Casa Bolaños

I’ve dreamed about leaving the U.S. since at least 2012….

That’s the year I first started traveling and it’s funny how travel gives you a completely new perspective on the world. I, like many others, grew up with the notion that the U.S. was the center of the world. This big superpower that kept the world turning. Traveling showed me how wrong that assumption was.

Especially growing up in an immigrant household, the idea of the “American Dream” was pushed onto us from day one. After all, my mother left communist Cuba to the land of opportunity, we had to be grateful.

On Being the Black Sheep Who Wanted to Leave

My family has known my goal for leaving the States for as long as I’ve had it. My abuela would call me a communist for traveling so much and visiting Cuba after they left. Even my mother, who herself left and moved abroad to Tunisia where I was born could not understand my desire to leave.

“There’s nothing out there in the world for me,” she would say. I would respond, “but I’m not you.”

I’ve always had an expanded world view. Maybe it was growing up in Queens, New York aka “the world’s borough” where there are so many cultures coexisting. Part of it was I always grew up with the notion of ni de aqui, ni de alla, which translates to “neither from here, nor there.” I grew up up knowing I was born abroad and raised in a culture different to my homeland, in a country different to my two conflicting identities. I grew up knowing I was Arab-Latina, only being connected to my Latina side in a country with a long standing disdain for immigrants despite being a nation colonized founded by immigrants. Either way, I knew I was always going to leave.

Marriage and an Acceptance of Staying

When I met my husband, Patrick, we had an almost opposite upbringing. While I was born abroad and raised in the U.S., he was born in New York and raised in Colombia. He often said he felt he missed out on a life in the U.S. and didn’t see life anywhere else, so I stayed. Safe to say our relationship worked out and was worth it.

But then we had kids and moved to Florida, and it became less about us and more about them and their safety

So, What Changed?

I wish I could pinpoint it to one thing. Lack of gun control? Illegal detention of U.S. Citizens for looking Latino? Lack of accessibility within the States? Healthcare that prioritized profit over people? Increased racism, ignorance, and bigotry? Food that makes us sicker with hormones and preservatives? It was a combination of all of this and more. The pot was boiling and the water was overflowing.

We had kids, then they went to school in Florida, and then my husband knew what fear was. How could we trust a system that couldn’t guarantee our children’s safety? Why does the right to bear arms hold more weight than the lives of innocent children in school?

The older our kids got, the more my husband toyed with the idea of leaving one day. Then, the unthinkable happened. While I still can’t talk about all the specifics as we are still in legal proceedings, the school we trusted our kids to put their lives in danger and we still deal with the trauma. Especially my son, who was only three years old when the neglect happened. That was the moment we knew we were leaving. There was nothing this country could give us if it could not even guarantee our safety.

A lot of Planning, Second Guessing, and Making it Happen

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to be rich to move abroad. On the contrary, as the cost of living is often less in other countries. That’s not to minimize the fact that minimum wages are also often lower, but that you can still have a high quality of life without a necessarily high income. We are by no means rich, trust, our debts will tell you otherwise!

Instead, we sold everything we own. Everything we could. We did multiple estate sales listing almost everything for $1. We used Facebook Marketplace and donated to local charities anything we couldn’t offload. We sold our car, our bed, even our clothes. We packed everything in just 2 boxes and 4 suitcases.

Did we constantly question every decision? Yes. Were we 100% sure we were doing the right thing? Yes and no. The guilt of not having family support, of our kids growing up away from their grandparents was ever present. But we also knew this was the right decision for the safety and security of our family.

If you follow me on social media, you see I talk a lot about a company called Boundless Life. They’re a company that helps families live and experience other countries for 3 months. They provide education centers for the children, housing, co-working space, and most importantly, community. When trying to figure out our options, this company came across my Instagram and it was like an unanswered prayer. What a great way to start our move. Because the hardest thing about leaving is losing the sense of the village we worked hard to cultivate. We knew this was our ticket out, and I am currently writing this from our co-working hub in the beautiful coastal town of La Barra, Uruguay.

To say it was a blessing in disguise would be an understatement. Even if you aren’t looking for a permanent move, like us, Boundless is a great first step to experience life abroad with other like-minded families wanting to give their children the world without stopping their education. It’s so beautiful to see there are options to create the life you have always dreamed.

What Happens After Boundless?

The Boundless Life program is a 3 month cohort (though they do have 1 month getaways!), so we knew we were going into it with the need of a backup plan. There are many families who continue with back to back cohorts around the world. I do believe we will do another experience with them in the future. I’ve never seen my kids so happy to go to class and not want to leave!

As my husband and I are both dual citizens of different countries along with the U.S., we have a unique privilege to be able to move and set roots elsewhere. We want our kids to be raised within their culture, and overall a better quality of life. We plan to stay in South America but more importantly, we plan to never live in the U.S. again.

We want to show that there is a better life out there. That the United States is not the center of the world. The U.S. isn’t even first in healthcare, education, or safety (they’re 131!!!).

Do we know what tomorrow will bring? Absolutely not. But for once we aren’t stressing if our children will return home safely. We aren’t stressing that we could be illegally detained without due process, despite being citizens, just for speaking Spanish. We aren’t feeling heavy or bloated after eating. We don’t fear getting necessary medical care because we can actually afford it.

Ready to join us, or have questions about the process? Reach out in the comments or as always, my DM’s are always open. Follow our journey on Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube as we are as transparent as possible about our life abroad.