I Ran Away to Mexico: An Unexpected Spiritual Journey

After flying to Mexico to teach English to Mayan children in an effort to escape the pain of losing my husband—after being challenged by an old Mexican man to lay down my agenda and just live with the locals—I finally let go of fear and grief and lost myself in a culture not my own.

I spent the next five years living all through Mexico and Central America. For a time, I even lived without electricity and without running water. I rented a house in a poverty-stricken community so I could see what living in poverty was like from the inside. My life became an experiment.

But the results of my experiment were more than I bargained for.

I unexpectedly found a spiritual thickness hovering over Latin America. From Mayan pyramids and cavernous entrances to the underworld, to shape-shifting beings and places where time and space bend, I found the remote rain forests and islands are rife with other-worldliness.

As my journey took me deeper into the bowels of a land wracked with poverty and human suffering, I became increasingly aware of how the struggle for survival on this narrow isthmus is not won in this realm, but in the one beyond.