I was born to Colombian immigrants in the United States. I grew up feeling like an outsider, which turned out to be a gift — it made me an observer, and then a writer, long before I called myself one.

I spent years in corporate America. I was good at it. I built things, led teams, sat in boardrooms, traveled to four continents. And somewhere in the middle of all that competence, I kept returning to my journals. They told a different story than the one my resume did.

Ecuador broke the surface. I fell in love with a shaman, with a tradition, with the Pacific coast and the mountains and the disorienting grace of not knowing what comes next. I lived there. I learned there. I lost there. And I wrote it all down, which eventually became The Shaman's Wife.

After Ecuador, I thought of returning to the life I had left. It did not fit anymore. The woman who returned was not the woman who had left. That is the thing about thresholds — you cannot uncross them.

Portugal was the threshold I crossed next. Not running from anything. Moving toward a life that matched the voice in the journals. A life organized around writing, walking, silence, and the kind of attention that only becomes possible when you stop filling every hour with proof of your own usefulness.

I live here now with my dog Sophie, who came with me from Ecuador and who has her own opinions about the Atlantic wind, and my rescued cat Merlin, who brings his magic to mornings in bed. I walk in the mornings. I write in the afternoons. I read in the evenings, or share food and wine and music with friends. My life is quiet and it is full and it generates the material — every essay, every poem, every reflection — that becomes the work.

The work is not separate from the living. The living IS the work.