Family Gap Year Post #34: Our Trip in Review

Family Gap Year: “Our Problems Just Followed Us Around the Globe”

I recently read someone’s reflection of their family gap year. The basic gist was (and I’m paraphrasing here): We romanticized what it was going to be like to live in another country and culture. But our problems just followed us around the globe.

I feel like that’s the start of my reflection. I didn’t necessarily romanticize what it was going to be like to live in other countries and cultures. However, part of me romanticized what our family life could be like while living in said cultures and countries.

The Backstory

We lived the first 10 years of my family’s life in the shadow of my job. I don’t regret launching a non-profit organization and a school, but the timing was a bit bad. It brought a lot of stress and turmoil into my children’s formative years.

By the time our Family Gap Year rolled around, I was able to drop down from two jobs (Executive Director of the school + Executive Director of the national non-profit) to just one job (the latter).

I had idealized notions that once the stress of my jobs was lifted, my family might be able to experience some healing that would help our “problems” dissipate (or at least lose their sharp edges).

I also romanticized what it would be like to homeschool our children and to lean into their childhoods with wonder and gratitude.

And, in the end, not only did our problems follow us around the world, they worsened.

High Highs and Low Lows of Our Family Gap Year

Our trip brought such high highs and low lows into our lives. At points, the lows were so low that we contemplated ending our trip early.

I would be happy to share specifics about our lows, but the particulars veer too much into other people’s stories. That’s one of the hard things about parenting. (If you’re ever passing through Austin, please reach out and we can go for a walk and talk around the lake.)

Suffice it to say: we struggled.

But we refused to end our story with: “and our problems followed us around the globe.”

I leaned into our low lows as an opportunity to understand—once and for all—what was going on within our family dynamic and identify some new solutions.

We set up meetings with a doctor, we started parenting classes, I started working with a trauma specialist, Matt and I started meeting with a parenting coach again, we tried new supplements, and I read book after book related to our struggles.

Exhaustion

We were exhausted.

It takes a lot to plan a trip around the world. There’s always something to figure out: Where do we get groceries? Why are the marshmallows pink? Is there a school that will accept our children for only three weeks? How are we going to get from the airport to our home in rural Bali two hours away? What do we do now that the ATM ate our credit card? Where do we go to get an ear infection treated? Is it safe to walk outside alone at night?

All of that work gets layered upon the regular work of parenting—the soothing, the refereeing, the coaching, the teaching, the feeding, the monitoring, the nagging.

But the Highs

But the highs. They bring you to your knees.

One morning in Kaikoura, New Zealand, I walked out on the balcony and the sheer beauty of the mountains juxtaposed with the ocean brought tears to my eyes.

Off the Na Pali Coast of Kauai, Tate and I bounced 2-3 feet into the air at the front of a catamaran and laughed as the cold waves drenched us from head to toe.

Henry and I saw a shooting star while lying on the grass at a camp ground in Maui. He said, “My wish is that this year brings us closer together as a family.”

One of the best nights we’ve ever had as a family was a random evening in Singapore when we visited IKEA and the hawker stalls and then found a machine on the street that juices oranges for $2.

Or there was the time we competed in Family Olympics or hosted an impromptu talent show in Akaroa.

Or fishing for salmon or hiking to the top of Nelson with friends or watching Tate compete in a schoolwide swim meet while talking with fellow moms from South Africa.

Or the “mud run” we did in Golden Bay.

Novelty

Every day was new.

I welcomed the Novelty with open arms. It was such a refreshing visitor after years of the same old routine: morning stress, full work day, afternoon stress, dinner stress, bedtime stress, more work stress, and not enough sleep.

The novelty buoyed me during the low lows and kept me motivated to continue identifying and trying out new solutions.

It finally came together for us in our 9th or 10th month of traveling. We learned the right combination of supplements and parenting approaches and general mindsets to stabilize our family.

Does anyone regret a Gap year?

I once read a book in which the author asserted that no one ever regrets a Gap Year. Reading that statement might make one conclude that all families should go on a Gap Year.

I’ve come to the opinion that Gap Years are not likely to make everyone fulfilled. I think it depends on the dynamic within your family (i.e., what are your “problems” and is traveling likely to exacerbate them?) and on whether you are truly, deeply fulfilled by long-term traveling (versus taking shorter vacations).

It also depends on the nature of the trip. There are such different versions of Family Gap Years. Ours was a mixture of slow travel (i.e., living in a community for an extended period of time) and fast travel. Both were filled with novelty for me, and both filled me up in different ways. But our trip was very different from a family who lives in a different country for an entire year.

In the end, I am so grateful for ours. We are different people and a different family because of the challenges we faced and the perseverance we mustered, the new worldviews we encountered, the people who welcomed us into their homes, the situations that pushed us to strengthen our courage.

Also, in the end, Henry’s wish came true. I couldn’t have asked for more than that.