A Lesson in Resiliency: My Experience as an Au Pair in Medellin [Guest Post]
The following article is a guest post by a person who wishes to remain anonymous. She shares her experiences working up the courage the leave her home town to au pair in Colombia….and how travel unexpectedly helped her mental health.
Arriving in Medellin is a welcome unlike any other. Expressing extreme hospitality and generosity is customary in many Latin American countries, and, in fact not, is a ploy for tourists to fall into; most locals are genuine in their interest of people from other countries and ability to assist newcomers in their home. In Colombia, the sentiment is a little different.
From my understanding, Colombian hospitality is rooted in more than the economic impact of the tourism industry. With the decline of the Narco wars only twenty years strong, Colombia has a very dark modern history. Most residents of Colombia have lived through the intense transformation of their country and have vivid memories of life in a constant civil war zone. Medellin was the central hub of Narco traffic for many years, thus aptly name the most dangerous city on Earth not more than thirty years ago.
Known as the “city of eternal spring,” Medellin is internationally recognized for its innovation and transformation with advanced urban infrastructure and a quickly growing economy.
It is not difficult to comprehend why, after decades of violence, optimism is now bleeding though the streets of Medellin’s 16 comunas.
Colombia’s social history is as rich as the country’s ecology. Colombia is a nation of dense biodiversity ranging across varying landscapes; picture groundbreaking urban areas surrounded by lush mountainous regions bordered by the Pacific Ocean, Caribbean Sea, and the Amazon Rainforest. Aside from drugs, guns, and corruption, Colombia is home to Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s birthplace of magical realism, Fernando Botero’s voluminous sculptures and paintings, and (of course) Shakira’s musical enlightenment. Colombia is green, lush, talented, and passionate. After a dark period of fear and danger, Colombia has regained interest from the global community separate from social issues.
I was drawn to Medellin for its evolution and transformation. I had heard from other travelers that Antioquia (the department where Medellin is located) has the nicest people (paisas, as they proudly refer to themselves), modern cities, beautiful historic pueblos, and unrivaled natural spaces. Medellin presented itself as a land of opportunity, of regrowth, of compassion, of dedication. A place that has been stigmatized for a bad situation they did not ask for and can celebrate the success of its demise. Like any nation, Colombia still faces social/political/economic implications of its past, however unlike many nations, Colombia has turned their pitfalls into assets by investing in the people and infrastructure to establish a pathway to sustainable development and growth.
I cannot speak for the people Colombia nor Medellin, but only for my experience in Medellin and what I have learned from those who remember the dark days of their city and have seen the evolution. If cities were to be personified, I identified with the manic-depressive weather behavior of my hometown, Chicago, but longed to be like the optimistic soul of Medellin. So, I packed my 40-liter backpack, booked a flight, and moved into a 600 square foot apartment with my new paisa family: mom, dad, 9 year old son, and 1.5 year old daughter.
It took five years of living in the comfort of my own city to feel like I was missing out on the world. Before taking my first ‘solo’ trip, I was anxious walking into a drugstore by myself to purchase dish soap. I was living in fear of the world without ever actually living in a world full of fear, where a bomb could be disguised in a parked car or where the government could declare war against their own people at any moment.
I experienced intense surges of excitement while researching destinations and reading travel blogs before profusely sweating and shaking at the thought of boarding a plane without a return ticket. It took years of funneling my anxiety (not an exaggeration—I decided I wanted to backpack in 2014 and left for said trip in 2019) of planning trips, canceling trips, applying to study abroad, canceling applications, before I left the country. I was Chicago (manic, then depressed, but always anxious) desperate to be Medellin (stable, content, resilient, growing stronger than the day before).
So how did I, a 24-year-old girl afraid of leaving the three block radius of my apartment to run an errand, find myself living with complete strangers as an Au Pair in Medellin, which was not too long ago considered the most dangerous city in the world?
The honest answer is I have absolutely no idea, but regardless of how I convinced myself to take that leap, Medellin taught me much more about my mental health than I ever thought possible.
It was not a cookie cutter experience, nor an intense spiritual awakening. I did not deboard the plane with a new genetic makeup gifting me an ideal serotonin/endorphin balance. I did not wake up every day with the energy and drive that I longed to have.
Each day was still a struggle, initially with higher anxiety levels and more panic attacks than I experienced in Chicago; but I do believe this was part of my healing process.
Cultural immersion has been a powerful tool in fighting my mental illnesses. While I was still struggling to get out of bed in the morning, doing so somehow seemed more achievable. There were new experiences to have every day, new skills at my fingertips to be practiced.
New streets to walk.
New foods to try.
New museums to visit.
New friends to make.
Though still as present as ever, my fears of the world were manageable and my anxieties at home were miniscule. I was unwell in my familiarity, yet thriving in an unfamiliar environment, speaking a language I was not yet entirely comfortable with to people I had no relationship with. I was skeptical that this extreme form of exposure therapy simply put my depression in perspective, forcing me into survival mode and realizing the unhappiness I had was laughable compared to the city’s history. This may very well be the case; however, it is wrong to assume that traveling ‘changed my life’ or ‘healed my mental illness’ to the point that the issues I struggled with were magically cured, vanished from me completely.
Though I only experienced modern-day Medellin, hearing firsthand stories of the horror that once dominated the very neighborhood I was living in taught me about resiliency. The dark history of Colombia hasn’t been swept under the rug; many people still struggle with the implications of Narco traffic today and the violence definitely has not completely ceased in parts of the country.
The optimism felt in the Paisa culture is not blind; very real struggles had to occur for the transformation to happen. Locals who lived through this transformation do not ignore the past but leverage it as platform for innovation and as a seed to grow.
It is hard to imagine Medellin as a war zone because of how quickly they were able to redevelop, to strengthen, to redefine. My whole life was spent thinking I was the shortfalls of my illness. That growth was not possible because of the mistakes I had made and the history of challenges I had failed to overcome. Not only is this mindset not true, but it is not the point.
Identity is only formed by the ones who claim it; Colombia could easily have never recovered and remained a stereotype for drug violence. Reforming identity is a choice. Strengthening the character of a city, or a person, requires an effort of resiliency to not let the unlikable parts become the whole. That is all they are—parts.
The point isn’t to shape our identity on our pitfalls. The point isn’t even to change our identities to overcome these pitfalls in our histories. The point of this piece is to emphasize that resiliency takes time, and forming a resilient identity requires using difficult periods of time as a pedestal for change as exhibited excellently by the paisas of Medellin.
Do you have any experiences with mental health and travel? We’d love to hear about them!