About Sandra
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Essence of Sandra
My life has taught me what no book could ever teach me on its own.
About Sandra
I’m Sandra.
I’m a woman, a mother, a wife, a writer, a mentor, a teacher, an entrepreneur, someone deeply curious about human nature and, above all, a person who is still learning how to live.
I don’t have a perfect story to tell you.
I have a lived one. A story of moving between countries, starting again, questioning, fulfilling some dreams and letting go of others. There have been moments of immense happiness and others when life forced me to stop.
I’ve searched for answers.
And thought I had found some.
I’ve changed my mind.
And I’ve been afraid.
I’ve started again.
And at 44, I heard a word that forever changed the way I looked at time:
Cancer.
Today, when I look back, I realise it wasn’t only my studies that brought me here.
It was life.
I have always been curious about people
Why can two people experience exactly the same situation in completely different ways?
Why do we repeat certain patterns even when we know they are hurting us?
And why can some people walk into a room and immediately sense the atmosphere?
I have always been fascinated by what we cannot see.
Why can we have what appears to be a good life and still feel that something is missing?
Why do we love each other and still hurt each other?
And why are we sometimes so afraid to change the very things we know no longer make us happy?
Perhaps the question that has stayed with me the longest:
What makes a person feel truly alive?
That curiosity led me to study, teach, write and explore different dimensions of what it means to be human.
But it also taught me to observe.
Listen.
To have conversations.
Travel.
To meet people very different from me.
And to question many of the certainties I had built throughout my life.
Living far away taught me to look closer
I was born in Portugal, but an important part of my story was written elsewhere.
I lived in Morocco and in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Living in another country is about much more than changing your address.
It means discovering that what you once considered “normal” is simply one of many possible ways of living.
I encountered cultures, religions, families, traditions and ways of thinking very different from my own.
And I learned to adapt.
I learned to observe before judging.
I learned that we can miss home deeply and, at the same time, fall in love with somewhere new.
And I discovered something that continues to fascinate me:
We may be very different in the way we live, but we are remarkably similar in what we seek. We all want:
To love and be loved.
To feel that we belong.
Safety.
Freedom.
To be understood.
To feel that our lives have meaning.
And to believe that there is still something beautiful waiting for us.
Living between different worlds made me more open, more curious and, probably, much less interested in telling other people what the “right” way to live is.
Then cancer arrived.
I was 44.
Some events divide our stories into two parts.
Before and after.
For me, cancer was one of them.
Suddenly, many of the things that had once seemed urgent no longer were.
The body we so often take for granted became the centre of everything.
There were treatments.
Fear.
Vulnerability.
And the need to keep going.
There was also the strange experience of watching life continue as normal around me when, inside me, everything had changed.
During treatment, there is one very clear objective:
To survive.
But there is another part we talk about far less.
What happens afterwards?
When the treatments end.
When the people around you breathe a sigh of relief.
And when, theoretically, you are simply supposed to go back to your life.
I realised I didn’t want simply to go back.
Because the Sandra who had entered that experience was no longer exactly the same Sandra who was coming out of it.
And a question emerged that would eventually change far more than I could have imagined:
If I’m still here, how do I want to live?
Surviving and living are two different things.
Cancer didn’t give me all the answers. And I don’t like to romanticise illness. It was difficult.
There was fear, pain and uncertainty.
But it forced me to look at things I might otherwise have continued to postpone. It made me realise how easily we can spend years doing what needs to be done.
Working.
Solving problems.
Caring for others.
Organising.
Meeting expectations.
Preparing for the next day, the next month, the next holiday, the next goal.
And, without even realising it, we can become extraordinarily good at managing life without ever being truly present in it.
That was when I began to understand a distinction that has become fundamental to me:
Being alive does not necessarily mean feeling alive.
And I started writing.
Writing became a way of making sense of everything that was inside me. All the:
Questions.
Stories.
Lessons.
Contradictions.
The things I thought I knew and those I was finally beginning to understand.
From that process came my book, The Dance of Life.
Publishing it was about far more than fulfilling a dream of writing a book.
It meant allowing a deeply personal part of the way I see life to leave the safety of my own thoughts and reach other people.
And perhaps that was when I truly began to find my voice. A voice less concerned with having an answer for everything.
