Moving From My Adventure Era to My Mom Era and Keeping Travel as a Priority

Would my travel life disappear if I had kids? How could I keep traveling with kids? These were the internal questions I experienced for years before deciding if becoming a mom was right for me. In this article I’ll share my experience of transitioning from My Adventure Era to My Mom Era while keeping my travel identity. 

By Morgan Newsom

@morgannewsomphoto

“Traveler” has been one of my titles since I was sixteen and took that first step onto foreign soil. As what happens to so many people…you either hate it and head straight home, or love it and start chasing passport stamps. I was hooked. Luckily, I found a partner that was just as travel hungry as me, and we made a few extra vows when we got married. Some vows were traditional like “through richer or poorer, until death do us part,” but some were more unique like “wherever you go I will go,” a “vow to voyage,” and to always be companions in life. We sealed the deal and our first year of marriage with a yearlong honeymoon backpacking around the world. Travel is a huge part of us as individuals and as a couple; it’s part of our identities. 

Before getting married, David and I discussed having kids, and at that point, we both said we wanted to be parents someday. But there were things we wanted to accomplish and have in place first. Society and what other people said led us to believe that once you have kids the travel fun is over, trips whittle away to one-week vacations during the summer, the norm is dropping thousands of dollars at Disney World, or simply that we’d never leave our town again because the kids’ schedules would take over with school/practice/playdates. So with this impending sacrifice and life change in mind, we made a list of things we thought needed to be done in order to be kid-ready. 

First was a list of destinations that we deemed not kid-friendly or more on the adventurous side, but that we still wanted to see in our adventure and backpacking era. India and its street stalls, urban jungles and actual jungles, spicy foods and Delhi belly, living on dollars a day, hopping trains with the locals, a country that attacks your senses in the most vibrant ways. But with a sleepy infant or a picky eater? Pass. New Zealand and its freestone rivers, fly-fishing or hiking a mountain range every day for three months.

But living out of a car with one person was already enough; I can’t imagine four of us camping out of the Subaru, even after Cars Protection Plus gave it a once-over. Other destinations that didn’t make our kid-friendly list included: fishing backwaters in Colombia, hiking Machu Picchu, Morocco by bus, completing the Camino de Santiago in Spain, and slow boats down the Mekong River in Laos, among other destinations.

In addition to working through our travel list, we wanted to feel secure in things like monthly finances, savings and having an emergency fund, purchasing a house, and career goals. David and I both started our own companies and any entrepreneur will tell you that the first two years are the hardest and the business is your baby. We were trying to be responsible and make the right adult moves before adding kids to the mix. Before we knew it, seven years of marriage had passed.

At this point the question of “Do we want to have kids?” resurfaced. We were comfortable with it being the two of us. We were successful and things were coming easily in our careers and finances. We were still enjoying our exotic trips together. We were accomplishing the pre-kid list but had our hearts changed about being parents? We discussed possibly not being able to conceive, we discussed adoption, we watched friends go through IVF and miscarriages, we watched friends go through joy but also heartache, and the many ways that families are created. Did we want to grow a family? Were we ready to make those life changes?

With this question on my mind I also started to challenge some of the perspectives that other people said to me regarding traveling and kids. Things like “It’s too hard, too expensive, not safe, too dangerous, won’t have the time and too busy.” In response to their Debbie Downer comments I started creating my own questions for my little fictitious family:

• What do we want our family values to be?
• How do I want travel to foster growth and individuals in my family?
• Will the kids blend into the family unit or will I cater everything towards them?
• Are our finances aligned and do we feel grounded about money?
• Have we reached some career goals or are we always moving the goal to the next thing?
• What are we willing to delay until the kids are older and able to join: specific destinations, hobbies, or activities that need to be age-appropriate?
• How will my definition of “adventure” change?
• How can I keep my travel identity and priority intact when other responsibilities and roles will change?

Then, not only did motherhood come knocking…she plowed me over with twin boys and a complicated pregnancy. One week after leaving the NICU, Cooper and Sawyer saw the ocean for the first time. And they slept for most of the eight-hour drive. We’ve had our good trips and bad trips over the last few years, but the end is always worth it, and I know that I’m giving them things in life that some people will never have: an understanding of the world, an appreciation for different cultures, an adventurous heart, and a curious soul.

We have kept travel as a priority in our lives with big plans but also small practices. Each year we plan a 2-3 week international trip for January (David and I started this when we got married), and it’s a time for us to reconnect going into the new year. This year Cooper and Sawyer will spend their third birthday in Costa Rica, their fourth country to visit. We practice simple foreign phrases at home, and they love to mimic our “hellos” and “goodbyes” in Spanish, French, Japanese, and Italian. We regularly eat ethnic foods, and the twins try everything. We plan on worldschooling as a way to support the value of travel, but right now we are reading and having lots of conversations about animals and places we will see on our upcoming trips. For big plans, we are looking forward to living abroad 3-6 months a year in the future and mapping out a huge continental U.S. road trip. Our extended family has finally warmed up to the idea of us toting the boys around foreign countries, and we often remind them why travel is important and why we need to go. It’s been teaching moments for all of us.

Whether you’re thinking about having kids or not, you have a newborn at home that wants to be fed every 2.5 hours, or grown kids forming their own ideas about the world, you can have both motherhood and travel. We should always support other women and their love of travel no matter what era of life they are in. Adventure to me now looks like the twins’ first time on a subway, their first time standing under a waterfall, or encountering a tree frog, bison, or wolf in a national park. Our adventures have become slower-paced, but they still exist. I’m seeing fewer late night bar scenes, but seeing more sunrises and afternoon siestas. I may have added “mom” to my list of titles, but I didn’t delete “traveler.” There is space in our family for both kids and travel. It will always be part of my identity, and I hope you can create a path that feels aligned with your life dreams too.

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About Me

Find her on Instagram at @morgannewsomphoto and on her website www.morgannewsom.com.

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