A Shattered Threshold: Living Between Two Cultures After Nine Years in Mexico

Featured image caption: World Cup with Tatiana, Alejandro, and Leo (July 5th, 2026): In the final seconds of Mexico’s World Cup run, I felt the ache, pride, and belonging of a country hoping together.

There are moments in life that do not arrive quietly. Some thresholds open like a door. Others break open like shattered glass. This past week, I have felt both.

The Night Mexico Lost, and I Felt Belonging

Last night, I was invited to watch the World Cup game between Mexico and England with Tatiana, Leo, and Leo’s dad. Before the game, we had already made the joke clear: I was not just a gringo watching fútbol in Mexico. I was, somehow, a muy “Mexicano Gringo Loco Local.” And honestly, that feels more accurate now.

The game itself was intense. Especially those final minutes. Ufff. My whole body was in it. I was not thinking about work. I was not worrying about money. I was not replaying the past or trying to strategize the future. I was just there—present, laughing, shouting, eating hot wings that absolutely put this gringo in tears, and maybe most important, feeling the collective heat of a country gathered around a shared hope.

There was joy in it. There was pride in it. There was fire. And then, at the end, there was heartbreak.

Mexico lost. The World Cup dream ended. You could feel it in the room, and beyond the room. Not just disappointment, but collective ache. A national exhale. A shared grief. And strangely, beautifully, even that grief felt like belonging. It reminded me of something I experienced during my first trip to Mexico nine years ago.

The First Time I Felt Mexico’s Collective Heart

Just after I arrived in Mexico, my ex took me to a concert in Cancún. I believe it was Alejandro Fernández. It was shortly after the 2017 earthquake in Mexico City. At one point during the concert, Alejandro asked for a moment of silence for those who had lost their lives.

I remember turning around and looking at the people behind us in the stadium. To this day, I get goosebumps when I think about what I saw and felt.

It was not only silence. It was a unified national grief. A collective consciousness of mourning and respect. The people around me seemed to hold the loss as if those who had died could have been their own brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, children, neighbors. It was devastating. And somehow… it warmed my heart.

Outside of 9/11, I cannot remember ever feeling something quite like that in the culture I come from. That does not mean shared grief, kindness, pride, or generosity do not exist in the United States. Of course they do. I know they do. I have felt them there too. But Mexico has shown me a different emotional texture.

There is a warmth here. A helping nature. A giving nature. A sense that people belong to one another in ways that are sometimes difficult for me to explain, but impossible for me not to feel.

Someone said to me recently that people from the United States do not quite have the same warmth that exists here in Mexico. I would say it more gently than that, because I know good people from the United States. I know kindness exists there. But I also understand what they meant. It’s just… different here. And after nine years in Mexico… so am I.

Starting Over at 50 in a New Country

July 2nd marked my ninth anniversary of coming to Mexico. July 4th marked the 250th birthday of the United States, my country of origin. July 11th will be my 50th birthday. Nine years in Mexico. Two hundred and fifty years of the United States. Fifty years of my own life.

And, in the middle of all of that, only two weeks before my birthday, I lost the stable client work I had been relying on for economic stability. That is the shattered part of the threshold.

In practical terms, I understand why it happened. The funding that supported the work changed. A launch was delayed. A donor no longer wanted to continue funding if the project timeline shifted. I do not need to name the client or explain the private details. That is not the point of this reflection. The point is what it felt like.

It felt like being sideswiped. Like a car crash. Like one of those moments where life turns without warning and suddenly the road you thought you were on is no longer there.

Did I handle myself perfectly? No. Did I lose my shit? Hell yeah! Did I say things in text that I regret? Also yes.

Maybe I burned a bridge. Maybe I was right. Maybe they were right. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe they were wrong. Maybe the truth is less clean than any of that. Maybe everyone was human inside a moment that had too much pressure on it. What I know now is that it happened. And… it is already in the past.

A Mexicana Mama, an Artist, and the Mirror I Needed

One of the things my friend Danae has reminded me is that there is no turning back. We cannot change the past. We can only reflect on it, learn the lesson, and move forward.

Danae is someone I met in Playa del Carmen before the pandemic. Over time, she became family to me. I call her my Mexicana Mama, because that is what she is in my life: not by blood, but by resonance, by presence, by the kind of love that does not need a formal category to be real.

Recently, we reconnected. She now lives in Tequisquiapan. Over the last few weeks, I have learned that she is painting, preparing for an exhibition in August, becoming more fully herself as an artist. She is a former filmmaker, a mother, and someone who has moved through her own fires. The details of her story are not mine to tell, but what I can say is this: watching her become who she is becoming has reflected something back to me.

We have talked, as we often do, about the idea that “everything happens for a reason.”

