Erica and her husband Travis made the decision to leave DC for Merida in February 2025. They'd been married almost twenty years by then, raising two teenagers, and both of them were carrying a weight that had been building for a long time.

Erica is honest about what that weight actually was. As a politically conscious Black American watching the direction the country was heading, she says there's always a sense that something can go left. Travis felt it too, working inside the federal government and absorbing the stress of a system he could feel shifting under him. Neither one talked the other into it. They both just knew it was time.

Getting their kids on board looked different for each of them. Their daughter was immediate, ready within the conversation itself. Their son needed three days to process it before he came back and said something that stuck with Erica: he was angry at the country, not at his parents, and he realized he'd been focused on what he'd be losing instead of what he'd be gaining.

What changed once they landed is the part that gets her emotional. About two months in, she watched her son walk out the door alone for a morning walk, no plan, no destination, just confidence. She says it was the first time as a mother she felt safe letting him do that. She talks about racism as a distraction, borrowing from Toni Morrison, a distraction from your life, your work, your dreams, and what it means to raise kids who don't have to carry that same weight.

Erica brings her own background as a community healer and spiritual life coach into this chapter of her life, work she's been doing since 2014 around emotional healing and liberation. What would it take for you to finally put that weight down?

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