A while ago I made a video titled: Why Living in Mexico Won’t Work for MOST Americans. Sorry to leave you Canadians out, I don’t know you well enough to talk about you. But, I’ve been an American all my life and now that I’ve been living in Mexico for two years, I feel I can tell you that living in Mexico IS working for some of us. And I want to tell you why I stayed.

I live in Michoacán. If you know anything about Mexico, you know what that means. 

It’s on the State Department’s do-not-travel list. Not as a precaution, but as a warning. This is a state with a genuine and well-documented history of organized crime and cartel activity. Not rumor or exaggeration; actual history that the people who live here don’t pretend doesn’t exist. When I told people where I was moving, the reactions ranged from concern to disbelief.  

And I want to tell you that there were moments last year where I genuinely wondered if I’d made a mistake. Not about Mexico, but about this particular corner of it. I stayed anyway. And what happened next is what this video is about.

When I first came to Mexico two years ago I paid these warnings more heed. I was driving and exploring and I rushed through Sinaloa and Colima despite wanting to see those places. I had had a pretty easy time of driving in Mexico and I didn’t want to press my luck and run into any trouble. But by the time I got to central Mexico, and close to Michoacan, I was really interested in seeing Morelia and Patzcuaro, and I thought I’ll never be as close as I am now. So I decided to go for it and explore a little of Michoacan. This coincided with about the 6 month mark of our travels by car in Mexico and though it was very exciting and fun for me, it was also exhausting. Moving every week or two. And the dogs needed a break as well. So when I found a little longer term rental that I fell in love with, I decided we needed to stay for a period of months and take a rest from all the driving. 

And that’s when I fell in love with the mountains of MIchoacan. I had been in the high desert for months at that point, in the mountains of Jalisco and Guanajuato, and I missed trees! So when I got here I fell in love first with the geography. Beautiful mountains, sparkling lakes, and all the trees and green I had wanted. It wasn’t until later that I fell in love with the people and lifestyle here, but I’ll get to that. 

But there was the security question. I knew the history of Michoacan and the warnings and I took them seriously. 

But When it comes to Mexico and safety, American media gets this wrong much of the time. Mexico is a huge country with states and regions that vary in geography, culture and security. Mexico is big. Really big. And it is not one thing. Where I live is not Tijuana, and it’s not what it’s like at the border. The possible risks you face in Puerto Vallarta are different from Chiapas, and different from where I live. I think most people who’ve never been here don’t understand how different one part of this country is from another. The security conversation that applies to one region genuinely does not apply to the next one over.

Are there places in Mexico I wouldn’t live? Probably. Are there places in the United States I wouldn’t live? Also yes. Can you really compare the worst part of Philly to the rural areas of Montana? No. So saying Mexico is dangerous is like saying the U.S. is dangerous; context matters.

But Mexico’s murder and crime rate is real, and it’s higher than the United States. Roughly three to four times higher. I’m not going to pretend otherwise. But the thing the headlines don’t tell you is that security analysts estimate that around two-thirds of those homicides involve organized crime groups targeting each other. That’s a very different kind of risk than what most people picture when they imagine danger in Mexico. 

For all of 2025, Mexico’s national murder rate per 100,000 people was 17.5, the lowest since 2015, according to a presentation by the head of Mexico’s National Public ‍Security System.

While Mexico’s National Public Security System reports monthly homicide figures based ​on state prosecutors’ data, INEGI collects homicide death data from civil registries and forensic services. Its figures ‌are considered definitive but are published with a longer lag time.

It is not randomly distributed. It is not directed at residents going about their lives, or at foreigners puttering around a finca with two dogs. 

In two years, I have not heard of any mugging, home invasion, or robbery in my area. The people who have lived here far longer than I have seem to go about their lives without fear. 

When people ask me if I’m scared I think of the families walking home from a fiesta at midnight in the street. The little girls playing on skates in the plaza at night. Grandparents chatting on benches in the park at all hours. 

Back in the States, I can’t remember the last time I spent an evening sitting on a public bench just watching the world go by. Here, people do it every day. They occupy public space with a level of ease that tells you something that the statistics never can.

There’s a level of public life here that I rarely experienced back home, where most people move from house to car to store and back again without ever really sharing space with each other.

