‘I always felt like I didn’t have enough’: Why this American woman moved from California to Mexico 20 years ago

By Tamara Hardingham-Gill, CNN

(CNN) — As a single mother of three “living paycheck to paycheck” in California, Janet Blaser had become resigned to constantly worrying about paying her bills and always “feeling less than.”

However, she began reevaluating her life after a series of events led her to take a “random vacation” to Mazatlán, Mexico in April 2005.

“I really wanted an adventure,” Janet tells CNN Travel.

Less than a year later, she relocated from Santa Cruz, California, to the vibrant city, situated along Mexico’s west coast.

“It’s home now,” she adds.

‘I felt invisible’

So what led Janet, originally from Long Island, New York, to pack up her life and move hundreds of miles away?

“My mom was ill and dying,” she says. “And she really, really encouraged me to follow my dreams.”

Janet goes on to explain that her mother was “full of regrets” about “things she hadn’t done” as she neared the end of her life, and this “stuck” in her head.

Around the same time, Janet, who had worked as a reporter for years, was at a crossroads professionally and felt as though she needed to “think outside the box.”

“I was 50,” she says. “So I wasn’t the candidate that people wanted.”

Her children were all grown up by this point, and she was frustrated that she didn’t own her own home after living in California for half of her life, and felt as though she’d never be able to achieve this.

“The prices were unbelievable,” she adds, admitting that she “kind of felt invisible, or a little useless.”

Keen for a change of scenery, Janet decided to travel to Mazatlán, a city she’d never visited previously, after reading about it online.

“I was in California, where there were so many Mexican Americans,” she says, explaining that she’d visited the country once previously, but had mainly vacationed in the Caribbean over the years.

“And I thought, ‘Let me go to Mexico and see what it’s like.’ So I got to Mazatlán, and it sounds so corny, but it just touched my heart.”

Janet goes on to explain that after spending several days of sunbathing, she took a walk to the Centro Historico and “fell head over heels in love” with the area.

“Even now, I’m embarrassed to say that, because it seems so dorky,” she adds, explaining that “felt like home” while walking through the town’s cobblestone streets and taking in its old buildings.

“But I think when you’re in the right place, you feel it. You sense it.”

Although she’d never considered moving to Mexico before then, after 10 days in Mazatlán, Janet decided that it was exactly where she needed to be.

Big move

“I still needed to work,” Janet points out. “And had the idea of publishing a magazine in English for the many Americans and Canadians living in and visiting Mazatlán…

“So that was my big aha moment.”

Once she’d returned to Santa Cruz, Janet started “fanatically” researching Mazatlán to determine whether it would be possible for her to move to the city and run a business there.

Six months later, she returned for a month to get a real feel for the place before making a final decision.

“I wanted to see, could I actually live here and be comfortable,” she explains. “I think that especially when you’re in another country, where there’s so many things that are different and unknown.

“To have kind of these little creature comforts to settle you is important. At least it is for me.”

After determining that “everything seemed to be workable,” Janet returned to the US and set about the process of winding down her life there.

“All my kids were really supportive,” she adds.

In January 2006, Janet set off on a four-day road trip to Mazatlán, packing her belongings into her “little car,” and leaving behind everything she knew.

However, she admits that she quickly began to question her decision.

“I was caught up in the excitement of it,” Janet explains. “And then once I started driving, I probably cried the whole four days.

“I cried and cried and cried. I was like, ‘What am I doing?’ And I kept calling them. And they’d be like, ‘No, this is your dream. Go do your dream.’”

Although she admits that she considered turning back at one point and struggled to read the Spanish road signs, Janet kept going.

By the time she arrived in Mazatlán, everything “felt familiar.” She moved into a rented property and set about integrating herself into the local community.

“It was really easy to meet people,” she says. “So I felt really welcomed and like I could do this.”

Janet, who had previously taken Spanish classes at a local high school, instantly took to life in Mazatlán, loving how friendly the people were and the fact that there was a “close community of foreigners.”

“I was just so excited about being here,” she says. “I had a little bit of savings. I had work online, and it was an adventure.”

She loved the tropical climate, along with the “live-and-let-live mindset” and found that she was continuously “buoyed” by the excitement of her new adventure.

“Even if I’d get depressed or sad, I missed my kids, and couldn’t call anybody,” she says.

“Then I go out the door and it’s mango season. And they’re literally falling on the sidewalk from a giant tree… I started surfing. There were just so many opportunities to have fun.

“I didn’t have those in the States. I don’t know why.”

Settling in

The lower living costs also helped immensely — Janet says that her rent was usually under $250 a month in her first few years in the country, while her cell phone and utility bills were also considerably less than she’d been paying in the US.

“That made a huge difference, obviously, in my stress level,” she says. “I’ve never paid more than $35 a month for electricity, even with air conditioning running a lot during the summer.”

However, while her life was more abundant, Janet stresses that she struggled at times and often felt lonely.

“It was not all easy,” she concedes, noting that getting Wi-Fi connected at home wasn’t as simple as it is now, and her cell phone initially didn’t work in Mexico, so she was unable to communicate with her family regularly for a while.

Janet also discovered that her Spanish wasn’t as good as she’d previously thought, and not being able to speak the language confidently meant that it was harder for her to form strong bonds.

“You can’t joke with people, because you can’t speak the language enough to make a joke,” she says, adding that her Spanish has since improved enough for her to be able to crack jokes comfortably.

“I find that’s often a way to kind of break the ice and feel comfortable, to be kind of funny.”

