There are decisions that make sense on paper and decisions that make sense in your soul. For Vanessa Mota, founder of My Dominican Kitchen and one of the most quietly bold mamis I’ve had the pleasure of sitting down with, moving solo from New Jersey to the Dominican Republic was very much the second kind.
Vanessa didn’t have a five-year plan. She didn’t wait until everything was lined up. She had a feeling, she talked to her kids, they said “go ahead,” and two months later, she was living on the northern coast of the DR, walking distance from the beach, finally doing the thing she’d been dreaming about for years without even fully realizing it.
I had to have her on the podcast immediately.
The Season That Made Space for the Leap
Vanessa has two college-aged kids. Her daughter had already moved to Florida for school. Her son was finishing high school and heading out next. And somewhere in the middle of watching her babies grow into their own people, Vanessa found herself asking a question a lot of us in the thick of motherhood rarely let ourselves ask: What do I want now?
She didn’t frame it as abandoning her kids, and she was very clear about that. She still talks to her daughter every day, video calls while she works, her daughter just “there” even from across the ocean. But she also said something that stuck with me: she couldn’t justify staying in a place that no longer felt aligned, in a house by herself, just to be available for kids who weren’t even there.
And that right there? That’s the kind of honest that our community doesn’t always give ourselves permission to speak out loud.
Building the Muscle Early
One of the most powerful things Vanessa shared was her advice for mamis who are nowhere near the empty nest season – including me, with my preschool-aged kids. She called it a muscle. The practice of staying connected to yourself, your dreams, your own needs, even when babies are small and your whole world is them. Because if you only ever pour into your kids and never into yourself, she said, you’ll reach the empty nest and not know who you are or how to fill the time.
But if you’ve been quietly nurturing your own dreams all along? You get to the other side and think, okay, now I have more time to do this and this and that. With excitement. Not loss.
She encouraged every mami, even one who just gave birth, to carve out some space for herself. Not because motherhood isn’t everything. It clearly is for Vanessa, who called raising kind human beings the thing she’s most proud of in her entire life, but because burnout doesn’t serve our kids either. When we’re depleted, we have short fuses, little patience, and we transmit that. When we’re full? Our kids feel that too.
Coming Home to the Motherland
Vanessa was born in Santo Domingo and moved to the US at 14, building her entire adult life there. She’d returned to the DR for vacations, but never to live. She ended up settling not in the capital where most of her family is, but in Nagua – a small coastal town on the northern coast, her maternal family’s pueblo.
And something shifted there that she struggled to put into words, which honestly made it feel more real. She described feeling held. Supported. Like she was being guided. She lives alone, works from her computer most days, sometimes doesn’t leave the apartment for days, and she does not feel lonely. She feels more connected than she ever did in the US.
I shared with her how I feel the same pull when I visit my family’s pueblo near León, like my ancestors are pouring creativity and energy into me. She understood it immediately. That feeling of returning to a place that carries your people, your lineage, your roots. It’s not something you can’t fully explain. You just feel it.
Building a Brand from the Source
My Dominican Kitchen started 12 years ago as a food blog with a goal of freedom (Vanessa’s word, not mine!). She wanted to control her time, her schedule, her income. She didn’t know then that the blog would eventually carry her across an ocean, but it did.
Now she earns through ads on her website, her cookbook royalties, and brand partnerships – all digital, all location-independent. She talked about the overwhelm of inspiration she’s experiencing now that she’s on the island: too many ideas, too many directions, that shiny object syndrome of seeing everything she could create and build from here. She’s pulling herself back to strategy, to focus, to asking who the brand is really for.
But what struck me most was how she described her actual mission. It was never just recipes. It’s always been about uplifting Dominican culture – using food as the entry point to bring her people and their stories to the world. Living in the DR has cracked that open in a new way. She told me about discovering pan de coco in Samaná – this soft, coconut-milk bread cooked over fire by the beach – and immediately asking the woman making it how it was done. Recording the conversation. Planning how to translate those informal, “add a little of this and a little of that” instructions into something accessible for a Dominican mami in Chicago or Madrid or wherever she might be, missing home.
That’s her gift. That’s always been her gift.
The Permission Slip Nobody Gave Us
Before we wrapped, I asked Vanessa what she’d say to the mami listening who wants to make a bold move – abroad or otherwise, but doesn’t feel ready. Her answer was so good I’ve been thinking about it since we recorded.
She said: we are never really ready. Not for anything. Not for kids, not for moves, not for the big leaps. If we’re afraid enough, we’ll always find a reason to say “not yet” and then we move the goalpost. And then again. And it’s not the circumstances. It’s us.
Instead, she said, just take the next best step. You don’t have to see the whole staircase before you lift your foot. You don’t even have to know what’s at the top. Just take the next best step and keep moving. And when you get there, take another one.
She ended up on a beach in the Dominican Republic, walking distance from the ocean, living a life she’d been quietly dreaming about for years, not because she had the perfect plan, but because she made the decision first and figured it out after.
Imagine what the next step could look like for you.
Show Notes
In this episode of the Mamis Abroad series, I sit down with Vanessa Mota, a Dominican-American content creator, digital publisher, author, and founder of My Dominican Kitchen.
Vanessa made the boldest move by packing up her life in New Jersey and moving solo to the Dominican Republic. She has spent 12 years building her bilingual food brand for the Dominican diaspora, and now she’s creating from the island itself. We talk about the empty nest season, what it really means to come home to your roots, and why you don’t have to be ready to take the leap.
What you’ll hear:
〰 Why waiting until you’re “ready” to make a big move is the one thing keeping you stuck
〰 How to stop losing yourself in motherhood at any season, so that when your kids fly the nest, you already know who you are and what you want
〰 What it really feels like to return to your family’s homeland, and why that ancestral connection might be exactly what your creativity has been missing
〰 How to actually make living abroad work financially, even if you don’t have a location-independent business yet
〰 Why your next chapter doesn’t need a perfect plan – just one next best step
Resources Mentioned:
〰 Visit My Dominican Kitchen’s website: mydominicankitchen.com
〰 Follow Vanessa on Instagram: @my.dominican.kitchen
〰 Support and purchase Vanessa’s cookbook
About Our Guest
Vanessa Mota | My Dominican Kitchen
Vanessa Mota is a Dominican-American content creator, digital publisher, and author based in the Dominican Republic. She is the founder of My Dominican Kitchen, a bilingual food brand built for the Dominican diaspora that has been sharing authentic recipes and cultural stories for over 12 years. After a decade of building her brand from New Jersey/New York, Vanessa made the bold decision to relocate to the DR solo — stepping fully into a new chapter of life, creativity, and purpose.
