The sinking ship that saved our lives
So we are 3 weeks away from our first adventure and I have to say, we as a family, have never been more excited. Every morning, our youngest, Aria, comes in and asks me, “Mommy, are we traveling today?” And my typical reply is, “No, baby, not today, we have a few more weeks.” This question is typically followed by a pouty lip and quickly remedied with the question, “Do you want some eggs for breakfast?” by me.
To avoid this daily banter, we created this calendar to help ease her mind:
Six months ago, if you would have told me that we would be selling everything we own to become full-time travelers, I would have looked you all kinds of crazy.
Rewind to 6 months ago
Six months ago, our lives were totally different. We lived in a much bigger house, in a nice neighborhood and were literally doing everything we could to keep our home. Due to a massive change in life priorities, we no longer could keep up with the payments of our home. Tim and I did everything short of illegal to keep our home and we were still drowning. Sadly enough, keeping this home had become our entire lives.
All we talked about was how to keep the home.
Making money to pay for the home.
How we wanted to paint the rooms, fix the backyard, remodel the kitchen.
This home has become a very unhealthy obsession that was quite literally sucking the life out of us, our happiness and our relationship.
So when we finally made the decision to walk away from that burden, it hurt like hell… I mean it was like breaking up with your first love kind of pain. This home represented so much for my husband and I that we felt like a huge piece of us was gone.
But as they say time heals all wounds and we quickly found ourselves in a position where we not only came up for air to breath, we were living life. Going out to eat for the first time in almost a year as a family, buying things that we desperately needed but always put on the back burner because this bill and that bill were more important and putting our kids in activities that we had been wanting to do for years.
Our sinking ship was the rescue raft that our life needed…
Fast forward to today
I thought we got rid of everything we didn’t need when we moved in July. Going from a 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath home to a 2 bedroom, 2 bath home teaches you how much unnecessary crap you can really accumulate over the years. But once we started packing for our travel adventure, I got a really good glimpse into how much stuff we didn’t touch in months but for some reason felt like we needed to have.
So we established this rule:
That included toys, gadgets, etc…
You would think our girls would be devastated over losing their massive collection of toys that Santa has brought them over the years but they were more than happy to give away the things they no longer played with to another kid in need.
I’m such a proud mommy…
We still have a ton of stuff to let go of. Living room set, clothes, electronics and the car, but I got to say, I have never felt more free in my life.
Once I let go of the idea/feeling that I needed to have these things in my life, it felt like a huge weight was lifted from me.
Our sinking ship from a few months ago prepared me to release the things I thought I needed to embrace the experiences I needed to grow.
And I am so ready to keep growing…