Although Janet loved the way of life in Mazatlán, she says that it took her “about two-three years” to feel really acclimated.

She initially found some of the cultural differences, such as the clothing styles, particularly for women, difficult to get used to.

“There’s full makeup and stiletto heels in the grocery store at eight in the morning,” she says, stressing that this might not be the case in the rest of the country. “And coming from hippie Santa Cruz, that was really weird for me.”

Dating in Mexico also proved to be “a whole different thing” for her, as the relationship dynamics were not what she was used to.

“The relationships with their families, that was expected to be part of the relationship with the boyfriend,” she says. “So that was challenging to say the least.”

Janet says she’s learned to stop worrying about time so much and no longer panics if she’s running late, as “it’s just not a big deal” there.

“The joke is, ‘mañana’ doesn’t mean tomorrow. It’s just a suggestion,” she says.

Within two years of arriving, Janet had published the first issue of her magazine, aimed at foreigners living in the area, and went on to found the city’s first organic farmer’s market.

Perhaps most importantly, she felt much happier and more valued.

“I don’t want to say I’ve been depressed in Santa Cruz,” she says. “But I’ve been stressed about having work and being able to pay the bills.

“And what was I going to do? And I was 50. And I didn’t have those worries down here.”

Janet was able to attain a permanent resident visa, known as an FM 3 at the time, relatively easily.

“The process and requirements have changed significantly since I got mine 19 years ago,” she notes. “Now the financial requirements are much, much higher than they used to be.”

Reflecting on her final years in California, Janet says that she had felt a lot of pressure due to “the consumerism that’s so much a part of American culture” and worried about things like not having a new car.

“In the States, I always felt like I didn’t have enough and I wasn’t succeeding,” she says.

“And I feel like I succeeded here, I was able to succeed. I started the business. I started the farmers market, which is still going on, and I’ve given myself a wonderful life.”

Janet returns to the US to see her children and grandchildren regularly, but admits that she feels “nervous” there now.

Taking precautions

“My granddaughters have active shooter drills in their elementary school…” she says.

“I don’t even know what to say about that.”

The US State Department currently advises against traveling to six of Mexico’s 32 states, with crime and kidnapping listed as the cause for advisories for several.

While she’s certainly aware of the crime issues in the country, Janet says that she’s always felt safe there, and takes “normal precautions for a single woman living in a big state.”

“Do I worry about random violence? No, it just doesn’t happen here,” she says, adding that she feels that the issues on the “border towns” are “not indicative of the rest of the gigantic country that is Mexico.”

“People don’t want to have guns. And that’s a very different mindset than in the US…

“I don’t worry when I go to Walmart that somebody’s going to shoot me. I don’t worry when I go to a street festival that someone’s going to run a car through the people.

“I worry about that stuff when I’m in the US. And what do you do? I don’t know how people live there.”

However, Janet admits that she misses her family and would love to be able to spend more time in the US.

“In my perfect world, I would have a base in Mazatlán and be able to visit each of my three kids in the US for a month or so each year,” she adds, pointing out that she’s also keen to spend more time in Italy after a recent vacation to the European country.

“I don’t feel comfortable or at ease going back and forth to the US anymore,” she adds.

Janet, who supports herself mainly through her social security benefits, says that she’d advise anyone considering moving to Mexico, to make sure that they have “all their ducks in a row” before taking the plunge.

“We have this saying here that people often leave their brains at the border,” she says. “So don’t do that…

“Listen to your heart. As airy fairy as that sounds, Listen to your heart and you can create a life.”

She published her first book, “Why We Left: An Anthology of American Women Expats,” in 2019 and is currently working on a series about Americans living in other countries.

When questioned about the impact of the growing number of foreigners who’ve flocked to Mexico in recent years, Janet notes that real estate prices in the country have likely risen as a result.

“Whether we like it or not, we’re kind of glorified tourists, and our presence affects the local lifestyle in both positive and negative ways,” she says.

Janet sometimes wonders about where she would have likely ended up if she hadn’t taken that vacation to Mazatlán two decades ago, and says she has no idea.

“Where would I be? What would I be doing? I can’t even imagine,” she says. “I don’t even know. I mean, would I be living with my son and his wife in Santa Cruz?… Would I have found work I could do?”

Around four years ago, Janet decided to leave Mazatlán after becoming frustrated by the huge amount of development taking place in the city, moving to an inland mountain area in San Antonio Tlayacapan on the north shore of Lake Chapala, near Ajijic.

“Now there are 25 and 30 story condo towers with 300 condos just lined along the ocean,” she says. “And I watched that happening, and it broke my heart.”

However, less than a year later she realized that she’d made a mistake, and returned “home.”

“Each time, I followed my heart. What can I say?” she explains. “And when I moved, after six months, I was like, ‘What am I doing here? What was I thinking? Where is the ocean? Where are my friends?’”

Now happily back in Mazatlán, Janet currently lives in a studio apartment with a balcony, and an ocean view, paying around $550 a month in rent, including utilities.

“Nowhere is perfect, but Mazatlán has this heart,” she says. “They call it the ‘Corazón’ (Spanish for ‘heart.’)

“And there is a warmth and a sense of community here. That is what originally attracted me to it… There’s a heart here and that is still beating, even in the midst of all this development.

“There’s still these really nice people. There’s still family-owned restaurants and businesses.

“So I just figure I need to focus on that part of it and try not to look up at those big condos. And if I could afford to, I would buy one too.”

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