That phrase can sound too simple from the outside. I know that. It can sound like a way of bypassing pain. But between us, it does not mean pain is not real. It does not mean loss is not real. It means that sometimes the thing that breaks the plan also reveals the path. And this is where the timing becomes impossible for me to ignore.

Carrying Mila Into the Freedom I Never Asked For

Since Mila passed away on November 25, 2025, my life has been changing in ways I could not have planned. For years, Playa del Carmen was home in part because it was the easiest place to care for Mila.

When she was diagnosed with cancer, and then when she died, something in my world ended. Not only because I lost her, though that loss is still enormous. But because the life that had been organized around caring for her also changed.

After she passed, I stayed in Playa until my lease ended. Then I came to Cuernavaca. I stayed in an Airbnb for April and May, and then moved into Tatiana’s house month-to-month. Her dad had said, last month, I was her angel. This month, she is mine.

Now I am here, in Cuernavaca, moving through July, preparing to spend my 50th birthday with my host family. And in August, I am planning to continue toward Tequisquiapan, near Querétaro, where Danae lives.

I do not know exactly what city or state will hold the next long chapter of my life. But I do feel, more and more, that I will probably live out my days here in Mexico.

Does that mean I no longer love my country of origin? Of course not.

Loving the United States From the Outside Looking In

I do love the United States. And I grieve what I see happening there. I watch from the outside now, as a spectator looking in. And yes, it hurts. There is a strange ache in loving a place that formed you while also recognizing that you no longer belong to it in the same way. And maybe, just maybe, that is part of why I created Aurelda.

The other day, I wrote about righteous dissent. But maybe Aurelda is not only dissent. Maybe Aurelda is also what came after dissent failed to be enough. Ironically, Aurelda has also become my refusal to stop imagining belonging, a refusal to accept fracture as the final truth.

It is my attempt to create a world where remembrance is possible, where grief is held communally, where identity is not flattened, where the wounded do not have to prove they deserve love, where queer and sensitive seekers can feel the deep exhale of coming home. And I see now that Aurelda could not have come from only one side of my life. It carries:

• the ache of the United States,
• the warmth of Mexico,
• and, the grief of losing Mila.

It also carries the freedom that opened after her passing, even though I would never have chosen that freedom at the cost of her physical presence.

It carries Monterey, Cancun, Playa del Carmen, the Riviera Maya, San Cristóbal de las Casas, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico City, Morelia, Merida, Tampico, Cuernavaca, Tequisquiapan, and all the other place I’ve already explored here in Mexico.

It also carries the ceiba, cacao ceremonies, sound healing meditation, yoga classes, rooftop breathwork circles, cross country flights and long bus rides, the unfinished Spanish lessons, the laughter, the loneliness, the chosen family, the fútbol games, the moments of silence, the hot wings, the heartbreak, and even men I met here in Mexico through Grindr.

Even moment like last night, when I said “¡Ay, papi, qué guapo!” when Tatiana correctly guessed that yes, of course, I thought Raúl Jiménez was beautiful.

It carries all of it. And, that is why “Mexicano Gringo Loco Local” makes me laugh, but it also feels true.

I am not pretending to be something I am not. I am not erasing where I came from. I am not claiming Mexican identity as if culture can be adopted like a costume. But after nine years, I also cannot pretend I am only from here or there anymore. I live between worlds. Now… I am both.

A friend once told me, “You’re Mexican now. You can pick and choose which parts of the culture you identify with.” I am still figuring out what that means.

I am still not fully fluent in Spanish. I still make mistakes. I listen more than I speak sometimes because I want to understand not just the words, but the feeling beneath them. I still have moments where I feel like an outsider looking in.

But then there are other moments (a family table, a birthday plan, a World Cup match, a friend calling me home, a stadium falling silent after an earthquake), when I realize that belonging is not always granted all at once.

Sometimes it arrives día a día, poco a poco. Day by day. Little by little.

Story as Medicine: What Shatters Can Still Catch the Light

Another thread arrived this week too. A former client and friend wrote to me after reading one of my recent articles. He offered condolences for Mila, and he recognized something in Aurelda that mattered to me. He did not describe it as just a book series or a website project. He saw it as a calling. He saw that I had tapped into a world and that I was living inside it.

That mattered. Because sometimes when you are building something from the inside, it is hard to know whether anyone else can feel it. His message felt like a witness from another chapter of my life. Someone from the professional world, from the web and client-work world, looking at what I am becoming and saying, yes, I see this.

At the same time, Danae has been reminding me of something equally direct. I have spent years giving my creative direction, digital strategy, design skill, storytelling, and tender loving care to other people’s missions. In the last few years, I have worked with two nonprofits while here in Mexico whose missions I believed in deeply. It was an honor to support them. I do not regret that. I brought my heart to that work.

But now, after losing the second of those stabilizing client relationships, I have to ask myself a harder questions:

• What if it is time to give that same care to my own baby?
• What if it is time to give that devotion to Aurelda?

