What it's really like being LGBTQ and Black in Merida starts, for Misha, with a long road to get there. She calls herself "a Jersey girl with a Georgia soul," raised across several cities in New Jersey with seven siblings before relocating to Atlanta as a young adult. From there her path went further than most: two years in Qatar, two years in Nigeria, then a final year back in Atlanta to prepare for the move to Merida, Yucatan, Mexico, specifically. She is direct that both places shaped who she is, and neither cancels the other out.

In Qatar, Misha was raised Muslim, so the culture was not new to her, even though she carried her own complicated feelings about the religion going in. She says the experience was beautiful overall, the people and the culture included, but she and her partner at the time, who lived there with her, had to stay discreet in public because homosexuality is not accepted there in any form. In Nigeria, the issue was different. She describes a painful pattern of colorism among Nigerians she encountered, who would often ignore her in public in favor of the white expats she worked alongside, even following her into her own apartment building without the same scrutiny given to her. She never had a single visitor during her two years there, in part because of how difficult and bribery-heavy she found the airport experience to be.

She found Merida the way a lot of people her age do now, through TikTok. She had already decided Mexico was next after Nigeria, narrowed it down, and visited for her birthday in September 2022. A year later, in September 2023, she moved for good, after selling a rental arbitrage business with properties in three states and an ATM business she had only just started. Her reason was simple: she wanted a peaceful, affordable, safe life, and she was tired of just surviving. As she puts it, she did not want to just survive, she wanted to live, and Merida has given her exactly that.

Misha is also honest about what she would change. The heat and humidity caught her off guard, she says bluntly that it gets serious, and she has learned to plan her days around it. She also admits, somewhat to her own surprise, that she does not love the local food as much as she expected, though she keeps a running list of favorite restaurants for the dishes she does enjoy. Her family back home took time to adjust to the news too, the same way they had with every previous move, but now when they ask where she is, her answer is simple: home, and home means Mexico.

On community, Misha is candid that she has not yet connected with a dedicated queer community in Merida, and she wants to change that. She points out that lesbian and women-focused queer spaces tend to be inconsistent across the cities and countries she has lived in, compared to how vibrant gay spaces can be elsewhere, and she is thinking through what she could bring here, especially with Pride month season on the horizon. What she has found instead is genuine friendship through The Black Mérida Experience's community events, people she describes as real and like-minded, plus healthcare that she calls magnificent: a specialist for everything, direct access with no referrals required, and doctors who text, send voice notes, and video call her personally, all for a fraction of what she paid for care in the United States. If her story sounds like yours, what would it take for you to see Merida for yourself?

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