Where do I even start?

After claiming the single mentor model might be a Western construct, a friend's husband, a Swiss diplomat, dismantled my argument from his living room.

I have not found a mentor yet. It feels like an admin task I keep postponing.

In Brazil you do not wish someone happy birthday before the actual day. Something terrible will happen.

I make jokes under stress.

I am an outsider. A literal Ausländer, if you may.

I was listed first among the featured presenters.

I was supposed to be an au pair in the United States. It did not work out. At the time it felt like a door closing.

Last year I went to a Rede Brasil Suíça event and did not know what to expect.

It is in the marketing, the products, the content. Someone figured out that nostalgia converts and now the whole internet smells like 1994.

I was maybe ten when I had a vivid dream and told a friend about it at school.

I have written before about bad advice. I have received enough of it to fill a book that nobody would want to read. But there is one that keeps coming back.

I did not tell many people I was going to move abroad. My brother knew. Some family members. But my friends, the people I saw every week, most of them did not hear it from me.

At the Coffee with Expats meeting everyone had a story. From Egypt. Speaks ten languages. Parents were diplomats. I sat there thinking I had none of that.

A friend here in Switzerland asked me the other day if I have someone bigger than me in the industry who can be my mentor. I said no. I am usually the mentor. What I did not say, because I was still figuring it out, is why.