The Happiness of Saudade

Saudade is a famously untranslatable Portuguese word. It refers to the feeling of melancholic longing or nostalgia for a place, person or thing that is beloved yet absent. It is a word characteristic to many Brazilian and Portuguese songs, poems, and novels, capturing an unsolvable, constant yearning.  

For me, saudade is a way of life, a thing I have with me constantly: I have saudade for my family in Brazil every second that I am not with them. Often, this can be a painful way to live – to be so focused on the people I am not with, on the kitchens I have not eaten in for years, on the bodies I have not hugged. Time heals all wounds except for saudade; saudade is the wound that only grows deeper with time and distance. 

But a Brazilian temperament as classic as saudade, and arguably more contagious, is happiness. Happiness, song, and laughter follow Brazilians around like a helium balloon that never loses its air. It is this affinity for happiness that makes saudade more of a beauty than it is a burden: Under the lens of happiness, saudade is not a reminder of everyone and everything that is missing, but a reminder of everyone and everything I am lucky enough to know and experience. An Ivete Sangalo song triggers in me an immense saudade, a dire longing for my family, but as I begin to dance to the song, everything I am yearning for is also everything I am happy and grateful for.  

Saudade may be painful, but that pain is only proof of how much love we have for the things we miss. So, let our nostalgia be as much of a celebration as it is a longing. Let songs remind us of fun memories rather than long distances, let foods remind us of last year’s full table rather than today’s empty one. Let saudade be less an elegy for everyone left behind, and more an ode to all the people we are soon to reunite with. 

Submissions to the 2025 Anthology are due on the 31st of July. 

Words by Bruna Gomes