I have always been curious about people and their stories, and nerdy with languages. I taught myself English by writing down Michael Jackson’s songs from the Bad album, while listening to them over and over again on my Walkman. Formally, I am educated in business and languages – specialized in Latin America.
The most challenging and joyful professional experience I have had yet, were my two years as an expatriated advisor for a Danish NGO in the country of the eternal spring, Guatemala; working with education and indigenous peoples – and young women’s rights in particular.
I have worked in the cross-field of communications and international development almost all my career, with a few detours to being a public servant in Denmark.
What I do best though, is make people shine and collaborate. And then I love writing.
This summer I quit my job, after a project took the better of me, and I decided that from now on, I want my work life to be driven more by joy and less by a steady paycheck. I want to to have more time, and this blog is part of that change, I want to see in my life.
I grew up between Mexico and Denmark, because my parents divorced, when I was three. Leaving me since then, to figure out and interpret the cultural codes, norms and behavior of two cultures very different from one another: The small social democratic kingdom of Denmark, and the former majestic Aztec empire, Mexico, with a history of nearly 500 years of foreign occupancy. Two contrasting models of living, approaches to life, family, society, gender, class and community.
Going back and forth across the Atlantic for 35 years to attend kindergarten, primary school, summer holidays, weddings of loved ones, university and making art, I feel I am in a unique position to give voice to a Danish Mexican heritage. Conveying contemporary glimpses of those idiosyncrasies intrinsic to the Scandinavian individualistic designed form of orderly life and the contrast full mayhem and violent magic that Mexico is to me, where reality often surpasses fiction.
Today, I feel privileged. While growing up I always felt different, and never quite Danish nor Mexican enough. Never one single place to call home. Instead, I have been given the whole world as a playground, to try to come to terms with who I am, and what I am to others. That is a challenge. That is why I write and travel. To understand better, what it means to live in the world.
I have lived, studied and worked in Denmark, Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Guatemala. And traveled to many places in Europe and USA. Everywhere I go, people always ask me one particular question: So do you feel mostly Danish or Mexican?
As a Danish Mexican, I always reply.
