Growing confidence to live on the road with kids

If there was any 1 piece of advice that I would like to impart on the world, it would be to travel.
Travel will change you. Traveling into the heart of other communities will change you more. Pushing yourself into nature and beyond your own boundaries will change you even more. Traveling with kids will be your transformation.

Back then…

I suppose my mom normalized traveling as a kid, a week spent in Vermont with family; traveling to Florida to visit grandma and grandpa for a week or two at 2 and 6 years old. My true passion lay during my first camping trip. It was what would become my stepfather and mothers first date. As a single mother with a child that desperately wanted to see a pow wow, she convinced this new man in our lives to take us to Manitoulin Island for a long weekend when I was 7.

That memory presses on in my heart as something that moved my very soul and grew a curiosity for other cultures, people and places.

You see I grew up in Toronto, my mom was a single mom and we had very little money. She had a passion for travel, but our funds were limited so we didn’t get to do much.  We didn’t have a car, so travel was always reliant on someone else.

As I grew up I desperately wanted to see the world and so I excelled in school and registered myself for 2 different exchange programs in high school. One that took me to France for 3 months when I was 14 and one that took me to Japan when I was 16. These experiences were fundamental to my growing up. Living inside families from other countries helped me to grow up seeing how similar we were as humans. It instilled a level of trust in my fellow human being.
I’m so grateful for those experiences I had. So when my deep desire to visit Africa finally came into the realm of possibility I wasn’t afraid and jumped at the chance. This took me to Zimbabwe for 2 months after I graduated from University at 23 years old.

This was Asia

Then life was just not heading in the direction I envisioned. So at the age of 26, I set out again. This time for Korea as an English teacher for a year, which allowed me the opportunity to visit Thailand, Malaysia, Japan again for 3 days and Taiwan.

At the end of that trip which I had been dreaming of since I was in grade 9, I had to take emergency surgery where they removed an ovary. I continued on my journey after that, but the universe pushed me home to Canada. I went back to school for nursing and hoped someday I would be able to return to the world.

Home country Canada

6 years later, having to quit nursing school in my second last semester and the confusion that followed that would lead me to myself, my future husband and the next opportunity I had to travel. It was a trip that would have me meet my biological father for the first time. It was something I had longed for my whole life and it terrified me, it’s magnitude. It’s amazing how deep desires stay with you until they are fulfilled. No matter how many times I had ventured in some other direction, my father and Vancouver Island, BC, Canada had pulled me. So in March 2015 my cousin and I set out on a 17,000km road trip around North America. We visited friends and family we hadn’t seen in years and it was such a special experience to share my journey with so many people I loved.

It had been a long road to feeling safe on the road. It had been a long road to feeling safe in nature. We believed the universe would take care of us.
With my cousin, Britt’s savvy camping skills and my savvy people skills, we had very few hiccups in our way.
It culminated in us staying with my Godparents (who I hadn’t seen since I was 8) for a week and me meeting my biological father for the first time in my life.

Longing and wishes

I got closer to nature that trip than I had ever been before. I made peace with so much of the wildness in my soul. When I returned to Ontario, my deep longing to be on the west coast of Canada simply deepened and I told my boyfriend James that I still wanted to live there one day.

3 years, 2 kids and never making more than a couple of thousand dollars a month in wages. Later I had let go of my dreams of traveling, of moving out west. But, the longing in my heart remained, as it does. When my partner suggested we might be better off surviving in a warmer climate, and maybe Vancouver Island was a smart plan, I jumped at the inspiration.

35 years of being in the world gave me the strength to believe that I could do this with my 2 young children. My mom was a huge world traveler before I was born. Sadly, other than a few trips as a young kid to visit family in the US, she had never done much traveling since.

I had never heard the stories of turkey or Greece or Mexico in the 70s. I had never known that part of her.  It had occurred to me that something that might have contributed to her death was her loss of passion for life. Her loss of partnership with the world at large, and the fear of having a kid and traveling.

It was my promise to myself that I wouldn’t have kids until I knew I would stay true to my spirit. Ensuring that I would embody what I wanted them to become in their lives. I had always said, you have to follow your own dreams to teach your kids to follow theirs. Without your own dreams, you are embodying the idea that they don’t count and can’t be realized.

The bus story

It’s been a long road embracing the circumstances that pushed us into our present situation, and it’s not easy in every facet of the word. But on the summer solstice of 2018, my now husband and I, a 2-year-old and a 5-month-old, a 21-year-old dog and a 10-year-old dog set forth into the mystic in a 40‘, 1996 International School Bus named Optimistic Prime, destination Vancouver Island.
We jumped, with only a couple thousand dollars in our bank accounts, and a guaranteed income of roughly 1800$/month from parental leave. We crossed our fingers and put our faith in the universe to take care of us. To get us here safely. I believed that if this longing was aligned with my highest purpose, then whatever came would lead me to the life I longed for as a kid.

The universe took care of us. I drove Optimistic Prime across the entire continent, the entire country, to a place where we could survive the winter.
We have now been living in the bus for almost 9 months. Now, finally, we moved to a property where we feel safe enough to start growing roots in the community. 1 year almost to the day that the bus showed up on Kijiji.
I struggle every day with how much it takes to be a mother, a wife, a woman while essentially camping. But, I know when I look back on these days I will regret nothing. This experience has been the culmination of every experience before. I am so grateful that I always pushed myself before I had kids so that I knew I was ok on my own. I would be ok with two tots doing the same thing.
Being in nature for so many months has deepened my reverence for the Earth and for my deep passion for balance and peace in the world. When you travel you rely on others. You interact with so many people you would otherwise never have met. It expands your understanding of the unity we have as humans. We are all the same, just trying to take care of ourselves and our families.

How this adventure influenced us

This adventure has deepened my relationship with my husband, in pushing us in every direction and loving each other despite our limitations, we compliment each other and have the ability to step up where the other falls short.

We don’t know where the next year will take us, and I have dreams of having a house that we can call our own, and building the bus out to be more comfortable, but wherever the journey takes us, I believe in the kindness of strangers and that the earth truly is a mother to us all. I know in my heart that this time spent with my kids at such a young age has created a foundation in their beings that will help them survive whatever the future holds. Whether they remember or not it has given them a level of connection to the universe; to taking care of ourselves/themselves with very little resources, to survival and, to feel safe on and with the Earth.

Perhaps it was growing up in a city until I was 12. Or, my mother’s death when I was 20, but I have struggled to feel safe in life. I suffer from anxiety and depression.  Pushing myself to be comfortable in those feelings, to love myself and my desires, to honor the little kid in my heart. All these have built a level of confidence in me, that at 36 I still believe anything is possible. I have some very lofty dreams of building space to help others like us, of community, and personal self-expression, and peace with the Earth and ourselves. I believe it is possible.

We are only going to change the world and create peace if we learn to forgive and accept ourselves and follow our little kid hearts into the mystic.

About the author

Amanda Archer, a Canadian traveler who is now on cross Canada trip in a school bus with her family.

Amanda’s story is a great inspiration for those who want to dare and travel, also with kids. Dealing with nature, the present and the past. Pursuing dreams.

You can follow the journey with “Optimystic Prime” school bus through the following media’s:

Instagram account:

https://www.instagram.com/OptimysticPrime/

Facebook account:
https://www.facebook.com/OptimysticPrime/