Not someday. Not after everything else is perfectly stable. Now.

That does not mean money no longer matters. It does. I am applying for grants, emergency writer support, artist relief, and creative funding because the practical reality is real. I need stability. I need runway. I need support.

The energy has shifted, it has to. What other choice do I have? Giving up is not an option I am ready to take. But don’t think the idea hadn’t crossed my mind a few times, it had. Instead of immediately trying to replace the lost client work with more client work, I am choosing to move forward in a way that feels deeply connected to my creative process.

Over the last six months, I have been refining the Aurelda Chronicles trilogy, preparing the third edition, working through the English canon and cultural resonance, translating and refining the Spanish version, repairing website and SEO issues, preparing book pages, thinking through trailers, AI-assisted video, audio, YouTube, podcast, and the larger ecosystem Aurelda is becoming.

Book 1 is ready. Book 2 is essentially final. Book 3 is near-final. The website has been updated and repaired. The vision is no longer abstract. Aurelda is not waiting for me to begin. It is asking me to choose it. And maybe that is what this shattered threshold is really about.

Something broke, yes. Something ended. Something I depended on is no longer there. But something else is becoming visible:

• Maybe the bridge had to break so I would stop standing in the middle of it.
• Maybe the economic side-swipe forced me to see that I had once again been pouring my best energy into someone else’s launch while my own work waited for the same level of protection, polish, strategy, and devotion.
• Maybe turning fifty is not only about aging.
• Maybe it is about finally recognizing the shape of the life that has been trying to form through me.

Finding Belonging in Another Country, Día a Día

I am not writing this because I have all the answers. I do not. I am writing this because I want to tell the truth from inside the threshold.

I am grieving. I am grateful. I am scared. I am proud. I am still learning. I am still becoming. I am still between countries, between identities, between what ended and what is beginning.

I am still carrying Mila. I am still loving the country that made me, even as I grieve it from afar.

I am still being changed by Mexico. I am still learning how to belong.

And I am beginning to understand that Aurelda is not separate from any of this. Aurelda is the story that emerged because I lived this. Because I:

• left;
• lost;
• remembered;
• crossed borders, literal and inner;
• found family in unexpected places;
• watched a country mourn after an earthquake;
• watched that country celebrate and grieve through fútbol;
• And, I have stood between worlds long enough to know that fracture is real.

And so is resonance. Maybe this is story as medicine. Not because story fixes everything. But because story helps us hold what would otherwise remain scattered.

It gives shape to grief. It gives language to becoming. It reminds us that even when a threshold shatters, the pieces may still catch the light.

And so I keep walking. Día a día. Poco a poco. Between two worlds. And yet, somehow, more myself every day.

The Story Is Available Now

If you are discovering Aurelda for the first time, The Prophecy of Resonance is a mythic story about sacred power, memory, love, fracture, and the courage to protect what must never become a weapon.

It is also, in its own way, a story about righteous dissent. The kind that begins before the world sees it. The kind that begins in the body. The kind that begins when someone who is afraid still says: I will not betray what heals.

The Aurelda Chronicles, Book 1: The Prophecy of Resonance is available now as an audiobook in the ElevenReader App.

Listen for the prophecy. Listen for the fracture. Listen for the part of you that still remembers.

Outside Aurelda: Works Cited

• “Round of 16 Mexico v. England 2-3 (1-2) #92 | 5 July 2026 | MEXICO CITY / Mexico City Stadium / MEX – Match Report.” FIFA. July 6, 2026.
• “Ten-man England hang on to beat battling Mexico 3-2 in last-16 thriller.” Reuters. July 6, 2026.
• “Mexico’s World Cup party ends in tears at the Azteca.” Reuters. July 6, 2026.
• “Mexico 2-3 England: FIFA World Cup 2026 last 16 – as it happened.” Al Jazeera. July 5, 2026.
• “Mexico’s World Cup run ends with 3-2 loss to England in round of 16 match after thunderstorm delay.” ABC7 / Associated Press. July 6, 2026.
• “Magnitude 7.1 Earthquake in Mexico.” U.S. Geological Survey. September 19, 2017.
• “Mexico earthquake, 2017 – Forensic analysis.” United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. September 17, 2024.
• “Alejandro Fernández en Cancún 2017 – Octubre 14 – Estadio Beto Avila.” Cancún Activo. August 31, 2017.
• “America250.” America250. n.d.; accessed July 6, 2026.
• “Celebrating America’s 250th Birthday.” The White House. January 29, 2025.
• “Gran Hotel de la Ciudad de México.” Mexico City Official Guide. n.d.; accessed July 6, 2026.
• “Zócalo: the heart of Mexico City.” KLM Travel Guide. n.d.; accessed July 6, 2026.