ABOUT
ISA
Hello, friends! I'm Isa, 30 y.o. super woman from beautiful Brazil - ok, this short description just came out but it's genuine, let's leave it like this.
Well, the story is a bit long but since you're here I'm just assuming you want to hear/know it.
Living a meaningful life was always my main goal, but my concept of "meaningful" has changed many times during my stay on this planet.
I could talk a bit about my professional journey but this page is not professional at all - on the contrary, it is heavily personal.
Let's say I had a complicated life. Not sure if up to this point I have been through more struggles than the average Brazilian citizen or even the average global citizen but I can guarantee you that Netflix is missing at least 5 powerful movie scripts for not knowing my crazy stories.
Somehow I made it, right? I'm alive and healthy - at least physically. And my role here is to help you go through your own struggles with a bit more information, with a bit more faith and with a community of people I've been nourishing since 2016. Here is actually where the story starts.
But how? What is this trip about?
It all started after I ended an incredibly abusive relationship - precisely when I realized people considered what I call "incredibly abusive" the "normal". So I started talking about it on Tumblr, then Facebook, then Instagram.
Women from all the 6 schools and 4 universities where I studied started messaging me with their stories which were always - and of course - very similar to mine.
So the friends of my friends started following me, then their friends, and the friends of their friends... And that's how I became the first feminist influencer in Brazil to talk about Domestic Violence. Then the most known. Until I became the most controversial.
At that point the legislation in the country was very different from how it is nowadays. Psychological violence wasn't a crime - barely a topic - neither was stalking. Restraining orders were super hard to get. The age of consent for sex was relative, we didn't have a special law to protect rape survivors in their court hearings and many other things. Still, abortion is not even close to be legal in Brazil.
Many things changed for the best in my country, and this was thanks to me and all the other women on the internet who were raising awareness on these topics. Members of the Public Ministry, lawyers, survivors, journalists, writers, teachers, students, researchers and many others putting all of their energy in pressuring the government to make Brazil a safer country for us women.
On a personal level, one of the most important things that have changed since I started my journey in activism is that I no longer believe in the Criminal Justice System - but let's save this conversation for another time.
So, what matters here is: since I started sharing my personal journey online, just the fact that I was telling women - that I don't even know- that they're not alone made my life meaningful enough.
We had some good years of feminist cyber-activism in Brazil until we all got caught by the latest backlash. It made me feel so small again, so invisible, so dehumanized...
I felt like I didn't want to be alive anymore, what led me to a strong urge to go out of my no-comfort zone and find other paths to follow.
One day, I had two friends at home with me and I started taking all of my clothes out of the closet. Sudenly it didn't make any sense to have all of those things, so I started a live streaming on my old Instagram profile and sold it all. Then I sold my shoes, my couch, my TV, my fridge, and basically everything I owned at that moment.
Then I bought flight tickets to Kuala Lumpur - for no specific reason - and a 80L backpack. And that's how I became a digital nomad.
I didn't really know what to expect but I knew I would find other purposes in my encounters with women from different countries and cultures.
Mahsa Amini was murdered in Iran when I was in Malaysia, so I visited a mosque there, put a hijab on and asked so many questions that I made the tour guide think I was willing to become a muslim. On my first day volunteering in a hostel in Indonesia, I had to deal with a case of sexual harassment between guests. That Irish girl trusted me enough to share what had happened to her the night before and it was on my shoulders to make sure the guy wouldn't be there by the time she'd come back. I made it.
Living abroad was a decision I took also because and when I understood the fact I'm Latin American on a deeper level. I've been traveling solo since I was 20, but this new journey was pretty much about seeing myself as a latin woman interacting with the world.
I kept doing what I was already doing: promoting guided book readings and debate groups online. On this website subscribers can access more than 200h of the original content I created since 2021. I was able to dive in the topics so much more because of everything that was happening in my personal adventure.
At some point in my journey I found myself in Kathmandu alone after being dumped by the guy I truly believed was the love of my life - let's also leave this topic for later.
There was absolutely nothing I could do about it. So, between one anxiety crisis and the next, I promised to myself that I would do anything in my power to learn all I could from this experience and make it my newest game-changing challenge.
I was feeling terrible and didn't have a single friend in Nepal or even in a convenient timezone to call. A suspicion of fraud made my bank block my credit card. The only place where I could use Apple Pay was the hostel I was in. I could see the Himalayas from the terrace. The only thing universe allowed me to do in Nepal was to meditate in the rooftop watching the Himalayas. So then I knew it was supposed to be like this.
A friend bought me surprise flight tickets so after 17 days in this forced bootcamp I went back home.
Everything I owned was in my backpack, including my Tarot deck. I started using it to communicate with my grandma. I asked her for protection and guidance. I started meditating regularly. I cried for the first time in many years. I held my inner child and understood her pain.
I started studying Psychotraumatology, enhanced my connection with spirituality, and shared this journey with my audience, as I always sincerely did during all my hardest times.
So I went back to Brazil, healed as much as a human being can do, and started traveling again.
First I went to Argentina, where they're facing a super delicate moment in politics, very similar to what Brazilians saw in 2018. Then Europe, where the suffering of all latinos started - so interesting to add this continent to my journey and observations.
During this time I fed another profile on Instagram and started posting in English, so now all the women I meet around the globe are able to understand the things I like to share and talk about. I've been translating my already existing content to English and Spanish to share my point of view with people who come from other cultures and political backgrounds.
I now offer online Tarot readings to others as a therapeutical moment of self-reflection and guidance. Our guided book readings here became less about politics and more about the political roots of our emotional struggles as humans living in society.
I decided to follow my dream of being an occasional tattoo artist and transforming people's emotional pain into beautiful scars.
Last, but not least, I learned a lot about the digital nomad lifestyle and felt like also sharing a bit of my view on the dark side of it - the one all nomads know very well but don't talk about.
A lot changed during these years, me specially. And I hope to be part of your changing/healing/growing journey too. Feel free to explore the universe of topics I talk about here at isaonatrip.com.
