Best Cities to Shape You, Shake You and Make You—My Experience Growing Up In 5 Cities

An anchor, a refuge, a pitstop, a parent and my best friend all embodied by different cities that made me who I am today.

Author Marcela Gómez, CEO of Culture Shift Team and travel enthusiast, shares her life experience of moving around to different cities and what she’s learned from them.

Bogotá, Colombia is enveloped by gorgeous green lush mountains. 

They are the witnesses of its inhabitants’ lives, surrounding the city and watching over us. In some places in the city, you even feel like you can reach out and touch them as if you have painted them. Every time I go back to my birth city, I spend time intentionally looking at the mountains.

And every time I leave, I make sure I say goodbye. 

The mountains of Bogotá do to the city what Central Park does to New York City: it is its own oasis. A massive, powerful refuge that provides a green escape from the pollution and grayness of a concrete jungle. It calms the overbearing noise of traffic and people yelling in a rush. Just one look above and around you and you’ve given yourself a reprieve.

I really love the city where I was born. I’ve also loved other cities that helped shape and mold me, stretch and challenge me and shake my identity to its core.

These are the cities that’ve provided me with solace, expulsion, energy, maturity, freedom and liberation during my lifetime—and some shorter pit stops along the way which have fueled my space for growth.

I am currently on a whirlwind adventure of experiencing life without a home to my name, and instead, two suitcases, hotels, Airbnb’s, and many loved ones’ homes to share across the U.S. I never imagined that I would be on this journey at 57 almost 58, but the universe has a way of putting necessary opportunities for growth in your path.

What’s going to happen at the end of the road? I don’t know. 

The cities in my life have been dear friends to me—this is how I grew in each of them, maybe it’ll help you question how your most cherished living places have helped, or even hindered, you in your own life. Reflecting on the cities that made me who I am today has helped prepare me for all the unknowns that lie ahead. 

Here’s to the path behind us, the path that grew us and the road beyond.

Let’s go back to where it all started. 

Place: Bogotá / Time: 1964 

What do I remember about my childhood? Earthquakes. 

Bogotá, as beautiful as it is, racked up its fair share of tremors during my preteen years. I used to be so proud of knowing what to do in case of one, it was one of those things you just knew how to handle living there.

I love the chaos of a city—after all, when I first came into this world there were just under 2 million people living there. Now? Closing in on 8 million. Talk about exponential growth. Talk about the chaos of a living, breathing city.

That’s why I also love New York City (which we’ll poke into later). The reaction I get from both is the same: how can you live there? I absolutely thrive in it. Sure the traffic is unbearable but you learn to live with it.

And the energy? Unmatched. 

Bogotá to me is the city that saw my birth and witnessed my first 16 years of life. It’s where I met my childhood friends, where I learned to be a friend for the first time and even where I learned the choreography to all the ABBA dances just so I could call my friends from our building over and have them sit so they can watch me perform.

It’s the only place in the world where my friends call me Sylvia. 

I’m a whole other person when I travel to Bogotá. I have to remember I have another persona, another name I go by. I intentionally chose to go back home after I graduated high school in Charlotte, North Carolina because I couldn’t adapt to life in the States at that moment.

It’s a city where people knew who I was and where my good friends were who loved me just the way I was. I could be myself and fit in and didn’t have to explain who I was or why I was the way I was to anyone.

Bogotá had become my refuge. 

So, let’s skirt back to that blip in time: high school.

Place: Charlotte / Time: 1981

“Do you dress like this back home? Do you have pot? Why isn’t she wearing any makeup?” 

I didn’t know how to fit into Charlotte for the full three years I lived there for high school. Clearly. There were so many questions, all the time, about who I was and why I was the way I was. I think back then people thought we had marijuana fields in our backyards, but I had never even seen it in my life!

I remember one time a guy invited me to a birthday party for one of his friends. 

I asked my mom and ended up going. It was a huge house party filled with kids and I asked him where his parents were so I could introduce myself as I would do in Colombia. The birthday kid was shocked. “My parents? They’re out of town!” 

