About me

Hi! I’m Silvia

I am a traveler, a collector, and a storyteller who falls in love with the essence of people and places. I write not only about destinations but about the experiences that shape our existence.

I am a meditator, a certified Mindfulness MBSR instructor by the University of Oxford, a student, and practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

My life is nomadic. Home is a feeling I carry with me, challenging me to find a sense of belonging in every place I go. But it hasn’t always been like this…

Transformation Journey

I started my adult life anxiously searching for a place “in the system” to calm the growing restlessness within me. The standard trajectory followed the expected path – higher education, job, career, marriage – until, at 28, I became a widow, turning my neatly arranged world upside down.

The unexpected loss became the catalyst for a radical transformation. From the need to reclaim my authenticity, I abandoned plans for a conventional life. I set out to travel the world and do volunteer work for a year. I said goodbye to a rising career in audiovisuals and left. I lived in a Buddhist monastery, explored remote villages, climbed mountains, descended rivers, and got lost in forests. When the time came to return to conventional life, I couldn’t do it. I chose to risk everything and study meditation, qigong, and traditional Chinese medicine, driven by a vital need to find my authenticity and purpose, with no certainty about where these choices would lead me.

Reconstruction and Entrepreneurship

My passion for travel also led me to pursue a postgraduate degree in tourism and to take on the challenge of creating a business in adventure tourism. I traveled accompanied by the joy of sharing the thrill of exploring the world. It was one of the most fulfilling phases of my life, in terms of learning, personal development, and connection with others and the world around me.

But, in a moment of vulnerability, I once again believed in the relentlessly critical voice inside me. The feeling of social pressure to settle down took over me again. I remarried, built a new professional project, and got lost, deceived by my internal beliefs fueled by the external criticism present within my intimacy. When, with the help of therapy, I managed to name the internal and external violence present in my days, I left. Without a home, money, or self-love.

Need and destiny took me to London, where I found a new purpose and an opportunity to reconnect with myself. I documented life stories of Alzheimer’s patients, recording their memories before they faded away. I found the path to inner harmony again until it was interrupted by the pandemic, bringing me back to Portugal.

Reunion with Inner Truth

Surrendered to demotivation and fatigue, I bought a house, settled in Alentejo, and sought normalcy through a mechanical job of simultaneous translation with rigid schedules, annihilating my creativity. But the cells of my being started screaming too loud. They demanded movement and adventure. It was time to say ‘enough!’. It was no longer possible to continue living a life that was not mine just to try to fit into a social format that, even apparently serving the majority, does not serve me.

Today I know that my darkest periods were essential for me to understand the importance of living in authenticity. They taught me that there is nothing wrong with being different and accepting myself in this unconventional way of being. I am adventurous, restless, curious, observant, creative, and intense. The certainty of routines is not where I find comfort; my lifestyle must be an expression of who I am, of the experiences I have lived so far, and I am done apologizing for it.

Silvia Out There

Thus was born “Out There” – a materialization of my irreverence. From the impulse to explore, to experience the world, and to empower through the skills acquired both through my personal journey and through Mindfulness and Traditional Chinese Medicine. To combine all my strengths and passions and with them generate a positive impact wherever I go and with those who accompany me, keeping in mind that

Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier.

Mother Theresa