And much more interested in asking questions that make us stop and look at life differently.
Today, I value different things.
I value a good conversation.
The kind where you lose track of time because you have moved beyond the superficial.
I value curious people.
Humour.
Music.
Movement.
Travelling.
Discovering places I have never been.
Listening to people’s stories.
Learning new things.
Silence, when silence is what we need.
And the freedom to change our minds when we are no longer the same person who made a particular decision years ago.
I have also learned to value my body much more.
Energy.
Rest.
Relationships that make us feel good.
Time.
And all those perfectly ordinary little things that suddenly stop being ordinary when we are faced with the possibility of losing them.
I don’t believe in a perfect life.
I’m not even sure I would want one.
I believe in a life that is truly felt.
A life where there is room for responsibility, but also for pleasure.
For depth, but also for laughing at completely ridiculous things.
For caring for others without disappearing from our own lives.
A life for pursuing our goals without turning our entire existence into a to-do list.
A life where there is room for changing direction.
For beginning again at 30, 40, 50 or 70.
For being able to say:
“I don’t want this for myself anymore.”
And also:
“I still want to experience that.”
Perhaps one of the greatest freedoms I have found is realising that we do not have to continue being who we once were simply because we spent many years becoming that person.
We are allowed to keep discovering who we are.
Essentya was born from that search.
It wasn’t born because I believe I have a formula for someone else’s life.
I don’t.
It was born because I deeply believe in the value of creating space for someone to stop, understand themselves and ask:
What is really happening to me?
What have I been tolerating for too long?
And what do I need?
What do I want to preserve?
What do I need to leave behind?
And how do I want to live from this point forward?
This way of looking at the human experience is also what led to the creation of Human Reset™.
My work brings together what I have studied and what I have lived, but I don’t want to spend too much time talking about my work on this page.
Because before you decide whether you want to work with me, I believe there is something more important:
Knowing who will be sitting across the table from you.
If one day you sit across from me…
You won’t find someone who believes she has a perfect life.
You’ll find someone who has had to rebuild parts of her own.
You won’t find someone who will tell you who you should be.
You’ll find someone genuinely interested in discovering who the person sitting in front of me really is.
I’ll want to understand what you say.
But also what you may still find difficult to say.
I’ll ask questions.
Some may be uncomfortable.
Others may make you laugh.
And perhaps one of them will make you sit quietly for a few seconds and think:
“I’ve never looked at it that way before.”
That is the moment that fascinates me.
Because, very often, meaningful change begins right there.
There is one thing life has taught me.
We don’t know how much time we have.
But that doesn’t mean we should live in fear of time running out.
For me, it means exactly the opposite.
It means not endlessly postponing the things that make us feel alive.
The journey.
The conversation.
That hug.
The decision.
That book.
That project.
A dance.
An apology.
That “no”.
That “yes”.
That new beginning.
Or simply an afternoon spent doing absolutely nothing and without feeling guilty about it.
My story has taught me that we can survive chapters we would never have chosen to write.
But it has also taught me something even more important:
We can choose how we want to write the chapters that come next.
I still have so much to discover.
There are still places I want to go.
Books I want to write.
People I want to meet.
Conversations I want to have.
Things I want to learn.
And days I simply want to live.
Perhaps that is what defines me best today.
I am deeply curious about life.
And if there is one thing I would like you to take with you after reading my story, it is this:
Don’t wait for something to change your life before you start living it.
You don’t have to change everything tomorrow.
You can begin with a question.
A decision.
A conversation.
One small step.
And sometimes, you can begin simply by asking yourself again:
What would make me feel truly alive?
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Sandra
Writer · Creator of Essentya and Human Reset™ · Mentor
For people who feel more.
Your life – Your essence – Your transformation.
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Discover a little more of my story
If you would like to get to know me beyond these words, you can watch the interviews below, where I share different moments from my story, my experiences and the way I have learned to look at life.
I also share a song I wrote, one in which I recognise myself every time I listen to it.
We are here to live, to grow, and to become who we truly are.
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PODCAST – SPOTIFY: Reconnecting with your Essence and Learning to Let Go
ZEE TV MIDDLE EAST: In-depth conversation with the Cancer Warrior – Sandra Martinho
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Yours in Life,
Sandra
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