So my husband Nick and I have decided to move to Portugal. I’ve had a lot of questions about why and how, and it’s been hard to decide where to start to talk about all of it. So I guess, I’ll begin at the beginning…

Right now (and by “right now” I mean September 2021. (This has been sitting in the drafts folder a while, especially if you consider it’s now April 2022 that I am actually publishing this), I’m sitting at a friend’s place in Grenoble, France, after spending 17 days in Portugal doing some research and networking. It was a really wonderful trip, but more about that in the next post. For those who know me, you probably already know I have a bit of wanderlust. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve moved farther and farther from my original home in Connecticut. And while I never left the country before I turned 30, once I did, the pull to explore other cultures and places only grew stronger.

My husband has been thinking about and talking about community, and living on a “compound” (not in a culty sort of compound way), since before we dated. But as we’ve gotten older, it’s been less joking about it and more trying to figure out how we could have a small plot of land to grow a lot of our food, and a creative studio space where people could gather and share ideas and information. Something we could work on together, that would bring us personal joy, and allow us to connect more with community.

In 2016 we decided it was time to start figuring out how to make things happen. American politics played a large roll in our decision, as did the cost and challenges associated with health care for small business owners. Initially we’d planned to look for land on the Oregon coast for our farm and retreat center, but the realities of the cost of health care gave us pause. One of us would always need a full time job for a company that would provide affordable health insurance, which would make a business partnership and running a farm together extremely difficult. Plus, if I’m being completely transparent, the rhetoric of Trump- mainly the mentality of “I got mine, fuck everyone else” really made us search beyond the US for a different lifestyle and sense of community.

Mexico was high on my list. I’d visited the country often. I love the culture, sunshine, and proximity to the US, but we had a list of countries to research: Italy (I’m technically eligible for dual citizenship), Spain, France, Portugal… And so it began. In 2017 we went to Mexico for my 40th birthday. It was Nick’s first out of country adventure, and I wanted to show him the places there I had fallen in love with: Puerto Vallarta, Sayulita, San Pancho. Plus, sunshine in the dead of the gray Portland winter has been my way of recharging over the years, Surely it would inspire us!

We stayed in the jungle for a few nights and spent our nights crunching the numbers, and scribbling ideas in note books. Trying to sort out what we had to do to earn more money to move AND support us while we got established somewhere. This is how we decided to convert our garage into an apartment to rent on Airbnb.

Fast forward to 2019: we visited Spain, Portugal, and France in the spring to get a feel for these places, just as construction on our ADU (Alternative Dwelling Unit) began. September 2019, and our “Urban Jungle Loft” studio was ready and open for business! It was a slow build, but just as I was returning from my retreat in Mexico, in February 2020, it was filling up for the spring and we thought our little plan might just work! Of course we all know what happened in 2020 and that little Airbnb sat empty most of the year, which was certainly discouraging (it took every penny we had to make it happen) and shook us from our plans, and thinking that maybe a big move wasn’t so possible after all.

2021 was different though…

Continued in Part Two