Rooted in Utuado: Sarah’s Love Affair with Puerto Rico by Millie America

When I met Sarah Ratliff for the first time, it wasn’t while walking through her eco-organic farm in Utuado, but through the glow of a Zoom call. And yet, the connection was immediate.

Her presence carried a grounded wisdom, her voice full of both reverence and practicality, as if Puerto Rico itself had taught her how to hold both truth and tenderness at the same time. In her, Ifelt the recognition of someone who not only loves this island but has allowed it to transform her.

Sarah and her husband, Paul, did not set out with a plan to change their lives so radically. Their farm life story began in December 2007 while they were both in the corporate world, culminating with biotech giant Amgen.

Every year on her birthday, Sarah would visit her doctor for a checkup because she had a few concerning symptoms. Heart palpitations, idiopathic IBS, daily migraines were Sarah’s usual complaints.

Tests were always run to rule out anything serious, and her doctor concluded each visit with the same “speech.”

“Stress is killing you. There’s nothing major wrong with you, but stress is a killer. Can you drop down in hours or get an assistant?”

When her 42nd birthday hit, she was off to her doctor, but this time with a new symptom to report: vertigo, also known as vestibular migraines. It’s what happens when the migraines aren’t getting your attention and your body is screaming for you to listen to it. The bout of vertigo that brought Sarah to see her doctor had lasted a week.

This visit’s speech ended differently. “Sarah, if you don’t leave the stress of corporate life, you won’t live to see your 45th birthday. I highly recommend you get out of corporate and go live on a mountain in the middle of nowhere. Corporate life isn’t for everyone. You’re probably just not cut out for it.”

It’s a difficult pill to swallow because our generation was led to believe that if we work hard in the corporate world, it will be rewarded. Higher salaries, better bonuses, and in the case of biotech, better stock options and rewards. Sarah and Paul had all the “proof” they needed they were, indeed, cut out for this world.

They knew they needed to get out of the matrix but weren’t quite sure how. They waited for a sign: from their employer, another economic downturn or something even bigger like peak oil or martial law.

They’re not Nostradamus but they knew “something wicked this way comes.”

That sign came in March 2008 when Amgen announced massive layoffs. This combined with seeing signs that the real estate market was going to crash (can’t keep offering mortgages with no money down and not anticipate a recession), they put their Southern California house on the market and gave notice to what would be their last job in the corporate world.

Initially, they moved to upstate New York to live near Sarah’s brother, but they quickly remembered why she moved 3,000 miles from family.

In their minds, they revisited locations they’d previously considered. Maryland to be closer to Paul’s family was nice, but as Winslow Homer so famously said, “you can’t go home again.” Canada? It’s the U.S. but smaller.

The South of France where Sarah’s parents retired to when she was 18 was a serious contender, but ultimately, they decided that while it was lovely visiting, it was also a bit like the Winslow Homer quote. It was too familiar to Sarah, although like Maryland was for Paul, things had changed and she wouldn’t fit in.

So, they returned to Puerto Rico, where they’d vacationed in 2007. This time, they looked for the only property on vacation rentals dot com that wasn’t on the beach. They rented an eight-acre farm in the interior, in the mountain town of Utuado.

As they drove up and down the hill to buy groceries and go sightseeing to different barrios of Utuado, they yelled, “yo!” to every person they saw. People were curious. Who were these Americanos with their funny accents? Where were they staying?

“En la casa de los Colombianos en Barrio Sabana Grande,” Sarah and Paul told the curious ones.

The Colombianos they referred to, Don Leo and Doña Alba, owned a second property at the bottom of the mountain and were very well known in the community. They would become invaluable for Paul and Sarah once they made their decision.

The next two weeks were suddenly filled with invitations to people’s homes for dinners and quinceñeras. Talk about an immersive experience!

Four days into that trip, Sarah remembers looking at Paul and saying, “I feel like we’ve been traveling for forty-some years, and we’re finally home.” They returned to Woodstock, where they’d been renting a cabin in the woods, and started packing. Telling Sarah’s brother, his wife and their daughter they were moving wasn’t easy.

Telling Paul’s sisters and their families, with whom Paul and Sarah are very close, was even more difficult. They’d already put up with him living in California since 1992 (Sarah moved there in 1998) and had hoped their living in Woodstock meant just an eight-hour drive vs. a five-hour plane ride.

