Our Story
We hope that each of us is enjoying life to the fullest, savouring the many gifts of living in Portugal. We hope that you may never need our care or support. However, life is often full of surprises – both happy ones that delight us and sudden medical events that may cause substantial stress.
In 2023, as some of our cherished neighbors and friends in Setúbal, Portugal started to encounter medical challenges in a city they were just learning to navigate. Organically, community members started to provide meals, transportation, grocery shopping, counseling, pet care, and shared durable medical equipment and resources for those who were recovering from, or living with, life altering health issues.
Our experiences in caring and providing for these initial emergency situations proved tremendously valuable as a foundation to help us all be prepared for an emergency situation and to offer tools facilitating the non-medical support services so vital to recovery and care.
A founding team began to create checklists and procedures for completing legal, health-related documents. Outreach to public services and utilities available as tools to organize support from friends, family and volunteers were also identified. These resources proved valued and next a series of workshops began in the Setúbal community and this online venue Vamos Bem! was created for educational and easy sharing of valuable tools for all.
Today, this “model community of support” is spreading to other communities across Portugal as well as those whom are preparing to relocate to Portugal.
Our steering committee and volunteer teams are caring, respectful and continue to provide additional resources and tools on this Vamos Bem! platform. Many are motivated to help by their own personal experience of caring for their family and friends, or their professional expertise as retired home care professionals. We do this as a community of compassion, courage, respect and action in service to each other. We invite you to join us and stay informed – or even volunteer – as we grow and expand our service to others in Portugal.
“The greatness of a community is most accurately measured by the compassionate acts of its members.”
– Coretta Scott King
A Message from our Chairwoman
Before coming to Portugal, my husband and I cared for our moms in their last years.
My mom died in August of 2020, during Covid’s first year when much was uncertain, and the fear of death from Covid was very real. As a result, my mom’s care fell to me and her dedicated caregiver. My mom had dementia yet was able to live a quality life until Covid restrictions limited her movement to bed and bathroom. Her death certificate says she died from lung cancer.
Chairwoman, Executive Leadership Coach, Nurse
I believe that it was Covid isolation, and that she was ready to leave this earth. I witnessed her last days and her last breath. It was sacred and exhausting.
Since that experience, I’ve been committed to learning more about the process of dying, options for a “good death” and living fully so that when our time comes, we have no regrets. Beyond our needs is the desire to spare our surviving loved ones the pain of dealing with “stuff,” or the felt need to make decisions for my care when I’m unable to participate due to illness. Beyond my medical knowledge as a nurse, I’ve been participating in death school to broaden my knowledge of the physical, emotional, and spiritual processes of dying, and the preparations needed for disposition of physical remains and protection of financial assets.
Soon after arriving in Portugal, I became aware of a fellow expat who was dying from cancer and had moved here alone. I was in awe as I observed the rallying of our community during this woman’s last three weeks of life. Total strangers sat by her bedside so she would not be alone in her transition.
Given the strong community focus in Setúbal, I envisioned the possibility for an expanded concept of being able to age and die in place.
Organically, it had already begun to materialize. Diverse members of the community, with personal experience in caretaking friends and family, have since come together to make the Vamos Bem! community model – a model we hope other communities in Portugal can adopt.
As we support our beloved community members, we envision the development of a model for aging and dying with dignity that may be replicated in other communities within Portugal.