Deep Feels at Parque Lage
The last year has been about understanding and repairing the detachment I created between me and my birth place.
This video was shot in the beautiful Parque Lage in Rio in April and until now I didn’t know how to release it. I had never been here before and it moved something. I thought I felt sad for how much I had missed, all the celebrations I was not here for, and all the places I have yet to see. But it wasn’t until later that I realized, that in this moment, I was actually missing my other home. The one that I had built in an entirely different country, and the people who were waiting for me to come back.
Being an expat means you always miss something, somewhere, and someone. It’s an exercise in human emotional resilience. When I was 17 and landed in a new place, I numbed however I could to make it. I left family, friends, loves, and put as much distance as possible between us. And I don’t mean the 5000 miles that separated us.
16 days after I arrived, 9/11 happened. It was a time to blend in.
I traveled back and forth for the next four years. To exist in between two worlds made me lose my sense of belonging. It felt like wherever I went, I did not fit in. After college I moved to California and I would be in the same city as my sister again, and I committed to making this feel like home.
And it does. But all that running away caught up with me when I had to travel back to Rio after a 15 year hiatus. Here I found something that had been unaccounted for in myself… it had been gone so long, I had accepted the puzzle that is me was just missing a piece.
This project is that piece coming to life. It’s about the transformation that is happening from connecting with this deepest sense of self. But it’s also about representation of Brazilian culture abroad, the lacktherof being another factor in my detachment from it. And finally, it’s for anyone who finds themselves wanting to be in more than one place at once. And I think in 2024, that’s pretty much everyone.
#riodejaneiro #cariocasabroad #braziliansabroad #brasileirosnoseua #immigrationstories #expatstories #expatsintheus #brasileirosnacalifornia
