Today we’d like to introduce you to Lilia Pozos.
Lilia, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I was born and raised in Mexico City. I am a Public Relations and Communication Strategist with an environmentalist heart.
I recently moved to Miami to be with the love of my life and everything has been a roller coaster of emotions.
Leaving everything behind is not easy. I miss my family, my friends, and my delicious Mexican food. During my first months here, I was feeling lost and sometimes without motivation. For me, every day was a journey to find my place in this new city with different challenges to overcome.
My husband also suffered because I was unhappy but he never let me give up, he cheered me in every single way and he encouraged me to keep working hard to achieve my goals. My project called Your Green Mermaid emerged during my darkest moments. But, what is Your Green Mermaid? I will explain in a bit.
First, I want to tell you something that changed my life for good: five years ago, when I was living in Mexico, I started to see beauty products with labels that said: no sulfates, no parabens, etc. and I asked myself, what the hell is all that? At that moment, I didn’t care.
Last year, when I arrived at my new country, I needed to find new products that could fit my daily beauty routine. When I started to look for products, I realized about those words that followed me like ghosts in the past: parabens, sulfates, and I started my research. That was one of the most shocking moments in my life. Getting to know all the toxic ingredients in our everyday products blew my mind away, I had the need to tell people about this but, how?
During 2017, I lived the most difficult moments of my life. I was so down and sad because I was not able to be with my family when my grandmother died and to make it worse, her son died one week later, almost at the end of the year a deadly earthquake hit Mexico City and the hurricane Irma hit Florida. My family and I were totally destroyed after those moments and I was feeling horrible. I also didn’t have a job. To feel better, I started to do a lot of things like learning a new language: Portuguese, reading a lot, making research and I discovered the clean beauty industry. I used to post this information on my personal IG profile, but I wanted to go further, and my clean beauty/sustainable living project began: Your Green Mermaid.
My husband was the first person that encouraged me to begin this project and I started to read more and more, going to events, getting along with my community and I also began to do volunteer work, anything! I had a lot of free time. I was teaching classes to kids and adults, cleaning the beaches, donating things, etc. I am now addicted to that! Your Green Mermaid is also a platform where people can look for volunteer opportunities around Miami where they can donate, participate and work together with me to generate a positive impact.
Living a sustainable life is also part of Your Green Mermaid´s pillars. When you become more aware of what you put on your body, you also become aware of other things like the waste and trash you generate every day. Your Green Mermaid is also part of a zero-waste community in Miami! I educate and inform people on how to reduce their waste with simple activities they can do from home. For example, whenever I am out of my house, I take my own cutlery, stainless steel straws, cloth napkins, cup and my reusable water bottle with me so I don´t generate any type of waste outside. I even take my glass containers whenever I go to a restaurant in case I don’t finish all the food.
Your Green Mermaid is what got me a better life with a real purpose of contributing to my community as a giving back gratefulness for everything I have today.
Now, I barely have time for myself and my husband! I go to a lot of events, I have a job in a Public Relations agency, I started my project, I am studying a Digital Marketing course and I want to eat the world in one piece.
I feel so grateful to be here and I have the commitment to generate a positive impact in my community. What does Your Green Mermaid do? Well, she volunteers, she cleans beaches, she teaches people how to live in a more sustainable way, she encourages others to reduce their waste to the max, she hosted her first non-toxic beauty workshop in Wynwood, she is also a dancer, a traveler and she doesn’t know how to cook.
This city has given me so many things that I can only say thank you. Your Green Mermaid is here to stay!
I am not perfect, I make mistakes, but every day, I wake up with the firm conviction of making things better than yesterday.
“If I can impact the life of one person, and that person can impact the life of another person and so on… my job is done.”
-Your Green Mermaid
Has it been a smooth road?
It hasn’t been smooth at all but with the love and care of my new family here: my husband and my new parents Rosa and Augusto everything has been much easier and smoother.
I write all my content in English which is not my native language and of course, sometimes I have difficulties because of that.
Your Green Mermaid represents an investment for me because now I don’t earn any money out of this but in the future, I want to create a sustainable business with a positive impact in the world.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with Your Green Mermaid – tell our readers more, for example, what you’re most proud of and what sets you apart from others.
Your Green Mermaid is the expression of what I want to accomplish in this life: I want clean oceans, I want eco-friendly products, I want to reduce my waste to the max, I want to see children and women happy because they learned something from me, I want people to realize their impact on every decision they make, I want to empower women by showing them what ingredients to avoid in every product they buy, I want less plastic pollution, less contamination and a better world for my future children.
I am proud of the person I have become in this city. I was not like this, my life was so different and I didn´t care much about these issues. Now, I am different and I want everybody to know how they can reduce their negative impact in the world.
I do this from the bottom of my heart just with the firm conviction of impacting the life of one person at a time.
Let’s touch on your thoughts about our city – what do you like the most and least?
What I like the most about Miami is the Latin culture that surrounds us. All Latin America is united here and is amazing how rich the city can be because of its heritage, traditions, music, food, and ethnicities. I love the unity between all countries and the love they show to foreigners.
What I like least is the trash and the single-use plastic/disposable life that a lot of people are used to. Some places are dirty, trash everywhere, overflowed consumerism and poor care of our environment.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.yourgreenmermaid.com
- Email: yourgreenmermaid@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yourgreenmermaid/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/YourGreenMermaid
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/YGreenMermaid
Getting in touch: VoyageMIA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
