When my three-year contract with a tech startup ended, I had time to create the things I wanted to see in the world.
I thought about a podcast. But I kept waiting for the right equipment, the perfect script. Then I remembered: I'd been blogging since my teens —clarinhaotoni on Terra, Entre Outras on Blogspot, then Medium. Writing is how I make sense of the stories in my head, how I've processed the world since those days pretending to be a reporter in my grandma's backyard.
Substack kept showing up in my feed, writers building communities, making livings from their words. So I joined.
The name: Barefoot circle
I'm always barefoot at home. Something about feeling the ground beneath your feet, removing barriers between you and where you stand. That's how I feel most myself, descalça, unguarded, ready for real conversation.
And circles. Nothing I enjoy more than sitting in a circle, having intelligent conversation with people. Not panels where experts perform. But circles: where everyone sees each other's faces, where vulnerability travels in all directions.
That's what I wanted to create. A barefoot circle.
Portuglês
Through capoeira, dinner parties and book clubs with other Brazilians in Miami, I started speaking portuglês, this natural mix of English and Portuguese that lives in immigrant mouths.
Then I read Gloria Anzaldúa and Conceição Evaristo. Anzaldúa taught me that just as Mexicans created Chicano, we Brazilians created portuglês. Part of our latinidad.
Evaristo said something that changed me: "If life didn't give me the opportunity to write, it would give me madness. Writing is an alternative to madness."
As a bisexual Latina immigrant, I've never lived in just one language, one culture, one way of being. Why should my writing pretend otherwise?
What happened next
I found myself creating intimate storytelling circles in this English-Portuguese mix where real connections happened. That's how Barefoot Circle was born.
Readers tell me they feel connected here. One said it's been "a beautiful and informative literary escape, connecting both mind and heart." Another wrote that my writing "nos leva para dentro do texto, com uma visão inspiradora" — takes us inside the text with an inspiring vision.
This is what you'll find: intimate stories woven with journalistic analysis. Writing that connects the political with the personal. Stories delivered weekly, in portuglês, descalça e com o coração aberto.
I'm a writer. I'm a gatherer. I believe every gathering holds power, that community is survival, that the stories we tell each other teach us new ways to live, love, and resist together.
Welcome to the circle. Take off your shoes. Stay awhile.
One of my wildest dreams? Make a living through my writing. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber.