There have been a number of studies in the past five or so years about the connection between time on social media and increased rates of depression and anxiety. I know through experience that comparison mind is a sure way to feel terrible about yourself; and it’s next to impossible to stay free from that on social media when scrolling through endless pictures of people looking like they are having more fun than you, are more successful, have more friends than you, are more attractive, etc. etc. We all contribute to this effect unconsciously because the experiences and photos we naturally want to share tend to be happy and flattering ones.
I have found that online traveling communities are some of the worst perpetrators of this ‘everything is perfect and we’re happy all the time’ imagery. As a long time traveler I know that there are some really hellish things that can happen when traveling and often do: food poisoning or major GI upset, getting stranded somewhere and being scared for your safety, getting sick and needing medical care and not having access to the type of care you want/need, seeing heartbreaking examples of poverty, animal cruelty, environmental destruction…I’ve experienced all of these things when traveling. The amount of sexual assault and misconduct that I experienced as a young female traveler is sickening. I’ve had men expose themselves to me, men openly masturbate while staring at me, I’ve had a guy put a knife to my throat because I insulted his pride by asking him to leave me alone, I’ve been drugged, I’ve been raped, I’ve heard more disgusting catcalls than the men reading this can even imagine, and I’ve been blamed for all of it because I have blond hair, am a woman, I like to drink, and I like to travel. I’ve also gotten hepatitis A, food poisoning twice, a severe kidney infection which left me unable to walk for two weeks, some weird animal shit disease from working at a zoo in Israel, a fungal disease that gave me giant blistering welts all over my body, excruciating ear infections, a mild case of malaria (despite meds), so. many. parasites, I’ve been completely devoured by bedbugs, and I have had “traveler’s tummy” more times than I care to remember.
Now that I am in my late-thirties and am a mom I have traded in the gross sexual assault issues for kid related hardships. Naturally, I prefer this much more, but it is still rough. (Sidenote: the feeling of freedom I now have as a fatter, older, woman walking down the streets alone has been pretty mind-blowing for me. This is greatly reinforcing what I have read about the connection between a history of sexual abuse and obesity in women, and how many women gain weight as a means of protecting themselves. To appreciate my size for offering me protection is a real mental trip for me. End sidenote.) My kids are generally “easy” kids, or at least one of them is, but long airplane rides, adjusting to new time zones and new beds and new food, disruptions in nap routines, these things are all extremely challenging for anyone!
This is the full picture of traveling. It is the beautiful images of white sand beaches and jungle covered ruins and it is also the unseen hours spent in a bathroom convinced there is an alien in your stomach trying to free itself from the confines of your body. It is both. It is still 100% worth it to us, but it is most definitely not 100% fun and comfortable like so many traveling blogs would have you believe.
Challenges happen when you are traveling, with or without kids, and it is just as important to talk about those hard times as it is to talk about the idyllic stuff. The fact that parents are dealing with these challenges and are still stoked to be traveling is much more inspiring than the false imagery of perfection and ease. Traveling with kids takes an ability to find calm while in the middle of a shitstorm, it requires flexibility and a willingness to deal with some difficult moments along the way; sometimes that is easier to do than others but it is all part of the glorious picture of traveling with your family.
I put together a list of challenges you can expect if you’re thinking of traveling/worldschooling/living abroad with your family (in addition to those briefly listed above). It’s hard to voice traveling woes without sounding super privileged and ungrateful though so I just want to first recognize our privilege and express our gratitude for being able to travel with our family. We are so grateful.
Friendships.
By far the hardest thing for me about traveling is what it does to my friendships back at home. Friends start to pull away and it can be terribly lonely, confusing, and sad. This was true for me when I did my first big solo international trip when I was sixteen and it is true for me now, over twenty years later. I have done a lot of work on myself since I was sixteen, I am fundamentally a different person, but this dynamic with friends has remained the same. While I take a lot of responsibility for the state of my relationships there is something that happens when I travel that is bigger than me and not limited to me; I have talked about it with other travelers and it seems fairly universal.
There’s a whole heap of emotions that can get triggered when a friend travels. The ones I have personally felt include: envy (this is a BIG one that I’m guessing every traveler is keenly aware of), tension around the differences of wealth between myself and the friend, something along the lines of feeling left out or left behind, lots of different self-judgments and comparisons (i.e. they are better/more successful than me), and a general feeling of disconnect when a friend has an important experience far away that I know little about.
It can feel really shitty for the traveler in this situation too. It can feel like you can’t talk about fun or life-changing experiences with your friends without making them feel bad, which is painfully silencing. I have seen the amount of likes I get on facebook posts dramatically decrease in the past two months abroad; for whatever reason people just don’t want to hear about it anymore. So where does that leave me? Should I stop posting and become silent and invisible? Should I constantly downplay what an amazing journey we’re having? Should I just reconcile myself to being unseen by my friends during this period of time? What does that say about our friendship?
