Chosen Places: Lisbon, Portugal

Jade Moyano is speaking her language.

I met

Jade Moyano

in Nicaragua when I attended one of her writing retreats with Trust & Travel. She’s a writer, journalist, and a ball buster if I ever met one. Every story of Jade’s starts in a different country, and every Instagram post has me looking at the background to try and figure out where she is. This time, I finally just asked her.

Jade, take us away.

Where have you lived so far?

I was born and raised in Brazil. At the age of seven my family moved from the big city to the jungle (what we call Mata Atlantica, or Atlantic jungle) on the coast of Rio. The town is called Paraty. It’s a colonial town below sea level with cobblestone streets laid by slaves in the 19th century. From there I was shipped, dispatched, sent off to East Hampton, NY at the age of 15. I can’t think of a more drastic change. New York, both the city and the state, were home to me for nearly 15 years. I was obviously freezing my ass and craved the jungle every minute of every day. I spoke mostly English and had a hard time expressing myself in Portuguese. One day I had it. I was invited to an artist residency in the jungle of Nicaragua and I jumped, literally, on the next flight over. I stayed in Nicaragua for 6 months, until the residency finished. I knew then my days in NY were over but I moved back to NYC out of desperation (how do we survive?!). That lasted another year and finally I gave up - I was ready to leave. But I didn’t move back to Brazil… At 29 I moved to Los Angeles, at 30 to Bali, at 33 to Costa Rica and at 36 to Lisbon. You see where this is going?