Today for the "Women's History Month", we are celebrating this fantastic lady:

Meet Nivea Bona, 50, a wife, mother, grandmother, teacher, model, fabulous and sassy woman!!

"Be yourself; everyone else is already taken." - Oscar Wilde

It's funny, but every time someone asks me about my life journey, I always answer: oh, that's a story to be told in a bar, preferably by the seaside...

I am the eldest daughter of a very Catholic couple. In my father's family, they were 12 siblings: six nuns, three priests, an uncle and my father who married, and a disabled uncle. On my mother's side, things weren't quite as "saintly," but there were a rigid structure and very defined social roles (with aunts submissive to their husbands' wishes). 

In this scenario, I had a strong perception of social justice (or the lack of it). My religious uncles and aunts were scattered throughout the remote corners of Brazil where entire communities lacked running water, access to healthcare, food, or education. The family had an annual gathering where they would tell painful stories. When we traveled to visit them, we would stay in convents and seminaries, places that are very familiar to me now, places reverberating discipline, silence, and contemplation. We also witnessed the poverty of the communities surrounding the local church.

My father almost became a priest. He graduated in philosophy, pedagogy, theology, and psychology. He was an intellectual well-prepared to be a priest, but with little notion of what it meant to be a father, so our house was often managed like a seminary. In his consulting business, he managed to apply much of this knowledge. I always loved learning new things, was very eager for knowledge, and I used my father as a “dictionary” and to discuss philosophical, religious, and societal concepts.

My mother majored in Social Work and worked her entire life in public health. Brazil has a universal public health system, and the constitution states that everyone has the right to dignified healthcare. Despite this, in practice, access can be very unequal. My mother's job was to direct families to the necessary care in the appropriate health specialties. In this mission, she witnessed many families suffering, from not being able to feed their children to domestic violence.

Living under the influence of the Catholic church and in a family with rigid rules, life was full of taboos and made me a rebel before I could even choose what I wanted to be. That’s how I started dating secretly at 15, and by the time I was 17, I was pregnant. The scandal couldn’t have been worse for the family. Uncles and aunts were shocked, my grandmother feared what others would say, my father was furious, repeating that I had ruined my life, and my mother—who had always felt challenged by my behavior—tried to be the mediator, maybe because she knew what was coming.

I got married. We were two teenagers building a family. He worked, and I gave up my life of school, guitar lessons, clubs—all to be just a mother. I often say that my son saved me because I knew I couldn’t fail. There was a human being depending on me. So, I didn’t have the chance to enjoy parties, get drunk, or make all the mistakes people make at that age. Someone depended on me, so I did what I knew: I studied to be a decent mother.

I dedicated a year solely to caring for my son and my marriage. But I wanted more; I could do more. So, I took the college admission exams. At the time, I had three passions: writing, theater, and justice. That’s how I started studying journalism in the morning and law at night. My idea was that with communication skills and knowledge of the law, I could help change the world. My family helped take care of my son when his father traveled for work.

After six months, I realized that my true passion was writing—telling stories—so I decided to focus on becoming a good journalist and left law school. That was when I started my small communication business.

After six years of marriage, which today could be called an abusive relationship, I decided to get a divorce. From then on, it would be just my son and me, and to this day, there's no one more important to me. I worked to support our home, and he studied and grew up beautifully, always challenging me to be a better person.

Gradually, I started meeting people again, learning to have fun. I started a stable relationship. It lasted eight years but also ended. I felt like I was failing again. It's funny how society places the burden of holding a relationship together on women's shoulders. This time, I had done everything I could to maintain a relationship in which I was the only one doing the loving. My ex-partner didn’t love me anymore.  It was then that I learned that you can't love for two people. I also learned that I was a whole person, complete, not half of anything, and that if another person doesn't come to enrich my life, it won't work. I understood then that maybe this “marriage thing” wasn't for me, and that was okay. I was a whole person. 

Meanwhile, a friend invited me to substitute for her in a communication class she taught at the university. I had never thought of being a teacher, but suddenly I fell deeply in love with the possibility of teaching others about how communication can transform the world. I started teaching, finished my master's degree, and fell in love with research. My son was studying at college, and we still lived together, but as he was more independent, I decided that now, being more mature, I could do the crazy things I hadn’t done as a teenager. That's how I dated an Argentine tango teacher and learned to dance in milongas (I even performed!), started traveling alone, learned to make candles, decided to weave on a loom, and started my doctorate. These things didn't happen all at once, but this was a fantastic phase in which I wanted to soak up all the life around me. I wanted to experiment; I had freed myself from some social definitions, and I accepted myself as I was. I also accepted that life sometimes throws challenges at us, and it's up to us to transform them into a cool story or to suffer bitterly.

