We have a favorite beach restaurant along the wide arc of sand that stretches from Playa Larga at the west end to Barra de Potosi at the eastern edge. 
Along Playa Blanca is the cabana "Chula Vida"...and this sweet life is how I like to think of my time here. I feel so blessed to be able to wake up in the morning and step outside into the warm morning air, listening to hummingbirds at my feeder as I read the paper. After a cup of coffee, I head up to yoga at Hotel Irma where the terrace provides the perfect venue for an ever changing yoga practice.
Along Playa Blanca is the cabana "Chula Vida"...and this sweet life is how I like to think of my time here. I feel so blessed to be able to wake up in the morning and step outside into the warm morning air, listening to hummingbirds at my feeder as I read the paper. After a cup of coffee, I head up to yoga at Hotel Irma where the terrace provides the perfect venue for an ever changing yoga practice. 
After a breakfast with Gene, our days can be spent visiting friends, travelling to nearby places, relaxing at our pool and shopping cooking meals of fresh local ingredients. The nights are spent outside with live music in the streets and the town coming to life when the air is cool enough to venture out and play ball sports, or simply sit at one of the local cafe's or lounge spots along the waterfront. We are no longer "tourists" and we do enjoy a standard of life here that is very nice. Although not extravagant with our spending, we rarely go without something we want or would like to do. Life is "sweet"...
But within a block of our home, the life of one of the women I spend a lot of my time with is not as simple. I have a project this year, that my friend Dawn and I have named "Sol Sisters", for on many levels, the concept of "sol"..sun, alma, soul is what drives life. And never having had a birth sister, I have yearned for sisterhood of friendships my entire life. I came to know a local woman named Lety via my friend Monica and her mother in law Isabel a couple of years ago. These woman all live in my community and are my friends. Lety is our seamstress "sol Sister" making our very popular and colorful Mexican oilcloth bags and barbeque covers and our hope is that by making our orders she will have an improved income and perhaps become self sufficient in the future. I have a secondary goal of using any profit that might be realized to fund local projects in our community. Women's projects as I see the lives of Mexican women to be difficult in many ways. This project has taken up a lot of my time in this first month of living here as I build a system and skills for communicating our pre-made orders to my Spanish speaking seamstress and track expenses, products and design new potential products that my friends here are asking for. Think yoga mat carriers, mens' beach bags and home IV nurse bags.
This week Lety shared her reality with me. Behind her ever present smile and willing work ethic, she is the sole breadwinner in her home. She is responsible for every bill payment, every meal purchase, every ounce of home maintenance and every positive social interaction she has. Her handsome, English speaking husband, although at one time employed as a tourguide, has fallen into a pattern of alcohol abuse and dysfunction that is straining her life to a near breaking point. Each day she is engaged in her work while he is either laying in his room or out drinking with his friends. He accuses her of inappropriate activity if she takes orders for sewing from male customers but is keen to ask her for money at every turn. She is safe in that she feels she can counter any potential for physical abuse by the strong police actions against male domestic violence. But there is little else she can do. Mexico is not an easy country for women to leave marriages in. She endures and tries not to complain and is hopeful that he will seek help at some time and begin healing from what she believes is a "medical problem"....
Is it any wonder that I recently learned that a beautiful young woman we know here has chosen a female life partner. I don't believe every Mexican man is as troubled as Lety's husband, but I do believe that there are many women here who have lives of drudgery and are treated as the possessions of their husbands. Bigamy and infedility are accepted here. Somehow the women who are all beautiful, slim, perfectly groomed teens become the overweight, prematurely aged women we see in the town squares and markets. The years spent at home raising children, providing all the work of raising a family have taken their toll on many.
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