He told me that they’d scored two kegs for the party and I asked him if I couldn’t go could he save a piece of cake for me then? I couldn’t understand him and I had no idea what a keg was. 

Students would talk back to teachers without reprimanding (something you wouldn’t dare to do in Colombia). A kid failed a class and raised his grade just by staying after school to help clean the erasers from the blackboard—where was I?? I couldn’t understand it. 

There was so much open conversation about sex and taking the pill—things I had no idea about. Boys would walk around spitting in foam cups all day until I eventually realized they were chewing tobacco—who are these people?? 

I felt lost because I didn’t understand what was happening. 

There was nothing horrible about the city or the experience when I really think about it but it lives in a dark corner of my mind because of the extreme culture shock and the emotional baggage I was carrying into it—not to mention I was a rebellious 16-year-old who couldn’t understand why my life was changing all of a sudden. 

The only thing I could think about was how good my life was back home. 

In Bogotá, I was captain of the cheerleading squad, my boyfriend was captain of the basketball team and I had a solid, tight-knit group of friends who I was beginning to experience freedom and independence with. 

The feelings of “hating Charlotte” that began to imprint on my young mind were really about the feeling of being uprooted completely and unable to find how to replant myself in another city and culture. 

I want to change that narrative for myself now. 

I don’t want to have that phrase in my body, mind or spirit anymore. I want to be able to talk about  Charlotte as it was: a period of transition and a stop in my life. By the time this post is published, I will have gone back, ironically enough, to visit a childhood friend from Colombia who moved with her family to Charlotte several years ago, and hopefully find myself with a different story about Charlotte that I can make peace with. 

After all, after those three years, if I couldn’t comprehend high school in this state, I couldn’t even imagine college! So I flew back to my refuge: Bogotá. 

Now, there are two places in the U.S. I haven’t mentioned yet that also shaped my childhood, upbringing, family dynamics and even my identity as a Latina—and exposed me to culture shock in friendlier ways than Charlotte did. 

Update: I spent a week in Charlotte in October 2022, I went with my heart and spirit ready to create a new relationship with Charlotte. I did. I am happy to say that my dear childhood friend who lives there made my trip a loving experience. Now, Charlotte is the city where my dear friend Ana and her family live. A city they love and that makes my heart happy and my spirit at peace.

It’s family time. 

Places: Miami, FL & Atlanta, GA / Time: Every Summer 

I spent every summer in the States. 

You see, my mother’s family moved to Atlanta in 1959 and my mother went to high school there. She had so many siblings and they were all in school so she doesn’t remember experiencing loneliness or not fitting in because they were all together. 

She went back to Bogotá in 1963, got married and then had me. 

When I was little I’d spend the summer wherever my grandparents were—sometimes they were in Atlanta and sometimes they were in Miami. I learned to water ski, ride a bike, play Barbies, speak English because of my cousins and even took back cheerleading with me to Bogotá. I loved the green rolling hills and the beautiful city of Atlanta. Of course, Miami was where my grandpa’s blue Pontiac was—and of course where endless days at the beach were. 

These summers were a moment in time when everyone came together and just had fun. 

After Charlotte, as I said, I went back to Bogotá to live with my father and figure out college. I did find myself a bit, I also found out I was pregnant, got married and so entered my unexpected pitstop in Miami. 1992. 

I experienced the aftereffects of separation and divorce in Miami where I stood on my feet, refueled my spirit, navigated getting a job and figured out how I was going to be a single mother—all with the support of my mother, brother, sister and friends from church. 

It ultimately led me to take a job a few hours north in the South.

Place: Nashville, TN / Time: 1994 

I write about Nashville in many of my blogs—after all, I lived there for 27 years. 

Nashville to me is the city that raised me and helped me raise my son. The city welcomed me when I was lost, matured me, helped me expand and grow in every way and helped me become an entrepreneur. 

It’s where I’ve lived most of my life. 

I found myself and my purpose in Nashville. I started seven companies there, became a community leader and leaned into becoming a mentor for many. I know I touched many lives there as much as they touched mine. 

Nashville has a huge part of my heart. 

