life that had taught her to move fast, produce quickly, wake up early, push through, figure it out, keep the schedule, make the plan, hit the goal, do the most, and then wonder why her body was looking at her like, ma’am, absolutely not.

I came to Lisbon wanting peace and clarity. And, if we are telling the truth, a snatched waistline.I had a whole little fantasy in my head. Walking everywhere (which I do). Fresh food (which I eat), Less stress (which I have). More sleep. Cute outfits. Waist disappearing. Skin glowing. Life finally cooperating with the Pinterest board in my mind.

Lisbon did give me peace. It did give me clarity. The waistline, however, has filed a formal objection and is currently under review. I have gained twenty-five pounds since moving here. I don’t love saying that out loud. Not because I think weight gain is a moral failure. I don’t. But because I am human, and honest, and a Black woman who has lived in a body long enough to know that acceptance is beautiful in theory and complicated as hell in the mirror.

That was the part I did not see coming. I thought the slower pace, the walking, the food, the rest, the less-stressed life would make my body accelerate these body goals .Instead, my body started telling a different story. So I had to listen.

What My Body Brought With It

I wish this part were cuter. It is not. My body became the part of the story I could not skip.

I mean my actual body started doing things I could not discipline my way out of. My temperature has been running low. My metabolism has been moving like it put in a PTO request and left no out-of-office message. My thyroid and I are in ongoing negotiations. And my doctor and I are trying to figure out what is actually happening, because something is.

I had symptoms for years in the States. I knew something felt off. I said something felt off. And still, like too many women, specifically too many Black women, I learned to walk out of appointments wondering if I had explained myself wrong, exaggerated something, or made the whole thing up.

Here, I have felt cared for in a way I did not realize I still needed. Not perfectly. Not magically. Just… cared for. A doctor listened. A general practitioner took their time. Another doctor asked me how my heart was. Not just the organ. My heart. I don’t know if he knew what that question did to me. But I knew. My body knew. And maybe that is part of what this year has been trying to teach me. That sometimes the body is not betraying you. Sometimes it is tired of translating what the life around you refused to hear.

I am trying to be gentle with myself, but gentle is not always where I land first. Some days I land at frustrated. Some days I land at annoyed. Some days I land at, girl, what are we doing? But I am learning that fighting my body is not the same as caring for it. And that is uncomfortable. Because fighting is familiar. Fighting feels productive. Fighting gives you something to measure.

Acceptance feels much less dramatic. Much less impressive. Much harder to post about. But maybe acceptance is the first honest step. Not acceptance as in giving up. Acceptance as in telling the truth before I decide what comes next.

Jacinta stands barefoot on a beach near Lisbon, wearing a bright pink and orange dress with one arm raised toward the sky. The sun is behind her, creating a soft silhouette, with sand and the ocean in the background. — **Joy started feeling less like escape and more like my actual life.**

A Life I Actually Love

Even with all of that, I am still grateful. Not fake grateful. Not “let me make this sound pretty for the internet” grateful. Actually grateful. Because Lisbon has given me a life I enjoy living. Not a vacation. Not a fantasy. A life.

A life with Portuguese class, where I am apparently doing well according to my teacher, though I remain suspicious. It is possible I am improving. It is also possible he wants me to keep liking him and paying him. Both things can be true. Either way, eu falo pouco português.

And every stumble counts. The language. The cobblestones. The daily systems I am still trying to understand. The everyday moments where I know just enough to get by and not quite enough to be confident.

This year has humbled me in small, regular ways. Machines with pictures instead of words. Which, I’m sorry, is not helpful. What does this symbol mean? Why are there four versions of steam? Am I washing clothes or summoning fog? Dog poop on cobblestone, which is a public safety issue and I stand by that. If you have never had to dodge dog poop on uneven stone while walking downhill, please know your ankles have been living a blessed life. And lemon pepper seasoning that technically exists here but does not razzle. Sometimes a little chemical helps. I said what I said.

Then there are surprises that are small enough to sound ridiculous until you understand what they touched. Like Celerio headquarters calling me because I couldn’t figure out how to work the app. Not me calling them. Them calling me. Walking me through it step by step like this was a perfectly normal thing to do for a person who was simply trying to get her little health-food-store life together. I kept thinking, wait… y’all do this?

And yes, everything here has not been smooth. Portugal can absolutely make a simple administrative task feel like a scavenger hunt designed by someone who took a long lunch and never came back. But then I’ll turn a corner and see the river. Or the light will hit the tiles on a building just right. Or I’ll be walking somewhere regular, not trying to have a moment at all, and the city will casually open up into some ridiculous view like it has no idea it just did that.

A miradouro. A glimpse of the water. A sunset that makes everybody stop pretending they are too busy to look. Lisbon is beautiful in a way that keeps interrupting me.

And I like that. I like walking here. I like hearing Portuguese around me, even when I only catch every fifth word and then have to build an entire plot from context clues. I like that the beach is close. I like that the river feels like a steady witness. I like that joy does not feel like something I have to schedule six weeks in advance so I can escape my real life.

That may be one of the biggest changes. Joy used to feel like something I had to plan for. Now joy feels like my life. Not every minute of it. Let’s not get carried away. But enough of it. Enough that when I travel now, I miss Lisbon. Which is wild, because for years travel was how I got free. Travel was the exhale. Travel was the thing I counted down to when regular life felt too tight. Now I find myself ready to come home. To Lisbon. A sentence I still sometimes cannot believe is mine.

A group of friends stands together on a sunny patio in Lisbon, smiling and holding drinks. The image reflects the community and genuine friendships Jacinta built during her first year living in Portugal. — **Not stumbled into. Built.**

The Life I Built On Purpose

One of the things I am proudest of this year is the community I built here. Not stumbled into. Built.

