WebService PHP + JSON - How to read return

Hello!

Personal, I would like to understand how to read the return, with the following structure:

$ws = array(

   'categoria' => array(
      array(
         'cat1' => array(
            'dado1' => $dado1,
            'dado2'=>$dado2                                                             
         ),
         'subcategoria'=>array(
            'dado3'=>$dado3,
            'dado4'=>$dado4,
         )
      ),
   ),
);

$json = json_encode($ws, JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE | JSON_UNESCAPED_SLASHES | JSON_NUMERIC_CHECK);

$url = 'https://link.com';
$ch = curl_init($url);

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, "POST");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $json);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array(
'Accept: application/json',
'Content-Length: ' . strlen($json),
"Content-Type: application/json",
));

$jsonRet = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

With the code above, I send it. Now how do I individually extract the return data?

It comes in this format:

{"data":{"nome1":João,"status":["ativo"]}} 

I want to be able to interpret only the status, or nome1 , separately with php.