A Story About AI, Courage, and Finding Home.
People ask me how I picked Setúbal.
Had I been there before? No.
Did I have relatives there? No.
Did I speak Portuguese? A few words, learned in the past six weeks.
So how did a 76-year-old woman with a rollator, a fixed income, and a daughter still at home end up sitting in a Portuguese square eating feijoada (a hearty bean stew) in the rain, watching a black cat sculpture on a rooftop, feeling completely at home?
I tell them: Claude helped me get here.
They look at me — this older woman with her rolling walker — in amazement. Claude? The AI?
Yes. The AI.
But here’s what I want them to understand. Claude didn’t pick Setúbal. I did. What Claude did was make it possible for me to hear what I already knew.
I had been thinking about leaving the United States since 2016. Thinking, not doing. Because I live on a modest fixed income — Social Security, a small pension, part-time work — and I couldn’t see how it was financially possible. So the thought stayed a thought for a decade.
Asking the Question
On April 5th, 2026, I sat down and typed into Claude: “Where can someone on a modest income relocate abroad?”
What followed was the most useful conversation I have ever had.
Not because Claude told me what to do. But because Claude could hold the entire picture at once — the visa requirements, the tax implications, the rental costs, the healthcare system, the walkability, the Jewish community, the climate — while I did the thinking that only I could do. What do I actually value? What does my body need? What kind of morning do I want to wake up to?
Six days after that first message, I booked an apartment in Setúbal, Portugal”
Six Weeks Later
Six weeks later I am sitting in that apartment, having lost ten pounds in two weeks — mostly fluid as inflammation leaves my body and releases the swelling it has been holding. I am walking at least two miles every day. I am eating the best food of my life, straight off restaurant menus without modification, or cooked in my own kitchen from market ingredients — whole grain bread from a local baker, eggs from free-range hens, olive oil, fresh vegetables, blueberries so large and sweet I have never seen their equal. I say boa tarde (good afternoon) to strangers in the park while I hand sew linen in the afternoon sun.
When people express amazement that I used AI to find my home, I want to tell them: the amazement is misplaced. The AI was a tool — a remarkable one, but a tool.
What took courage was the decade of knowing something was wrong. What took clarity was being able to say, out loud, what I actually valued. What took trust was listening to what my body already knew.
Claude and I got here together. I brought the knowing. Claude brought the research. Neither of us gets to Setúbal without the other.
That’s not a story about artificial intelligence.
That’s a story about finally asking the question out loud.
We are in this together,
🌀 Nora
This post is part of a series of essays written from Setúbal, Portugal and was written on May 23, 2026. Read our other posts in The Portugal Series.
ABOUT THIS POST
This post is about Protect, one of the four Pillars of Small Steps Lasting Change. It’s about how a 76-year-old woman on a fixed income used Claude, an AI, to find a place and a community that could support her health, and why the courage to actually travel to Setúbal, Portugal was hers, not the AI’s.
Read our other posts about Protect.
About Small Steps Lasting Change
Small Steps Lasting Change is a wellness practice for people living with chronic illness and changing capacity. The four Pillars (Move, Nourish, Rest, and Protect) and the six Patterns for navigating change as it actually happens in a human life anchor the practice.
Begin where you are.
Nora Chaus is the founder of Small Steps Lasting Change. She is a retired registered nurse, a facilitator, and a work in progress. She divides her time between Portugal, Canada, and Baltimore.