If it wasn’t for Covid-19 I probably would have stayed since I was so comfortable there. But I knew there was an opportunity for change and growth—and one to be closer to my son—so I left. 

I’m so glad I did. Not because Nashville doesn’t absolutely bring me to tears when I think about the lives, friendships, experiences and memories I lived there, but because I had no idea what was waiting for me in the next city and it sure had big plans for me.

Place: NYC / Time: 2020

Ah yes, the big pandemic move. 

Instead of a concrete jungle, NYC seemed like a concrete desert. There wasn’t a soul in sight as I walked down the streets of the most populated city in the U.S. But the biggest difference for me was the ability to live without labels. 

I always felt like I had to prove myself in Nashville, mainly because I was Hispanic. It was always “Marcela is Hispanic.” I don’t feel like that in New York. Here I am Marcela. Period. I don’t have to qualify for anything else. 

I feel more confident, outgoing and courageous here—more me. 

I remember when I came to New York City for the first time in 1981 I fell in love instantly. There was something about the energy of the City that was beyond explanation. I remember telling myself I was going to live here someday. 

When my son got accepted to university here, I lived my dream through him by visiting him as often as I could. When May 2020 came about, I knew my son was sitting by himself in NYC while I was doing the same in Nashville. By this point, we had lived apart for 11 years and that’s what made my decision to pack up and move. 

Almost a year later, I could hear the City come back to life. 

What’s beautiful about NYC is that you establish a relationship with the city just by walking it—that’s how you fall in love with it. On top of that, you have all this energy of creation, not even just from business, but from art, theatre and music. It’s inspirational. It’s a place where you can keep dreaming and where creating motivates you. 

And, after all, this city is a dream come true for me. 

It’s funny because I haven’t found that saying that people here are rude at all true. People mind their own business, they’re not criticizing, judging or generally caring about what you’re doing or wearing. You have your own universe however in times of need people show up. 

I now have a bubbling community of friends here and am the VP of NYC’s National Speakers Association, so there’s a great opportunity for connection. It’s just that people aren’t telling you how to live your life or how to fit in a box and I really appreciate that. 

I want to live the rest of my life like that, with fun and freedom. 

As I was saying before, life comes at you with the unexpected and it’s up to you to decide what kind of expansion you want in your life. For me, that looked like the Universe offering up a big plate of growth and I decided to take life by the airplane horns yet again.

Place: Planes Across the U.S. Sky / Time: 2022-2023 

So I find myself on the road without a home and with two suitcases to my name. 

It’s a neverending story of healing and evolving as life continues. I thought I was going to stay in New York when I first came two years ago, but the Universe put another idea in front of me and I’m excited about that. 

I want to discover how I feel about my life now and what new things are coming into my awareness. 

Part of who I am is telling people you can think outside of the box for yourself and you don’t have to do what everyone else is doing. Everyone’s path is not the same and yours can look exactly the way you want it to. 

There is, for example, a city I’ve never lived in but since I discovered it in a magazine at 6 years old I hope to live in one day… 

Place: Monte Carlo, Monaco / Time: ????

Every time I think about the future, Monaco always comes into the conversation unconsciously. 

When I tell people about Monaco, they scoff at me, but sure, it’s on Planet Earth, I can live there! So what am I waiting for? I have no idea!

My plan timeline-wise was to live there when I’m 70, but hey! You just never know where life might take you. 

Maybe at the end of these five months, I’ll find myself with a ticket back to New York City. Or who knows? Maybe I’ll be writing from a gorgeous ocean-side apartment in Monte Carlo—letting myself fall in love and be shaped by another city. 

I’ll keep you posted. 

Traveling and all these life experiences of living and moving around to different cities and countries have given me a unique edge regarding my multicultural marketing expertise. 

I not only am knowledgeable through life experience and over 30 years of delving into different markets, but my team over at Culture Shift Team also combines their strengths in diversity, equity and inclusion to make a true powerhouse framework to shift both your internal and external relationships within your company so you can make a bigger impact where it matters most. 

Come chat with us to see how we can best help you thrive!