So, I pay attention and stay informed. I don’t pretend the risk is zero. But I also know that the kindness I encounter every single day, from neighbors, from strangers, from people who don’t share my language but find a way to connect anyway, that kindness is real, and it is constant. 

The biggest surprise wasn’t that I felt safe. It was that I felt welcome.

It’s a strange thing to hold both of those realities. But that’s the honest picture.

What I’ve told you so far is why I wasn’t afraid to stay. What I haven’t told you is why I wanted to.

The thing about Michoacán’s reputation is that the warning that keeps most people away is also part of what makes the people who come here so interesting.

Nobody ends up in a lesser-known corner of this country by accident. There isn’t a famous beach, and there’s no well-worn tourist trail. The people who settle here usually looked at all the options, did the research, read the warnings, and came anyway.

That self-selection matters.

The foreign residents I’ve met here are, almost without exception, independent, thoughtful people who made a deliberate and somewhat unconventional choice about how they wanted to live.

But what surprised me most wasn’t the people I met. It was what happened to me.

I didn’t move here looking for a social life. I’m a homebody by nature. Back in Oregon, I could go weeks without any meaningful social contact and tell myself that was perfectly fine.

In Oregon, the only people I regularly saw were at work. That was it. That was my entire social world.

And by the end, I was exhausted. Not physically exhausted. Soul exhausted.

After years of stress, responsibility, and carrying more than I should have, I had become withdrawn. I wasn’t easy to be around. I could feel people keeping their distance. I don’t blame them.

I told myself I was a private person, an introvert. I told myself I preferred it that way, and I believed it.

I didn’t know I was wrong until I got here.

For most of my adult life, I thought independence was one of my defining traits. I thought I needed very little from other people.

But somewhere along the way, I discovered that what I had called independence was, at least partly, just exhaustion.

And once that exhaustion began to lift, something unexpected happened.

I started making friends.

Not because I was trying to. Not because I suddenly became outgoing. It kind of snuck up on me, it just happened.

Something about being a foreigner in a new country brings people together. And here, both among the foreign residents and the Mexican locals I’ve met, people seem less guarded. More willing to stop and talk. More willing to include you and get to know you.

Now I find myself meeting friends for lunch, going to gatherings, spending time with people several times a week, and that never happened in Oregon.

And there’s something else I’ve noticed: When something happens here, something urgent or emergent, people don’t wait for help to arrive. They become the help.

If there’s a fire, neighbors show up with shovels, water, food, information, whatever they have. If a road is blocked, somebody already knows another route and communicates it on the message board. If a family is struggling or they lost their dog, word gets around and people step in.

Of course the authorities are part of the picture too. The bomberos/firefighters get called. The police get called when they’re needed. But what struck me was who gets called first.

Neighbors. Friends. The community WhatsApp group.

The person down the road who always seems to know what’s going on.

I realized that in an emergency, the people most likely to help me aren’t sitting in an office somewhere. They’re already here. I’ve come to realize that another form of safety is belonging to a community that notices when you’re in trouble.

And there is something really reassuring about that.

I didn’t know I was missing that until I had it.

When I lived in Oregon I walked my dogs through the neighborhood every day. Along the route there was a small plot of land: trees with shade, a bench with a throw pillow on it. The pillow said “enjoy the little things” It looked like a little park. Really cute.

It looked like an invitation to sit down. I never actually did while I was walking the dogs, and then I was glad I didn’t because a couple of weeks later bright orange “no trespassing” signs were everywhere. Alongside the cute pillow and the bench. I guess someone had stopped to sit on the bench, and got kicked out. I took a picture.

The bench was still there. The pillows were still there. But the message underneath had finally made itself clear: this isn’t for you. Stay out.

I walked past that bench for a long time and it kind of bothered me. How things are in the United States. Things are made to look good. Inviting, like community. But underneath, the reality is that there’s not much belonging or community, no real welcome. It’s all just for show.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago. A couple of friends and I went for a hike here in the Michoacán countryside, through fields, up into the hills, through forest trails. We were clearly walking across someone’s property and I asked about it.

My friends shrugged. It’s understood, they said. People can walk through. Just leave the gate the way you found it.