I went to Spain for five months, he visited, I returned and finished my doctorate. In 2014, I was the chair of the journalism department at a university, and we decided to get married so he could get a Brazilian visa and work in the country. My son graduated from college and was working. We adopted a dog. Without any plan or expectations, we became a normal family. 

At that moment, I began to learn that we don’t control anything, that life comes and goes with infinite possibilities, and it will depend on us to fulfill them.

In November 2015, my husband's grandmother, who owned a bed and breakfast in Bar Harbor, passed away, and the family needed someone to manage the inn while they prepared to sell it. My father-in-law made us an offer, and I, already quite stressed with academic life, thought it would be a good break in my career, so I could take stock.

We moved to Bar Harbor in 2016, and I put on a different hat: I went from being a doctor in communication to being a housekeeper. For three years, we lived in what I call paradise, and I took a crash course in hotel management and in the way of life in Maine. I ended up falling in love with the people, the state, the nature, the simple way of solving things. But, over time, the enormous difference between winter and summer and the lack of year-round activities took their toll. I needed intellectual stimulation and started applying for various positions at universities across the country. I collected hundreds of rejections. I couldn't even get interviews. It seemed like I wasn't meant to teach in the US.

Six months after I moved to the US, my son moved to Panama (2017), where he met my daughter-in-law, who is French.

In January 2019, we sold the inn in Bar Harbor. In April 2019, I traveled to Brazil to say goodbye to my father. At the beginning of December of that year, we went to Panama to meet my granddaughter, a little person who would change my life forever. 

After helping the new owners settle into the inn, we moved to Brunswick, where we had both found jobs in a hotel. We rented a bedroom near Bowdoin College because we were looking for houses to buy. On December 24, 2019, I was starting my training to work at the hotel in Brunswick when the manager came to tell me he couldn’t hire me, and that he was also going to lay off my husband, who was already working there as a waiter. The hotel had filed for bankruptcy. So, we ended 2019 unemployed, and sharing a house with students.

I had already learned that life can turn us upside down, but I never imagined it would be like that. The only thing that kept us from losing our minds was that we had some savings. In January 2020, I applied for every possible job in the region—from salesperson to letter carrier. And to preserve my mental health, I decided to volunteer. I started to help asylum seekers arriving in Maine, and since I spoke Portuguese, I became a cultural liaison for a family of ten people from Angola. Accompanying their journey made me realize how privileged I was. They had gone through extreme hardships that I couldn’t even imagine. They arrived with nothing but the clothes on their back. At that moment, I had a purpose.

In April 2020, it was no longer possible to visit houses for sale due to the pandemic, and prices soared far beyond what we could afford for a down payment. We were destined to stay in that bedroom for who knows how long. In that same month, the Bath post office offered me a position as a letter carrier, and while everyone else was stuck at home during the pandemic, I was walking the streets delivering mail and packages. Life has its funny ways... I worked seven days a week, sometimes 12 hours a day, sometimes 14 hours a day. Delivering mail is an extremely exhausting job especially in the U.S., where everyone expects packages to be delivered overnight. My body started showing signs of strain: allergies, vertigo, migraines.

In April 2021, after a severe bout of vertigo, I decided I couldn’t do it anymore. I had hit rock bottom. I had no idea what to do next, but that job no longer suited me. Out of sheer desperation, I quit without having anything else lined up.

I had applied for and received a small research grant, and in September 2021, I spent the month collecting data in Galway, Ireland. I returned and tried to study to become a copywriter, but that didn't work out. In October 2021, I promised myself that it would be the last attempt to get a job at a university, and I applied for a position at Boston University. In December, they interviewed me via Zoom. In January 2022, still unemployed, without any hope, I decided to go for something I loved: I sent an email to Shermans Bookstore applying for a job, and they called me the same week. There, I was in heaven: learning a lot every day, living among books, and talking with people who read a lot. I was settling in, making plans to stay there forever when, in March, I received an invitation for an on-campus interview at Boston University. I prepared my demonstration class, still without hope. In May, I received an offer to work as a Master Lecturer in Media Science.

The first semester was pure panic. Learning the ropes in the U.S. university system while in the midst of a variety of menopause symptoms was not easy. There were weeks when I cried every day. I would wake up in the middle of the night imagining I had forgotten everything I had prepared for class. My colleagues and my mentor were fabulous; I found support whenever I sought it. What I needed to silence in these last few years was that voice that kept saying “I'm not good enough”, “I won't make it”.

I will. As I always have. Life can come and turn everything upside down again, but I've now learned how to pick myself up. 

Another one of Nivea's Favorite quotes:

"When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time." - Maya Angelou

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#womenshistorymonth #womansupportingwomen #womanpower #mainephotographer