When Blythe Berube Rowan ’92 and her husband, Christopher,  decided to travel the world for a year with their two young sons, age three and eight, they put everything they owned in storage and left home with no real plan or itinerary. Ms. Rowan, who has always had what she describes as a “deep and unyielding wanderlust” was excited to embrace the experience of traveling with her children, who were open to every experience. “Life just makes more sense to me out here in the greater landscape,” she wrote in an email for our interview series. Read more below about the family’s experience abroad, with all the joys and challenges that came with their decision.

What made you and your husband decide to put everything into storage and travel the world for the past year?

Ahh, a question with many answers. There were a host of reasons and life events that led up to this decision, but I’ll offer just a couple here.

I’d spent years longing to travel the world with my children. It was important to me to get to see the world through their eyes and hearts. People often wait until their children are older or feel that their children can just travel when they are adults…but then, like me, they are traveling with years of indoctrination and bias about the world and its people. I wanted to see the world from their innocent perspectives, and I wanted that to be their first experience with seeing the world too. I wanted them to cultivate a sense of wonder and easy curiosity within themselves about culture and people and the planet that would carry them through their lives. This was something I wanted to share with my children rather than waiting for them to be out of the house and on their own. It was the way I wanted to experience the world as well.

Continue reading →