We hiked for ninety minutes. We passed a man herding cattle. He nodded and we said hello. Nobody questioned us, and there were no posted signs.

I’ve thought about that bench in Oregon a lot since then. The contrast. Not because one place is perfect and the other isn’t.

But because it made me realize how often we confuse the appearance of a thing with the thing itself. The appearance of community and of welcome. The appearance of connection.

I spent many years surrounded by symbols of those things that I didn’t notice how little of them I actually experienced.

The bench was just one example. Think about the suburbs, so much of the built environment looks like community: sidewalks, front porches, cute street names, neighborhood parks.The structures seem like the performance of neighborliness. But how many people actually know the names of the families three houses down? 

So often, the appearance of the good thing has replaced the good thing itself. And when I was inside it, I couldn’t see it. 

Mexico didn’t perform anything at me. It just was what it was. And slowly, without my realizing it, that stopped feeling strange and started feeling like relief. It became difficult to ignore the differences.

Like I said, I’m kind of a homebody. I don’t go out all the time and I’m not exactly immersed in Mexican society every day. And yet something Mexican got into me anyway.

It’s not just the slower pace, although that is part of it. It’s harder to describe than that.

Back in the States there was a tension in public life that I had stopped noticing because I’d lived inside it for so long. Like a low-grade edginess. An ambient aggression that’s just part of the background now, like traffic noise. You see people angry in their cars. Interactions that feel so transactional, or guarded. It feels like it’s one wrong word away from tipping into upset.

I didn’t notice it when I was living there. But I noticed it when it was gone.

Here that edge is mostly absent. People are genuinely polite, not in a hurry. And it’s not a performance, like the fake customer service smile that feels so dishonest. Just… actually nice to talk with. People are slow to anger or annoyance. More Present.

When people sit together, they’re actually together. When they talk to you they are not looking at their phones.

And after a while, something in me responded to that.

I noticed it the way you notice when an irritating sound has stopped. Not when it begins, but when it’s gone.

The tension I’d been carrying for years simply began to ease.

I live a very small life. I putter in the garden, play with the dogs, read and write. I meet friends for lunch or dinner. And by any measure it’s a quiet life. And it turns out that’s exactly what I needed.

For years I thought I was a loner. Now I’m not so sure. Maybe I wasn’t as solitary as I thought. Maybe I was just in an environment that made genuine connection harder than it needed to be.

One of the most surprising things I’ve learned here is that we don’t become ourselves in isolation.

The culture around us matters, and the people matter. The way a place feels matters. And Mexican culture matters.

I understand more now how our environments shape inner life. I underestimated how much a culture of slowness, community, and human interaction would affect my own sense of wellbeing.

Sometimes changing your location changes more than just your address.

I don’t know where I’ll be ten years from now. But I do know that this life changed my understanding of what human beings need. And maybe more importantly, what a human, like me, needs to thrive.

In the last year of nursing, I was losing my hair. I broke three teeth from grinding them night and day. I was sick all the time. Strange infections. One thing after another.

That’s what chronic stress does to a body. That’s a nervous system that has forgotten how to rest.

About a week after I drove away from Oregon, I was standing on a beach near San Carlos. The dogs were running through the surf for the first time, chasing gulls. I looked out at the water, looked up at the open sky, and I just started crying.

Not from sadness. From relief, and from something releasing. Something I’d been carrying for so long that I didn’t know I was carrying it.

At the time, I thought I was reacting to leaving nursing behind. Now I think it was bigger than that.

I wasn’t just leaving something, I was entering into something. The slower pace. The absence of that constant edge. The people who are actually present when they talk to you. The neighbors who show up.

The communities that exist not because someone organized them, but because that’s just  how people live here.

None of that seemed important when I first arrived, but now I think it mattered more than I understood.

For a nervous system that had spent decades bracing against life, it wasn’t just pleasant. It was healing.

I came to Mexico because I wanted a different life. What I didn’t realize was that a different life would slowly create a different version of me.

And maybe that’s the real answer to why I stayed.

Not because Mexico is perfect and not because Michoacán is free of problems.

But because somewhere along the way, I became healthier here. Calmer, more connected here.

More myself here.

And once I experienced that, leaving stopped feeling like the obvious choice.