The Several Lives Within the Gallery Wall
Last weekend we celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary. Considering I live in England and the party was in the garden, it was a VERY bold move weather-wise. But somehow we got lucky. The sun showed up (eventually), our closest friends and family gathered together, and that afternoon was pure joy.
In preparation for the party, my husband and I spent hours going through twelve years of photos to create a gallery wall and write a little speech - nothing too formal or serious. Twelve years' worth of them, covering since we first met. It's funny when you look back at your life from that perspective, almost as a spectator. Obviously there were thousands of photos of the children, and after we'd admired all the cuteness and reminisced about trips and special moments, what stayed with me was something else: looking at me. And how much so many of the lovely people at my party knew me but not all of me.
One of the things we mentioned in our speech was how much my husband and I have in common despite growing up on opposite sides of the world. I'm Brazilian, he's English. We come from different cultures, different countries, different childhood memories (I always get lost when he talks about old TV shows!). And yet we both grew up in single parent households. We both experienced all the loneliness of being an only child. We both experienced the aftermath of divorce. We both grew up watching adults doing their best whilst carrying more than they should have had to carry.
Looking back now, I can see that life asked me to adapt very early. My mum was doing everything she could. For a long time it was just the two of us. The thing is, when you're a child, you don't understand circumstances, you simply draw conclusions. And somewhere along the way, I drew a few: I learnt that having control was important because everything around me felt unstable; I learnt that if I wanted something, I'd probably need to make it happen myself. I learnt not to ask for too much because everyone around me seemed busy surviving their own emotional tsunami. I learnt not to be a burden or to need too much from anyone. And perhaps without realising it, I started believing that being capable was what made me valuable.
And to be fair, those lessons worked remarkably well. As we didn't have much money, I studied obsessively and earned a scholarship to a private school. Then I studied some more and got into one of the largest universities in Rio. I built a successful corporate career and became the youngest manager in one of Brazil's largest telecom companies whilst being a young woman and relying only on my own efforts.
I was ambitious and extremely determined. I became the woman who could make things happen. The woman who could cope, who could solve the problem. Looking back now, I can see how much of my life was built on that determination, and I'm grateful for it. That force, that masculine determined energy pushed me and made all this possible. That version of me created opportunities I could never have imagined as a child.
But she was also carrying quite a lot. The pressure to succeed, to prove herself. To make everything work and to never be the one who dropped the ball. But at some point, what had started as determination slowly became armour. And the problem with armour is that eventually you forget you're wearing it. You stop noticing the weight and how much effort it takes to hold everything together. You stop noticing how exhausting it is to always be the strong one.
And then your body notices for you. Mine certainly did. When I eventually became ill, I could no longer ignore what my body had been trying to tell me for years (It actually took my body sounding the alarm twice before I finally paid attention). The message was that surviving and living are not the same thing and that control has a cost.
Eventually, I listened: I travelled alone; I became more conscious about my health and I started changing parts of my life that no longer felt aligned. And eventually I realised I didn't want my corporate career anymore. That's also when I met my husband. Looking back, the timing still feels almost suspiciously perfect. I never set up to move abroad and to be honest I wan't looking for a new relationship at that moment. But I couldn't deny the pull and eventualIy moved to the UK.
I left behind a career, a language, loved ones, a culture and, if I'm honest, part of my identity.
Looking at the pictures around this time, it felt a little bit like that scene in Runaway Bride where Julia Roberts' character has a different favourite breakfast with every fiancé. I feel that maybe when I moved countries, I seemed to acquire a different favourite breakfast too. Not because I was pretending nor I was being fake. Just because adapting had become second nature. (Also, they don't have pão com manteiga or cuscuz here, which probably didn't help.) Moving countries requires you to learn customs, social rules and new ways of fitting in.
And then motherhood arrived; Which is wonderful, and exhausting, and beautiful, and relentless - all the same time mixed together.
Motherhood has a very strong flavour. It tends to take over all the other ingredients.
Suddenly you're not just you anymore. Being a mum comes with an impressive collection of job titles: chief organiser, keeper of the family calendar, finder of missing shoes (or anything really because they can't find the most obvious things), professional snack distributor, referee between you kids, manager of everyone's emotional wellbeing. And somehow years can pass in that role without you really noticing.
Standing in front of that gallery wall, looking at twelve years of photos, I realised I had already lived several lives. There was Scholarship Andreya, corporate Andreya, immigrant Andreya, new Mum Andreya, sleep-Deprived Andreya, volunteer-at-School Andreya, party organiser Andreya.
There should probably be a whole exhibition dedicated to all the different versions. And every single one of them was real. But what struck me most wasn't how many versions there had been. It was how many times I had arrived somewhere I once desperately wanted to be, like the scholarship, then the university place, the career, getting married and having children, building a home.
If you had shown some of those photos to younger versions of me, they would have thought: "She's done it." And to be fair, many times I thought so too. I thought the next milestone would create that feeling of arrival. That magical point where everything finally makes sense and you sit back feeling complete (preferably on a beach somewhere, reading a book with Bossa Nova playing in the background.)
The funny thing is that life doesn't seem to work like that. Because every time I reached one mountain, I could see another one in the distance. Not because I wasn't grateful nor I wasn't happy. And certainly not because what I had wasn't enough; but because there was always a part of me that was still growing, still curious and still becoming.
For a long time, I felt guilty about that. How could I want more when I already had so much? How could I feel pulled towards something new when my life was objectively good? Surely I should just be content. Surely gratitude should be enough. But I think that's something many women quietly wrestle with, especially women who have built beautiful lives.
Because nobody tells us that gratitude and desire can exist at the same time.
That you can deeply love your life and still want more from yourself. And that wanting more doesn't mean rejecting what you already have, sometimes it simply means you've grown beyond the version of yourself who created your current reality.
Looking at those photos, I didn't see a woman who was never satisfied. I saw a woman who kept growing. A woman who kept saying yes to the next chapter when it appeared.
And perhaps that's what stayed with me: the reminder that every version of me thought she was building a better life. And she was.
Which makes me think that perhaps wanting more isn't always a sign of dissatisfaction; sometimes it's simply a sign that life isn't finished with us yet.