“Daddy didn’t leave the farm and become an engineer to put you through college to turn around and become farmers,” we can still hear his older sister telling us. “And you, Sarah! Do you think your writer parents are proud of you right now?”

His other sister was supportive, although it was difficult because she had really hoped they’d stay on the East Coast. After spending a week with them, they returned to Woodstock to start packing and to call the movers. Within a month, they and their cats were boarding a plane bound for San Juan to pick up their rental to take them back to the la casa de los Colombianos in Utuado, who’d agreed to rent them the eight-acre farm until they found property to buy.

They chose Utuado, a place far from the polished postcards of San Juan. There is so much history in Utuado. It was one of the towns where the uprising of 1950 took place. The mountains there are rugged, demanding, and alive with memory. “The soil here remembers,” Sarah told me.

“When you plant, you’re not just growing food—you’re stepping into a lineage of those who worked this land long before you, and those who will after you’re gone.”

At Mayani Farms, the land became their greatest teacher. Farming in Puerto Rico is not simply a matter of putting seeds in the ground. Invasive vines grow at an alarming rate and if farmers don’t keep up with them, the vines will strangle their plants.

The rains come when they will, sometimes as blessing, sometimes as disaster. Hurricanes leave scars that take years to heal. The terrain itself demands respect and creativity. Sarah admitted that farming here required her to shed old ways of thinking and embrace humility.

Mistakes became lessons. Failures became teachers. “Every crop, every season has something to show you,” she said. “You learn patience. You learn resilience. You learn that nothing comes on your timeline—it’s on the land’s timeline.”

Today, Sarah and Paul have taken what they’ve learned about farming organically in the tropics to help newcomers to this life. They are eco-organic consultants, and they also have a growing nursery of their rare collection of fruit trees, palm trees, medicinal plants and sustainable bamboo they grow.

But the soil was not the only lesson. The culture itself became a mirror. Coming to Puerto Rico as two people who were not born here and with no cultural or ethnic ties to the island meant facing questions of identity and belonging.

Sarah and Paul arrived as outsiders, and they knew it. Trust had to be earned—not assumed. “When we first got here, we only knew four people,” Sarah recalled. “Four days into that vacation we knew in our bones this was home, but home doesn’t happen overnight. It takes showing up, listening, and being willing to be changed by the people around you.”

She spoke about the subtle differences between life on the coast and life in the mountains. On the coast, diversity and tourism create a wider acceptance. In the mountains, culture runs deep, traditions hold fast, and people take longer to welcome someone new. “If you live in the metro area, you may never feel racism,” Sarah explained, “but in the mountains, it shows up differently.

There’s colorism here. There are layers you only understand if you live among people long enough to notice.”

As a multiracial woman (Black, Japanese and white) married to a Black man, they have both seen how those layers play out. But what struck me was the grace in her reflections. She doesn’t frame Puerto Rico through judgment or through the lens of comparison to the U.S. Instead, she holds the contradictions with compassion. “Puerto Rico is complicated,” she said, “and that’s part of its beauty. You can’t love it in pieces—you have to love it whole.” She continued. “And honestly, it’s difficult not to fall in love with the people here. Our neighbors have been amazing at making us feel like we’re not desde a fuera (outsiders) but are Utuadaños.”

That wholeness shows up in her writing. Sarah has authored one book about being multiracial and two books about Puerto Rico, pouring her observations, research, and love for the island into pages that now travel the world. She writes not as a visitor, but as someone who has dug her hands into the soil, walked among the people, and committed herself to being part of the ongoing story of this place. Her books are part memoir, part cultural critique, and part love letter. They remind readers that Puerto Rico is not a backdrop but a living, breathing country with soul. They were created to help others who get here and want to call this magical island “home.”

By the end of our Zoom call, I realized I wasn’t just interviewing Sarah—I was being taught by her. She knew more about Puerto Rico than I did, though I was born here. That realization didn’t sting; it inspired. It reminded me that to truly love a place is to study it, to respect it, to let it change you.

I cannot wait to walk her farm in Utuado, to stand in the mountains that became her chosen home, to feel the soil she speaks of so reverently beneath my feet. Until then, I hold her words close: the story of a woman who once came here on vacation, who listened when the land whispered, “You belong,” and who had the courage to make that belonging real.

Much love,
Millie America