Most popular question: How can you just leave your kids to go volunteer abroad?
It’s so selfish. I must be a cold hearted, disconnected mother. If you’re a mom and you are thinking of taking a trip on your own, you are probably the worst right? Yeah, no. I do not see it that way at all. In fact, even though my kids are not physically with me, they are a big part of these projects when I am volunteering in other countries, or anywhere really.
Let’s back the train up.
I was a young mother. It was not some grand master plan. Life just worked out that way and I have a pretty cool son. He is 11 now. His father and I didn’t jive well and it just was not meant to be but we both share equal custody of this kid that is turning out pretty awesome. Obviously, being a mom at 20 meant my dream of studying abroad was quite impossible. In fact, college in general was pretty difficult. I had to make some cash, fast…to support this baby. I threw myself into my career at the bank. It isn’t any child’s dream to grow up be a ba
nker but it offered an opportunity to utilize my strengths and is a pretty conducive career for motherhood. The truth is, before age 24, I had never really been on any trip or vacation, let alone leaving the United States. My family growing up just didn’t do things like that. Once I could purchase my own trip, I was pretty hooked on going whenever and where ever I could. I also wanted to be sure my kids had those experiences too. I married my husband and we had our daughter Addie. We both have similar philosophies on providing these experiences for our children.
Raising respectable adults who contribute to society.
I am no parenting genius. I make a ton of mistakes as a mom. I am sure my kids will tell me all the stories later. However, there is one thing that I have to believe is going right. My kids were collecting a lot of “stuff,” stuff from birthdays, grandparent random Tuesdays, and double trunk loads on Christmas from all sides of the family. Now for my son, that is like multiplied by 4 because he goes to holidays on both sides of his family, his dad’s and mine. It is crazy, out of control, and most of this crap just sits around without attention. We live in a nice suburb in a nice house and I just cannot have these kids growing up never wanting for anything and transforming into snobs.
We started volunteering locally with our children doing things to give back to our community. They think it’s fun and we were having a lot of conversations about what we were doing and why. We live in a snow tundra 70% of the year, so we started by adopting the houses of little old ladies (freaking adorable) to shovel their driveways and sidewalks when ever it snows. The kids make more a of mess than anything but the little ladies get so pumped when it snows because they know we are coming. They are socially isolated, with disabilities keeping them in the house. They have cookies ready for the kids on snow days and we go in to chat and warm up each time.
We expanded to cleaning up trash in parks and streets, packing food, and becoming buddies to people with mental disabilities. Anyways, this is not like…”oh, look at us. We are soooo wonderful.” …Mearly ideas if you are trying to find things kids can do to give back. Besides, this was just me trying to prevent them from growing up to be asshole yuppies right? The kids like it, most of the time. Sometimes, they just want to stay in and don’t want to shovel, but that is like 100% of all Minnesotans every now and then.
My son got to the age where he started making larger world issues observations, like people living in the parks that we were cleaning up. Why are we doing drills for school shootings? Why doesn’t everyone have food to eat? Mom, did you know some people do not have water to drink where their homes are? He is a sensitive kid and pretty observant of other people’s emotions, more of an empath than his mother for sure. I felt like this was a small success that he is a pre-teen looking outside himself and wondering what he could do.
Things are all happening at once.
It took a little convincing to get my husband to think beyond our annual all-inclusive in Cancun, but I got him to 
about doing Europe. We were planning this thing last minute and we had our agent give us 3 options. Two were typical and one was odd to us: Croatia. We did not know much about Croatia and it checked off some boxes for me. I wanted to NOT be a tourist, but do what locals do, go to local spots. We did an 
experiencial, small group literally called, Live Like a Local. It was like 6 people, all our age and we dug in. It was amazing and that was it for me. I needed more of that. Our parents took our kids for 14 days while we were gone. The kids were busy and loved it. We video called them a lot and showed them things and they learned about about Croatia, although they weren’t physically there.
Right about then, I was visiting a bank client, who happened to be an organization that sets up study abroad semesters for colleges and volunteer abroad projects. At home, I was really ramping up my volunteer activities locally. I have this cool leader at work that is into being a “Net-giver in life,” (you know who you are, shout out!) and I was pretty inspired to do as much as I can for others. It felt good, I was learning a ton, and it was a cool thing for our family to share. Anyways, this organization, World Endeavors from Minneapolis MN, had this secret affair going, where I creeped on their website like every day, reading every corner of it and wondering why I didn’t do all those sweet things when I was “young enough.” I joked with their staff one day asking, “Why don’t you do these things for people who are old now, ha. Ha.”
