Walking in The Air: A Christmas Letter of Gratitude

During these 10 years in London, I kept one steady belief…

Sotheby’s: THE SNOWMAN (1982) ORIGINAL STORYBOARD ARTWORK, BRITISH,

The Temper Trap, Sweet Disposition

I arrived in London with two suitcases and a dream. I left behind everything I knew, my family, my language, my country, my comfort. What I brought with me was belief. Not just in the future, but in myself. This is the story of ten years of building a life from memory, from love, from fragments of possibility.

All my family came to the airport to say goodbye: my parents, my friends, my siblings, my cousins, my aunties, and my grandma. I was naïve. Full of dreams, and absolutely no idea what I’d find in London. I didn’t give it too much thought, I just knew I wanted it. So I went for it. And I figured things out once I got here.

There were moments tough, lonely, disorienting but I kept going. Because the dream of being here was bigger than anything else I could explain. It was visceral. Unshakable. London lived in my thoughts long before I ever made it my postcode.

The day I came back to Brazil from my student exchange, the very first trip to London, I remember lying in bed in Wimbledon, in the house of the family who hosted me. Looking up at the ceiling. Watching the streetlights glow through the window. Thinking: I’m in a dream. I am the dream. That night, I wrote a letter to my family. Outside, a soft shower made the red bricks glisten, the pavements shimmer in that bluish tint that only belongs to London. I loved it. The smell of coffee, the quiet buzz. London has a fragrance. A texture. And I was hooked.

When I got back home, I thought about that feeling every day. The freedom. The sense of being in step with a city whose rhythm didn’t overwhelm mine but matched it. I made comparisons. I imagined the version of my life that could exist here. And then, I worked for it.

I spent years in British English classes. I remember my teacher saying, “You’re so good, you always top the class, why don’t you work a little more on your grammar? I just didn’t learn like that. I couldn’t. I created my own method and brought native fluency into existence.

And my father, he believed in that method or the apparent non existence of one. He’d leave work and cycle across town to pay for my tuition. Sometimes late, always steady. Every month, for years. There was one thing he knew without question: I would make it. Because he believed in me. The way his father believed in him. That belief was passed down like inheritance, and maybe, just maybe, he sensed I needed it more than anyone else.

We lived in a small, agricultural city in southern Brazil. A place where people drove Mitsubishis like they were Range Rovers. And my dad? He cycled. He’d collect me from private school on his bike, not in an SUV. He was a man of law, but always a bit of an outlier. Never quite conventional. Never fully understood either. He owned two cars, one very old, which he refused to part with, and a new model my mum drove. She was the one behind the wheel, doing the shopping, the school runs, the birthday, prom, party dress fittings. We had a comfortable life. Protective. Loving.

But I was always comparing. Most of my friends came from families turning over millions a year through farming, exporting commodities. They travelled abroad at least twice a year, lived in sprawling houses with garage space for at least four cars, the latest tech in every room, and playrooms that looked like something out of a shop display. One of them had thirteen bathrooms.

I came from a traditional professional background, solid, respectable, but I couldn’t even grasp what life looked like outside that bubble. And then London burst it. And it didn’t burst gently. I learned what reality looked like the hard way, and it wasn’t overlooking a view of the Shard. It was something called Zone 3.

Leaving that behind, flying to London, felt like abandoning a version of myself that hadn’t been backed up in iCloud. But human memory doesn’t wipe like digital files. There’s no hard reset. No corrupted folder. No “restore from backup” button when things disappear. We carry memory in our cells. Our DNA is memory. Our future is built on it. Layered, coded, stored in the soft tissue of who we are. And I brought it all with me, in two suitcases, across an ocean.

When I arrived, I had to make new memories. I had to learn how to become someone else, in a new language, in a new system, in a new life. I was anxious. I was hungry. For everything.

I arrived in a place that didn’t know a thing about me, but had already decided what I was. Based on how I speak. How I look. It’s comforting, apparently, to file people quickly. Less thinking involved.

At customs, I told them I was here to study fashion journalism. I felt proud. And terrified. My English was solid, but not sharp enough to decipher someone from Glasgow on a first try. I had no one waiting for me. No safety net. Just me, my ambition, and the belief that had been placed in my spine cord.

Somerset House, 2025:

One of these days leading up to Christmas, walking through the city with my five-year-old, we rushed to Covent Garden for burgers. We’d just watched The Snowman, at The Peacock Theatre, the animated adventure of a boy and his magical, one-night-only friendship. As we dashed past Somerset House, I stopped in my tracks. The ice rink. The towering Christmas tree. The fairy lights dancing across the flaky ice. It felt untouched by time. 1960s, 1970s, 1980s… it could have been any year. It transported me.

And looking at it through his eyes, I thought:

I’m walking in the air. I’m still living the dream. Every chapter I write. Every milestone I reach. This is the dream made real.

It’s ten years of memories, plus the 28 that came before. The full archive of a life in motion. This is the gratitude and grief and joy I carry, shaped by every person who walked beside me, especially the ones who believed in me before I knew how to believe in myself. I wish every person would know how important that contrast is.

A thank you, most of all, to the tutors through my academical journey. The ones who saw a kid full of potential, not a problem to be solved. Yes, I was neurodiverse. Yes, I was different. But they chose to nurture that, not label it. Others called it a problem. But I was lucky. I had people who chose to see me.

Miss Lourdes, the nun and Maths tutor with the same name as my grandma, my great Italian nonna, now in heaven. She saw my pain and invited me for tea. Who welcomed me into her quiet world without ever compromising her role. She didn’t soften the system. She bridged it for me.

Then came university. Thiba, my first journalism tutor, reminded me of my grandad. A little wild, a little brilliant. Funny, sarcastic, drunk on literature. He said, “The My best students aren’t the ones who always get Firsts. They’re the ones who swing between a 2:2 and a First, because that’s real. He made me feel seen. He gave me my first journalism job before I graduated. Pulled me aside and whispered, “You’ll do the interview like everyone else, but your spot is already yours.”

Then Magda, my Master’s degree tutor. She saw the spark in my ideas. She chose me out of many. She let me think differently, encouraged it even. And in that, a new voice was born.

These mentors replaced every “you’re not enough” with “I see you. I believe in you. I want to know what you can do.”

That belief, that thread, is what got me to London. It’s what held me through this last decade. And it’s what’s pulling me forward now.

Because this next chapter? It’s not about London Fashion Today. It’s not about lifestyle, or hotel reviews, or curated moments. That chapter is over. It mattered, but the world is shifting. I’m shifting. I’m building my life for impact now, not just ambition.

And I want you to be part of it!

I want this space on Substack, to be a place where belief gets passed on. Where anyone unsure of whether they’re “allowed” to dream can read this and know: you are. And if you’re still in doubt, let me close by saying:

I was nobody in London.

No one knew my name.

And now, they do.

Make sure you place not just presents, but also that one wish you’re holding onto under the tree this year.

Merry Christmas! 🎄

M