My Journey From Traveler to Mexican Resident

Guest blog by Rachel Rickman

Playas de Rosarito with son Callan and Bea-dog—Fall 2022

“Where are you from?”

“De donde eres?”

I get asked often on both sides of the border.

“Upper Michigan,” I respond. “But I’ve lived in Mexico for over seven years. Our son was born in Cancun.”

Currently, I live in Rosarito, Mexico, which is close to Tijuana and San Diego. For most of my adult life, I didn’t think I’d live anywhere but Upper Michigan. I fantasized about, and even researched living in other places, but my life felt permanently entrenched in Michigan. My family is in Michigan. The home and land I grew up in and that holds a piece of my soul. I know how the trees look during every season.

The different textures of lake ice.

When to plant and when to harvest.

It’s in the weft and weave of my being. However, I believe something in me always knew I needed to venture elsewhere.

In my first marriage, I believed I was living out my destiny. I married a good, kind man who hunted and fished just like my father. I lived in a lovely cabin in the woods on ten acres similar to the home I grew up in. I got my degrees and became a teacher, just like my parents. It all made sense and felt good to everyone I loved—but not me.

It was like feeling hungry all the time, but you have plenty of food. The feeling didn’t make sense. I cried tears I couldn’t find the wellspring of and tried to keep cramming myself into a life I wanted so hard to make fit.

In 2013, I went to India to visit my dear friend and mentor, Jaspal Singh, who was living in New Delhi on a Fulbright Scholarship. I wanted that trip with every piece of me, but my salary at the university paid very little, and I had no money for travel. With a bit of guidance from my ex-husband, I grew my own marijuana to pay for the trip and sold it at a local dispensary after teaching my university classes. I cultivated and trimmed the plants myself—hard work earning every dollar. When I bought those plane tickets, it felt like a hint of sun warmth on a frozen-Michigan-January day. 

40 acres, 100 year old log cabin on the Laughing Whitefish River— Summer 2016

I’m acutely aware of the tropes about women having some grand epiphany and “finding themselves” while traveling. 

I still haven’t seen “Eat, Pray, Love” (Although “City of Girls” by the same author is a favorite book of mine). However, I did wear out my “Under the Tuscan Sun” DVD from watching it so many times.

While the “Stella Got Her Groove Back” stereotype always made me uncomfortable, the truth is that those stereotypes and storylines exist because of their accuracy. Women (and some men) so easily slip into our society and family determined roles that by the time we look up and realize we’re living lives that don’t feel honest to us, we’re eyeball-deep in marriages, mortgages, kids, debt, and all the other details a socially acceptable life entails that are really hard to untangle from.

Travel provides perspective. It opens our eyes to other choices—other possibilities. Other lives to live.

As much as I shy away from the stereotype: “white girl travels to India, has an epiphany, and decides to change her life,” that’s more or less exactly what happened.

I had traveled before: to Mexico, Italy, Scotland, the Bahamas—but there was something about India that shook me. Made me face the insignificance of my own life amongst such history, such a mass of humanity also living out their lives every day in ways so markedly different to mine it was a struggle to take in.

Midway through our trip, Jaspal and I drove through the countryside from Jodphur to the lake city of Udaipur. We passed through villages and farmland filled with crops I had no reference for. 

I remember the moment a fragment of my consciousness clicked into place. 

One woman, alone in a field. Green and gold sari falling gracefully to the ground. A bundle balanced delicately atop her head. I saw her, and grasped how truly limited my life had been up to that point. While my existence as an English Professor living in a cabin in the woods, growing veggies and weed might seem like an adventurous life for many, I’d lived in a cabin in the woods growing vegetables most of my life. It was good and familiar and a life I most likely want to return to someday, but in the meantime, days, weeks, and months were passing and I had so much more to experience.

I didn’t want to just travel and participate in visits to new places—I wanted to inhabit them. I wanted to exist within the moment and truly live different lives.

Community birthday party in our neighborhood in Playas de Rosarito—December 2022

It’s a moment I’ve returned to often in reflection. Especially lately.

There was no smooth transition into a new life once I made this realization. In fact, what came after was hard, messy, and full of lonely moments, insecurity, grief, guilt, and heartache. It’s taken years to untangle it all and sort out what I truly want from my guilt at hurting and disappointing people I love.

After my divorce, I lived anywhere there was a couch or bed a friend or family member could spare. I camped next to waterfalls and slept on stony Lake Superior beaches. I entered into a two and a half year emotionally abusive relationship. I lived in a canvas wall tent for six months, cooking on a two-burner gas stove and wood stove. I bought a 100 year old cabin on 40 acres and broke up with the abusive boyfriend, living alone out there and sleeping with a loaded .22 at my feet. I prowled the woods at night to bolster my courage, finding comfort in owl calls.

In December 2016, I made plans to travel to Isla Mujeres, Mexico for two months in an attempt to clear my head and determine a way forward. I was divorced; an English Contingent instructor with no health insurance and no possibility of career advancement; I had a mortgage on a beautiful piece of property in the middle of nowhere and a scary ex with a vendetta against me.

Travel, once again, decided my life’s next trajectory.

Me, Ryan, and baby Callan at our wedding in September 2018

A month ago, I flew into Detroit and drove to visit my 99-year-old, world-traveled grandmother. She’s in assisted living in Armada—a tiny, rural town about an hour outside Detroit. My five-year-old son and I stopped at a local market for groceries and the cashier, who may have been all of 18, overheard us talking about what a long travel day we’d had.

“Where’d you come from?” She asked pertly. 
“Mexico!” Callan said proudly. “I was born in Mexico.”

I’m used to startled looks from people when Callan—who is blond and blue-eyed as can be—states his birthplace and homeland. 

“Wow!” She said, “You’ve traveled more than I have in my whole life.”

“Travel.” I said to her with a smile.

“I was supposed to only be in Mexico for two months, but then I met my future husband and decided to stay. We got married, had this guy, started a business, and have had all kinds of adventures,” I said with a smile.

She stared, intrigued. 

“Travel.” I said again as I gathered our groceries and headed for the door. “You never know what could happen.”

Rachel Rickman is a freelance writer/writing consultant/English Professor/Creative nonfiction writer from Michigan's Upper Peninsula living in Rosarito, Mexico. Find more of her writing at www.jezebelstable.com