You aren’t old Rachael and we do send adults all over. You need to do this.
And so I did. I talked to my husband, who has never told me no to anything really but I was sups nervous about asking for this. I talked to my kids. They thought it was cool. I chose a country that I thought I would never in my life every get to on my own, Thailand. (It’s super far and I HATE flying, another story). This was definitely out of my comfort zone. My kids and I started watching every Youtube, documentary, and other videos on Thailand, Buddism, culture and food. It was fun! They liked seeing animals, and animals Thai people were eating (see my video of me eating bugs).
My daughter was learning Thai with me and loved showing her dad how much she knew. We would listen to language audio lessons in the car and it is crazy how fast little kids pick up on that stuff. We were all getting ready for my solo trip.
I am not going. I cannot do it.
I would love to talk a big game but I was literally sobbing while packing and telling my husband I couldn’t do it. How could I leave my kids? Am I the worst mother ever? Who does this? Is this a mid-life crisis? I was b
alls deep in asking myself all of the questions every person around me was asking when I told them about this project. I packed my bags anyways but I went to sleep that night not sure if I was going to get on the plane. I think my husband was more irritated more than anything at that point. We had been talking about nothing but Thailand for months. It was booked. This was going to happen, if he had to leave my ass at the airport. I was showering the next morning and convinced myself that this was pivitol moment in my life where a quote I saw was never going to be more relevant. “If it excited you and scares the hell out of you, it will change you. Do it.”
This is happening.
I thought my husband would stop me but he didn’t. He didn’t even really say goodbye. He stresses out in airport traffic but also, I knew he didn’t want to make this a THING. I would be back soon. I got on the plane. I video called my kids and husband every 12 hours every day I was there. It was exactly a 12 hour difference so we just did 8AM and 8PM. I had specifically chosen September because they went back to school and sports. They were busy and hardly noticed. I got to talk to them before school and recap their days at night (their time). I made sure each time we had our call time set, I was somewhere cool and would show them all kinds of things. My hus
band got videos and pictures all day and they would sit together and look at everything. Teachers were emailing me to say the kids were presenting to their classmates all kinds of things they were learning about Thai culture.
Human Trafficking is despicable.
This is definitely a deep topic and I will for sure talk about this more in another post but I want to touch on this is relation to my son. I was in Thailand working on at a non-profit that rescues and protects victims of trafficking. My daughter is in the clouds and there is no way she could fathom this, I mean, who can? My son is older and he and I video chatted about this a lot. I didn’t going into heinous details but I told him about parents who sold their children to be in slavery, the bad ass chicks I worked with that gave everything they had to these girls, and the work his mom was doing. He understood enough to know why it was so important that I was there. I remember a conversation I had with him while I was in Thailand and feeling torn about missing my family but not knowing how I could leave these girls here. He thanked me for what I was doing, my 11 year old son. Be still, my heart.
IDGAF.
I don’t particularly give a shit if someone thinks I am selfish or a cold hearted mother for volunteering abroad anymore. I don’t think about it. My kids are doing great work at their level at home. They learn all about new cultur
es with me in preparation and even learn new languages. They know what their mother is doing and why I am there. Other people need us and we can help, so we should. I have also made a big point to show them travel and experiences is way cooler than more Legos. My son is begging to go on his first volunteer abroad trip with me. It’s a contagious family affair and these poor kids will be wanderlust junkies too, just like their mother.
You must experience the world FIRST. Mother’s orders.
People look at me super weird when I say this but I am going to try to do my darnest to make my kids take a year off after high school graduation to go backpacking before they go to college. In some European countries, this is required and I think it is genius. I have been saving money to fund their year abroad. I just want them to buy a one way ticket, open their minds, see some shit, and meet all kinds of people. They have all of their lives to be responsible adults. It is the best gift I can think of giving to my two favorite humans. Plus, maybe their old Ma will have to meet up for a bit.
What do you think about that? Is it a terrible idea?