Another way I have felt the disconnect is with how little my friends are communicating with me. I am guessing many of them think that I’m on this ‘fantastic trip’ and don’t have space or time to receive the everyday-type texts they send when I’m at home. Texts about their recent parenting struggles, what they’re up to this week, what annoying thing their husband just did…the standard female friendship stuff. While it may feel to them like my exciting trips to rainforests and volcanoes means their news is less important to me, that is simply not true. I love them, I miss them, I want to hear about their lives! I want to get the same texts I do at home. I also want to be able to tell them about what I am doing without worrying that my joy will make them feel bad or that my challenges will be brushed off because I’m ‘in paradise on an amazing trip.’ My kids are still my kids, parenting abroad is still parenting, I need my mama friends.
This stuff is hard, traveling often feels like you’re walking on a very lonely road.
Adult Partnerships.
While brief romantic getaways can be beneficial for your relationship, traveling for an extended period of time with your kids can add some stress and strain to your relationship. Getting through airport travel with tight timelines, endless flights, long sleepless layovers, and all out sprints from one terminal to another terminal in an airport as big as a city with your arms about to fall off from carrying so many bags and children, is just the first hurdle to get through! Travel can bring up those personality differences that you have grown accustomed to and have strategized around at home. Just think about all the things you have negotiated over the years and know that you will most likely have to do that all over again in your new environment. You also won’t have the help you have at home, you won’t have your trusted babysitter, daycare, playdates with friends, grandparents that can watch the kids, the resources that make your life easier. When stress levels rise, the consequences often show up in your partnership.
Food.
It really depends on the country but having any diet restrictions, like being vegetarian like we are, can be difficult. While we can almost always get rice and beans in Latin America, that is often the only thing we can eat on a menu and I’m sure the beans we are given are frequently cooked in lard (I consciously choose ignorance with this one and don’t ask). In Southeast Asia we had to specifically say “no fish sauce” about five times with each order, it just isn’t thought of as being in the same category as meat. It can also be difficult to find the foods that you depend on and consistently eat at home. For instance, despite having a bakery on every block it is almost impossible to find bread in Costa Rica that isn’t white, soft, and flavorless and there are hardly any cheeses to be found besides a mild flavored white cheese. These things are staples in our household and were hard adjustments for us. It has also been surprisingly challenging to find local, organic fruits and vegetables. With kids that are picky eaters all of this can be exhausting.
Sexism, machismo, lack of women’s rights in many countries.
Self-explanatory.
Being seen as a rich foreigner; which you are.
If you are traveling to a developing country and/or a place with extreme poverty there is no way around this one. You have much more wealth and resources than many of the local people. Naturally, you will be seen that way. Locals will charge you more for things than they would other locals, people may be relentless in trying to sell you products and services, people may stop you in your path, get in your personal space--which can feel unsafe at times as a female traveler--and hustle you for money. Yesterday this guy made a little rose for my daughter out of a palm leaf, forced it into her hands acting as if it was a sweet gift, then turned to me and demanded to be paid for it; things like that are normal…and you really can’t fault them for any of it. You have enough wealth to travel. They are trying to survive. You should pay more for services and goods than locals. You can be fully aware of your privilege however, and it can still feel like shit. We have paid a lot of money for some tours recently in which we have felt like we were seen solely as a business transaction vs. actual human beings by the guides, it has felt remarkably unfriendly. AND, it is also totally understandable.
Kids getting needs of play met.
I had imagined my five year old would be able to find friends at the park to play with, I’ve seen so many beautiful pictures of worldschooling kids playing with new friends wherever they are. Sadly, that has not been the case for us. Our daughter Josie is a pretty shy kid with people she doesn’t know, add in the language barrier and she hasn’t played with one other kid since we got here despite many opportunities. This means her play needs either don’t get met or fall on her toddler brother (which has led to an increased bond between them but also more conflicts) or us parents. We can’t measure up to playmates her own age, we just can’t, and this has started to be a big source of guilt and concern for me. She is much more grumpy and reactive on this trip than she is at home and I think this is the primary cause.
Laundry:
if you have kids and are trying to travel light you need to do laundry often. We have yet to stay at a place with a washer and drier (including very nice places in Italy). We have no problem line drying, we dry our clothes on the line at home and prefer that for environmental reasons. However, it can be problematic when you only have a couple days in one area and can’t wait for things to dry, or if you’re in tropical area where it is so humid nothing ever seems to dry, or if you have a very limited amount of clothes (I had to put on wet underwear the other day ‘cause I didn’t have any that were dry and clean, yuck!). There are laundry services in many places, but then you end up needing to hand wash clothes that shouldn’t be put in the drier or things you don’t want other people dealing with like period undies. We spend an exceptional amount of time dealing with laundry.
