My Nomadic Family Has Traveled to 12 Countries — Here Are 12 Lessons We Take with Us Everywhere
I’ve always been an avid traveler, so in October 2025 when I told my children (ages 5 and 10) that I wanted to travel the world with them, they didn’t bat an eye. This wasn’t our first rodeo, after all. In 2017, before my youngest was born, my eldest and I did a tour of Europe that included Italy, France, Denmark, and Spain for three months. Since then, I’ve taken both kids to Mexico, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Jamaica. My kids are well-traveled, so they know what to expect.
This time the plan was to travel indefinitely (we had no return date) and to go wherever we fancied. So I purchased one-way tickets to Bangkok, Thailand, for my two kids and me, and we left Dad behind at our home base of 10 years — Atlanta, Georgia — because he has a career that is location-dependent. I felt like I was leaving home behind as my kids and I trekked across the world.
We ended up being abroad for five months and traveled across southeast Asia to places like Chiang Mai and Rayon, Thailand, and Bali, Indonesia. I figured that we would travel until we got homesick, but our travels around the world showed me that home is portable — along with many other teachings. Here are 12 lessons about motherhood that no travel guide or parenting book could have taught me.
1. Home is a ritual, not a specific place.
Every morning, no matter what country we woke up in — Thailand, Mexico, Bali, Costa Rica — we turned on our playlist, had fruit and yogurt, and made warm tea. Having a kitchen was non-negotiable everywhere we stayed, and while the kitchen would change every few weeks, our ritual never did. That consistency became the signal: We’re home. Home can be found in routine.
2. Your kids will show you what actually matters.
My daughter has three things that go on every bedside table within minutes of arriving somewhere new. Her teddy bear, favorite book, and a pretend makeup kit. I watched her do it in a guesthouse in Chiang Mai, and realized she had already figured out something I was still learning: Home can be found in small mementos.
3. Kids don’t need a common language to make friends.
Every country has playgrounds. They all work the same way. In Bali, Mexico City, and Bangkok, my kids would find other kids within an hour. No shared words necessary. The barrier adults warned us about? The kids never noticed it. Home can be found in common interests.
4. A comfort object is a portable home.
My son, who has been traveling since he was 3 months old, never got homesick. He has four items that have to go with him: his autographed copy of The Diary of a Wimpy Kid, his binder of Pokémon cards, his Beyblades, and Scout, his teddy bear. Scout has been on every road trip and plane adventure we have ever had as a family. He mentioned missing other things when we were leaving on our big adventure, but the more we traveled, the less he seemed to miss his “things” and the more he seemed satisfied with what he did have.
5. Kids learn everywhere, not just in a classroom.
My kids are being educated by worldschooling, which is the practice of using travel, real-world experience, and everyday life as the primary classroom. By the time my kids were navigating airports on their own, they understood boarding sequences, baggage claim, currency exchange, and how to read a departure board in a language they didn’t speak. They follow a regular K-12 curriculum and meet with tutors virtually every week, but the real education happens in the living and doing.
6. Most of what you’re managing is just noise.
I packed light — just two kids and two suitcases — because I like to buy clothes from each place that we travel. Kids are constantly growing, so I buy that season’s clothes in the country we are living in and donate whatever no longer fits, and move on. By traveling with less, I realized there was a low-level anxiety I’d carried with me for years. It was connected to rooms full of things I was organizing, maintaining, and stepping over all of the time. As soon as it was just my kids, a few bags, and me, it lifted. That was a surprise.
7. Stability is a feeling, not a floor plan.
When we got to Bali, three months into our travels, I was lying in a villa looking out at a rice field and felt calmer than I had in years. My kids were safe. We had food and a roof. We didn’t have anywhere to be. I realized that what I’d been chasing in square footage, I’d already had. Stability travels — you just have to stop mistaking furniture for being grounded.
8. A playlist can be home, too.
We had the same Spotify playlists running across all 12 countries. My kids knew what was happening by what they heard — morning music meant breakfast, wind-down music meant we were settling in for the night. In the middle of the unfamiliar, the playlist was the signal: We’re here, we’re okay, this is us.
9. Moms absorb the chaos so their kids don’t have to.
On a flight from Bangkok to Istanbul, a passenger became physically aggressive after I reclined my seat — kicking, shoving, making the flight miserable. I was alone with both kids and stuck. My son knew something was wrong but stayed calm because I did. My daughter never knew what was happening.
10. Your kids are watching how you handle not knowing.
Traveling in foreign countries means living in the unknown. Missed buses, wrong turns, and menus in languages we couldn’t read. Every time my kids asked what we were going to do, I said, “I don’t know, but let’s figure it out together.” That answer became a lesson.
11. Motherhood is already nomadic — and home is wherever you decide it is.
I didn’t realize before I became a mom, but every developmental stage is a relocation of sorts. I’d experience a new child, a new school, a new version of who they are, and none of it came with a handbook. What travel made clear is that I already knew how to land somewhere new and make it feel like ours. I’d been doing it all along. My kids have my heart. Which means wherever we are, I am home.
12. What you thought you’d miss and what you actually missed were never the same thing.
Before we left in October, I grieved leaving our house behind — even if it was just temporarily. I thought I would miss the familiarity and the routine of home. What I actually missed, once we were gone, was simpler and smaller than any of that: a specific coffee shop where the barista knew my order, Sunday morning farmers markets, the way the afternoon light hit a particular window in our house. Not the stuff or the square footage.
My family and I traveled off and on for nine years, setting out across the world without an end date to our travel, and returning to our home base when we needed to. This time, we returned home when global war tensions decided for us. We’re resettled now, back in a fixed address with walls and a zip code. But I write these lessons looking back, and what I know is this: The road didn’t take anything from us. It gave us a language for what home actually means. And whenever we’re ready, we’ll go again.