Growing Up on the Road

Fethiye, Turkey 2025

When we started on this journey, he was only six months old - our youngest one. Just a chubby baby, with his narrow hazel brown eyes observing the world cuddled in the wrap on my belly. I could inhale his smell with each breath I took, and at times it felt like he and I were just one.

It is funny to think back to when it was so physically challenging to be myself while traveling in new countries and embracing a whole unknown world. The intensity of those days—navigating unfamiliar landscapes with a tiny human literally attached to me—seems both impossibly distant and vivid in my memory.

By the time he could walk and talk, he had lived mostly traveling, not knowing where he was born or what country was his home. I often wondered what kind of child was emerging from this unconventional upbringing: one who always felt safe, always lived in the present moment of whatever surrounded him—sand under his feet, cheeks sun-kissed, jungle rain in his hair. I don't count countries or adventures we've embraced since we started, but all of a sudden, in the dawn of one more year around the sun for me, I realized how I don't have small kids anymore.

A new chapter has started, and somehow I found myself in the middle of it all: a preteen girl, a middle child wild nature fanatic, and him—always in wonder and always in awe. The dynamics have shifted beneath my feet almost without my noticing.

It is a completely new game, a new setup. Before, we could make decisions and drag them across the globe, and they would (for the most part) come along without complaints or input. Nowadays, everything is up in the air—there are arguments, ideas, proposals, joys, and disappointments. Our world spins in different directions—feels like more and more each day.

All of a sudden, I don't have a baby to wrap around my body, questioning where I end and he starts. Now I know for all three of them where they are and who they are becoming. I know myself too: observing, ever-changing, wondering, and living in my own awe.

What they have become since we started and where this journey has brought us all has been transformative. I am lucky enough to still be so present in their lives, to be able to listen to their heavy breathing in the night when they fall asleep, to feel their arms wrap around my body when they need a cuddle or sense of connection. I am here, and they are too—but so different from those early days.

Our travel days are now planned in a plenum. We vote and discuss, seeking after their needs rather than primarily our own as before. Now we travel to places where they have connections and friends; we travel for communities and our loved ones. The map of our journey is being redrawn by more hands than just mine.

I am gaining new insights all the time while also meeting my frustrations when I'm not able to see past their needs. The transition from being the sole navigator to a family council has been both beautiful and challenging.

Once it was so simple and straightforward. Once they were small and needy in ways I could easily understand and meet. Being a full-time traveler comes with its challenges, and those challenges have certainly evolved.

He is still small, they are still just children, but somehow it's all very different, so much more intense in a whole new way. The intensity has shifted from physical demands to emotional and social complexities.

They are still promising life close to us, still believing they will never move away. I take it all in, still believe their words, and at the same time know it might not be true. But as long as they are here and we change together, I am blessed and confident that we will always find our way—whether that's across oceans or just across the room from each other.

The journey continues, not just across landscapes but through the terrain of growing up and growing together. And perhaps that has always been the most important adventure of all.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​