Paula Brukmüller - Flowers from Greece - The Autobiography of the Journalist Who Turned a Personal Tragedy into an Inspiring World Tour

I let my tears run through all the hurt, anger, love, sadness and fear of what was yet to come. I regretted the end once more, but I had stopped asking the reasons why everything happened. When my heart unburdened yet another ocean of pain, I grabbed my notebook and wrote my first self-love letter. I had committed to do so while still in my flight to Bahia.

I left dozens of letters scattered around the house before leaving for good. I poured my heart out in my best lines in messages to Felipe but I’ve never given myself the same comforting words.

That morning, I looked at myself as if I was looking at my best friend. What would I say to that woman after hearing such deep pain? How could I help her? What words could bring some comfort and help her face reality at the same time?

No one better than myself should tell the words she needed to hear. I was the only human being in the world who could understand the pain. It was like splitting myself into two people: my rational self, looking at the whole situation from a distance and telling my emotional self that everything would be alright.

Trancoso – Bahia, 23 February, 2018.

Dear friend,

I know I’ve never made a habit of writing to you but we’ve been talking a lot these days and I feel I need to say how much I love you. I even think I should love you more. You deserve more. I swear I am doing the best I can to be with you in this time of pain and transition. I’m taking care of us the best way I can, and whenever I can, I’ll try to take us back to the present.

Because I love you so much, I would like for you to stop wondering what our life would be like if things happened differently. Nothing can change the past. What’s done is done.

You are the one who usually say that when you take a path, the others cease to exist. You can’t go back and take the road on the right. It’s already gone.

You can improve the path you are following now though. Plant flowers and dance in the rain if it falls. Sit down to watch the sunrise or sunset. Smile to those who cross your path.

I know it still hurts…

I know it still hurts…

My love, only I know how much it all still hurts because I’m the only one who can feel it with you. But we are so strong. Hold tight a little longer. I promise that soon things will get better. Hold my hand, darling. I am the only person who will still be with you until the end!

I love you so much and I want to love you even more.

The first days in Trancoso were filled with meditation, before sleeping and after waking up, and a lot of emotional confusion.

Google: How to get over a divorce?

Google: How to win your ex-partner back?

Google: How to silence your ego?

My mind, lazy and used to the life I took in the last 14 years, wanted to go back in time, no matter what.

It takes a lot of hard work to start from scratch, when everything was already in order, in your comfort zone, even when the situation wasn’t exactly “comfortable.” It gives us safety, precisely because we know how things work in that territory. It is easier for the mind to keep suffering from what it already knows than risking something completely new.

My job in the bed and breakfast, which was supposed to be helping with the guests breakfast and cleaning the rooms, ended up changing. By knowing of my previous experience as a web journalist, Cândice and João, the other business owners, asked me to take care of the social media and their two B&B ranking in the internet search engines.

I was working 3 hours a day, I had a small comfy room, a shower and breakfast. I could use the pool as much as I wanted to and I grabbed one of the bikes available in the B&B.

I started doing yoga and going to a simple gym in town every other day. Every morning, I would get up, do some meditation, write positive affirmations in my Reflective journal and tell myself: today I will do my best to feel good.

I also started having weekly appointments with Sidney, a holistic therapist who had traveled the world and then decided to settle down in southern Bahia, in a large and airy house surrounded by trees and wildlife. We used to talk for hours, and then he would perform a chakra balancing ritual for me.

At nightfall, when Bahia heat would give us a break, I would have a seat with Cândice and João by a bamboo lamp, under a cashew tree in the yard, and we would drink wine or beer.

By meeting their friends, I started making my own ones and gradually going to some barbecue parties and other parties in town.

Adding to my work and yoga mornings, along with my training and beach afternoons, soon I also started to have dance nights, new friends and beer. I began to go out on my own for fun and met a lot of interesting people.

Advertisers and lawyers who left their successful young people status in cities like São Paulo and Salvador to work as waiters or receptionists in hotels on the beach.

Life began to show me that there were infinite possibilities to follow and I was free to choose any of them.

In that time of social life resumption, it didn’t take long for the first flirtations to emerge, of course. Unlike the American writer Liz Gilbert, in “Eat, Pray, Love”, I wasn’t interested in leaving love to the end of the trip at all.

Of course, I didn’t want to get into another serious relationship so fast. I was well aware that my wounds needed to heal to live a healthy relationship, as I wished and deserved. Still, I wanted to experiment and have fun without commitment. Despite the obvious risks, my self-esteem needed that external stimulus. And since I was willing to heal from serious relationships, it seemed right to have less serious ones and watch my own behaviour in each situation.

It wasn’t as easy as it looked on these lines. The first time I tried to undress in front of a man was a disaster and I started crying. I left the guy in a very uncomfortable situation, thinking he was doing something wrong. I explained it wasn’t his fault and told him to leave. I was totally embarrassed when I saw him the next day, but today I’m happy for respecting my own time. After that, I started making questions to myself before taking a step forward, and everything happened more naturally.

A month after landing in Trancoso, I was already feeling stronger, but deep inside, my ego was writhing. I was still living a kind of obsession. I kept checking Felipe’s social network and couldn’t leave the cell phone. Every day, I used to wait for his message asking me to go back to him and, at the same time, I asked the universe not to let him look for me, as I was willing to accept him back even though I knew I didn’t want that life anymore.

One day, checking some lost information on Facebook messenger, I came across a hidden messages box that I didn’t even know was there. I opened the message and couldn’t quite understand where that had come from. A woman wanted to know if her “boyfriend” was really separated or if she was being tricked.

An intense rush of adrenaline ran through all over my body. I felt my hands tingling and they started shaking straight away. My heart, which hadn’t been at its normal pace for weeks, sped up even more and my stomach turned.

It was official, I had lost my position forever.

As it was said in the message, Felipe was already introducing her to his friends as his girlfriend, but as she often sees him talking to me, she wanted to make sure he wasn’t tricking us both.

At first, it looked like she meant to mark territory. I was furious and I couldn’t even think. I didn’t even notice the message was already there for almost 30 days.

- Keep your girlfriends away from me. I don’t want to know about your life. Please, tell them you’re a widower. Tell them you’ve always been single. Make up any lie, but don’t tell them my name.