England, my country of birth, childhood, and youth, shaped me. Mexico, the country where I lived thirty eight years imbued me with its culture and lore. The U.S., the country where I currently reside, changed me and led me into a challenging new life.

My parents, a British naval commander in his forties and my mother, an American-Mexican socialite in her mid-twenties, met at a cocktail party in New York City during WWII. Despite age and cultural differences, this unlikely pair was married three weeks later. I was born on the English south coast during a bombing raid. My seaside village, was a perfect place for an imaginative, adventurous child, but after ten years in post-war England, my mother took us to Mexico City where her family lived, and an opposite cultural environment to the one I knew.

I came to the U.S. first to college, and then to advertising in New York. In my twenties, I finally went “home” to England, became part of the London swinging scene, and worked my way up to a junior executive position in a major advertising agency. It was a big accomplishment at a time, the sixties, when few women were allowed to hold what was deemed a man’s position.

The lure of Mexico was too strong to resist and I returned. On the spur of the moment, I was married on the beach in Acapulco, had two children, divorced, and carried on as both a single mother and a VP  of an international advertising agency in Mexico City. Hard work and hard living were my style. My life verged on luxurious, with servants, nannies and private schools for my two boys, late model cars, expensive restaurants, designer clothes, and yearly trips to England.  And then it was all gone: my career, money, home, possessions, and the one thing I could least afford to lose, my health.

Constantly, I’d ask myself, How on earth did I end up in this situation? My answer: I would have to find a way back up.

And I did.

A job at the lower end of the pay scale proved to be a first step to an entirely new career in the U.S. Then, working in Hispanic qualitative research, I gained fascinating insights into the evolving consumer habits and attitudes of the different Latino segments in this country.

Over the years, I have written and co-produced TV commercials, published newspaper and magazine articles about Mexico, co-written a cookbook on Mexican Cooking, and for two years had a weekly column, “Insights into Mexico” in the Baja News. I published short pieces on online sites such as Commonties.com.

These days, I give talks about how professionals can make a new start after being laid off, about my three identities (English-American-Mexican) and how they affect me, and on acculturation issues of Mexicans in the U.S.