Limited toys and books for the kids.
You only have what will fit in your suitcase or backpack, which isn’t much. We have had limited success getting books at libraries.
Different cultural expectations about touch.
It is very important to us to teach our daughter that she gets to decide when and if she wants to be touched. It is equally important to us to teach her that her appearance is not what defines her and is not as important as her character. This can be much harder in some countries. My kids have red hair and blue eyes, they are noticeable in Latin America. My daughter is constantly being touched by strangers in the street. People just reach out and touch her hair or cup her chin and get really close to her face and tell her how cute she is. In the states if someone touches her (which doesn’t happen often) I say, “please ask her first.” When people make comments about how cute she is in the States I usually respond by saying, “yeah but you should see how creative and intelligent she is, those are the things we’re proud of.” As a tourist in a foreign country with a different culture and language barriers, this is a lot more difficult to navigate. We have had many discussions about this with our daughter (my son is only a toddler) and have talked about how people are generally coming from a kind place, how it’s important to be polite and recognize cultural differences, but that if she feels uncomfortable at any point she still has every right to tell them to stop or she can physically move herself behind me or her dad and we will always support her decision. But it’s tricky.
Being another tourist in a sea of tourists.
Many tourists travel in ways we strongly disagree with, showing little respect for the country or people they are visiting. To be lumped in the same group with people like that can feel awful.
Being an environmentalist.
If you’re passing through a place it can be a challenge to figure out how to recycle or what the local rules are, and forget about composting. In Costa Rica everything comes with plastic, at the farmer’s market fruits and veggies are often wrapped in plastic, plastic bags are given when buying anything, and we haven’t been able to buy in bulk (using reusable containers) like we do at home. We actually do travel with reusable grocery bags and produce bags but we have still contributed more to the landfill in the past two months than the past two years at home.
Stray dogs.
I was once chased down by a pack of dogs in Bali, my sister is dealing with scary dogs in Macedonia, my husband just went for a run in Costa Rica and had to carry rocks because there were two aggressive dogs. It’s an issue.
Most other countries do not value efficiency or speed to the extent the US does. Sometimes it is a big positive to be forced to slow down; other times it’s incredibly annoying.
This shows up in lots of different ways. I was pretty shocked how hard it was to get information online when traveling to Italy. In the states most websites are designed to give information quickly, you can go to a hotel’s website for example and in a couple of clicks find out how much rooms cost and what is available. You can also expect a website for a big tourist attraction to have a “FAQs” page that would include info like if kids are allowed. I would spend hours online investigating attractions and places to stay in Italy and at the end still not have any clear information. It boggled my mind. And that’s in a developed country. Here in Costa Rica most businesses don’t have websites, the only way to find out about places is to walk around and go to them in person. Be prepared to spend a lot more time trying to access information.
Bad wifi and therefore lots of $$$ spent on data.
Since my hubby works remotely this is more than just a ‘staying up to date on Facebook and Instagram’ issue. We have been careful to pick airbnb’s that say they have fast wifi but have learned the hard way those descriptions are not to be trusted.
Childproofing.
We spend a lot of time combing through Airbnb’s looking for options that are most safe for our toddler and we still have to get creative with childproofing everywhere we go. We have also found some really cool places where we would love to stay but because of one unsafe design feature we have to pass on. We can do a lot by moving furniture around—we currently are using a barricade of chairs to block an open hallway that leads to a pool—but some things can’t be made safe. We have to stay much more vigilant than we do at home; we have to be constantly aware of where he is and what he is doing. It’s exhausting.
Expectations vs. reality.
There have been more than a few times my husband and I have been really excited to take our kids somewhere, sure that they are going to be stoked out of their little minds, only to be crushingly faced with unpredictable reality. For example, we paid a high ticket price to go to an animal rescue center in Costa Rica that we were absolutely certain would be a highlight of the trip. We got to see sloths and toucans up close! It was so cool! Our toddler however had zero interest in any animals that day (WTH??) and when we asked our daughter what she most liked about it, she said the chocolates from the gift shop. Oof.
Those are some of the issues we are facing on our trip. It has been a magnificent two months full of explorations, learning, and extraordinary sites. It has also been hard and draining and uncomfortable. Traveling for an extended period of time is not a long vacation from regular life, it is still parenting issues, relationship struggles, laundry…it’s just intensified and in new places. It is wonderful and challenging, it is both.
*** To follow our travels in real time, head to Instagram and find @organicallygrowing.
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