I moved here alone. And I don’t mean alone in the dramatic, cinematic, woman-looking-out-the-window-with-one-tear way. I mean literally. And from the beginning, I knew I did not want to build a beautiful life in isolation. So I made community a practice.

I went places. I said yes. I followed up. I made plans. I let people know me. I let myself be new without acting like I had everything figured out.And somewhere along the way, Lisbon stopped being a place I moved to and started being a place where people know my name. That has meant more than I can explain neatly.

Because in the States, even when people lived close, everybody was always busy. We could be a few miles from each other and still need three calendar holds, two reschedules, a weather event, and the grace of God to get one dinner on the books.Nobody was wrong for that. That was just the rhythm. Work. Traffic. Exhaustion. Obligations. Everybody trying to survive their own week and maybe send a “we have to catch up soon” text every six months with the best of intentions.

Here, the pace has been different. People have time. Or maybe people make time. Either way, I have felt the difference. A walk can turn into dinner. A coffee can become three hours. A casual invitation can become a real friendship. People check in. People gather. People sit. People linger without acting like the next thing is always more important than the person in front of them.

That has changed me. Because I did not realize how much I had accepted friendship as something squeezed into the margins. Here, friendship has had room. And I have had room inside it.That does not mean everything has been easy or instant. I am still me. I still am a natural homebody. I still entertain myself very well, possibly too well. I can have a full evening with myself and be thoroughly amused by the company. But now there are people here whose names show up on my phone and I smile before I even open the message. People I can text for a walk, a coffee, a ridiculous question, or a dinner that somehow becomes three hours. I came here by myself. I did not stay that way.

What It Cost

People ask versions of this question all the time, even when they don’t ask it directly. What did it cost? And I get it. Moving across an ocean sounds like sacrifice. It sounds like leaving. It sounds like loss. And yes, there are things I miss.

I miss being close to my family. I miss being able to show up without a flight, a time zone calculation, or an international data plan. I miss the ease of knowing exactly how things work because I grew up inside the system, even when the system got on my nerves. And listen, as I sit here still waiting on a security deposit from my first Lisbon apartment, there are definitely some protections and regulations from the States I miss more than I expected.

I miss certain foods. Obviously. I miss walking into a store and knowing the exact aisle where my foolishness lives. I miss being able to find what I need without translating the label, Googling the ingredient, or standing there trying to decide if this is body lotion, dish soap, or hair conditioner. But outside of proximity to my people, I don’t feel like Lisbon has cost me much that I actually needed.

Well, I take that back…..

It may cost me my Delta Diamond Medallion status, and let us not pretend that is not nothing. I have worked hard for that little luggage tag lifestyle. But apparently, when you stop flying back and forth from the United States to somewhere across the globe like a woman fleeing her inbox, the airline notices. My flights are shorter now. I fly partners more. I am not trying to be back in the States every other month just to keep a status tier alive.

So yes, my Diamond status may be in danger. Pray for me.

But seriously. This year has felt less like a cost and more like an investment. An investment in pace. In health. In friendship. In a version of joy that does not require an escape plan. In a life that lets me come home to myself more often than I have to recover from myself.

I still miss what I miss. But I do not sit around wondering if I made a mistake. I didn’t. A year in, Lisbon still feels less like something I gave up and more like something I chose well.

A view over Lisbon with red rooftops, pastel buildings, and São Jorge Castle in the distance under a cloudy sky. The image reflects looking back over a year of life in Lisbon and stepping into year two with more clarity. — **A year later, the view feels different.**

Year Two

So now I am here. One year in. And I keep thinking about the way the date looked on the page.

6/26/26.

Forward and backward, the same. But I am not the same. Not in some dramatic, completely transformed, new-woman-who-only-drinks-herbal-tea-now kind of way. Please. I am still me. I still want the answer faster than life likes to give it. I still want my body to hurry up and make sense. I still think proper lemon pepper should be considered a basic human right. I still have days when acceptance sounds lovely in writing and rude in practice.

But something has shifted. I no longer think freedom is only about leaving. Sometimes freedom is staying long enough to notice what your life is trying to teach you. Sometimes it is letting a good thing be good without immediately asking what it has to produce. Sometimes it is admitting that the life you wanted still comes with hard parts, and the hard parts do not make the wanting wrong.

That might be the clearest thing I know after one year. I was right to come. Not because Lisbon is perfect. Not because I am perfect here. Not because my body, my work, my language skills, or my life suddenly arranged themselves into some clean little after-picture.

I was right to come because this life has given me room. Room to rest. Room to build. Room to be frustrated without being lost. Room to be cared for without earning it first. Room to miss home without needing to move back. Room to stop treating my body like an opponent. Room to enjoy an ordinary Tuesday and realize joy does not have to be an event.

In year two, I am not carrying the weight. And I mean that in every way I know how. Not the shame. Not the old urgency. Not the belief that fighting harder is always the answer. Not the version of me who thought rest had to be justified, joy had to be scheduled, and softness had to wait until after the work was done. I do not know exactly how to put all of that down yet. But I know I want to.

Tonight after drinks and snacks on a rooftop, I walked through Chiado, the neighborhood where I first landed, and felt a little nostalgic in a way I did not expect. Not sad. Just aware. That version of me was so new here. So open. So sure without having any proof yet. And now I can walk those same streets with a whole year behind me.

A year ago, I arrived with six bags and no fear. Today, I am writing from a life I chose and still choose. Forward and backward, the date gave me the same answer:

I was right to come.

I am still right to stay.

A Question

If you feel like commenting, tell me this:

What part of your life is asking for more room right now?

Room to rest.
Room to change.
Room to tell the truth.
Room to choose something different.

I’m curious what comes up for you.