Can a desire for adventure co-exist with a longing for home?

Reflections and questions after a weekend of travel and how this craving to explore more, and yet build strong roots, is playing out in my season of Motherhood...

Hello lovely one,

What is on your heart today? How are you feeling?

I have just returned from a long weekend away in Germany for a family wedding. We stayed in a little town about an hour outside of Hamburg called Stade - it was full of beautiful doors (magical portals), cobbled streets, mystical looking bridges and reflections on water - it nourished my soul in ways I didn’t know I had been missing.

I had no plans for my writing this week and part of me wanted to skip it entirely because I seem to have more questions than answers right now. But as I wrote I realised that the medicine — as always — is in the exploration, so today’s writing is devoted to this question…

‘How, as a Mama, do I dance with the deep desire to plant roots and create a home for my family AND satisfy this innate NEED to explore and seek adventure out in the world?’

Magical doors to other realms

The reality of travel with small children

Traveling with children is not the same as traveling without them… and the quicker you sink into acceptance of this, the more likely it is that you will actually enjoy your experience.

It has taken me two children and 4.5 years to land here.

This weekend there were no leisurely long lunches, lie-ins or spontaneous late night dance parties… however there was a richness in the experience.

I have come to realise that the medicine is… minimal expectation AND an openness to simply being fully present to what rises in each and every moment. When I remember these things then actually there is a depth to the experience and a chance to see the world through an inquisitive and truly magical lens.

EVERYTHING has the potential to excite and expand these little souls’ awareness. A supermarket visit (I am a sucker for a foreign supermarket), a train ride (complete with cancellations and delays), a walk under a bridge (billy goat gruff anyone?) a statue… different flowers… steps up and down… railings that can be wonderful things to swing on… children have the ability to turn the things we don’t ‘see’ into imaginative games and hours of entertainment.

While I packed a fair few activities for the girls - most of them went un-touched. A wonderful reminder of the magic of ‘boredom’ or space to make up play.

Knowing myself well enough by now

I won’t pretend I didn’t feel a little stressed and overwhelmed in the lead up - purely because I like to be as prepared as possible. I would love to be that Mother who can just go with the flow but I know myself well enough by now to understand that I need an element of organisation. (You can’t take the Virgo out of me!)

Another layer to this is Vesper’s food allergies. I packed cartons of oat milk, a gluten free loaf of bread and plenty of pre-packaged snacks so I could relax knowing that we had some items for her.

I know what I need to feel the most calm and grounded possible - which of course ripples out to the entire family.

This means…

• Leaving with plenty of time to get to the plane, or train, or whatever mode of transport we are taking.

• Ensuring that both girls have plenty of healthy snack options with us (I have two of these that I fill with different little things to keep them occupied - saviour on the flight and when moving around).

• Also ensuring food is factored in for me — if I am hangry it is not a good recipe for calm travel.

• When possible choosing flight times that give us spaciousness. For example we travelled on Thursday for the wedding on Saturday which gave us a day to settle, explore and suss out all the locations we would need to be on the day.

• Writing a full list several weeks before we go and meticulously checking off things as they are packed.

My husband knows this - and although he is definitely more inclined to leave things a little more last minute, he accepts and understands me (after over 20 years together).

When I have as many of these things as possible in place I can relax and hold space for everyone else - it also means that when things don’t go to plan - I am more settled and able to hold us all through that too.

Moments of fun with a statue and cobbled streets

When did the world became so small?

I asked on my Instagram stories whether other Mother’s feel the same as me — do others have this inner turmoil between a deep desire for travel and a strong craving for creating home as well?

It seems from the responses that I am definitely not alone in this predicament and that made me feel a little more soothed.

A few months ago I took a trip to London - without children - for a date day with my husband. It was the first time we had been alone together in a long time, and the first time I had left my little bubble at home since before Vesper was born.

At first I felt like a stranger to my husband, to myself and to this big vast world that I had forgotten about.

I kept asking myself… when did my world become so small?

It felt extemely confronting - I was wobbly and exposed as I met this part of me that had been dormant for a very long time. Not just since the birth of Vesper, but really since the birth of Sophia in 2019.

Thanks to the pandemic we lost not only time, but also the opportunity to gain confidence in the wider world. So as I started to settle into a day in London I started to feel more at ease, but also saddened at how much I had ‘missed’. That day in London was a wake up call as my eyes opened to the sights around me and I felt a little piece of me waking up and coming alive.

People. Places. Sights. Sounds. Food. New experiences…

I realised I had been starving myself of it… and I was ravenous!

Early morning reflections from the river in Stade, Germany

A loss of opportunity?

My eldest is starting school in September. The year when I was pregnant with her I traveled to Austria, Cornwall, Portugal and Spain… and I imagined that by the time she began school we would have had many, many foreign adventures by now.

The reality is that much of that time was swallowed by restrictions. On one hand it was easier because we didn’t have to stretch out our wings, but it is also something I feel as a sense of loss as we edge towards the container of school holidays. I do know that we have choices here and there is always a possibility to travel once school begins, but it will be way more up-rooting.

I also know that the reality of traveling and exploring with children — and my little vision of staying in the jungle and watching the children run barefoot round nature — is likely a bit of a romantic notion that in reality would be harder than Instagram makes it look.

BUT… I cannot seem to shake off this deep, deep longing to see the world with my family…

WHILE ALSO…

… needing and wishing for our home to be as we would like it, renovations complete, and a firmly rooted place for us to live and form the centre of our lives.

The BOTH/AND of life forever present.

This weekend in Germany I remembered…

…my passion for finding little restaurants and sampling food from other countries. Both myself and my husband are major foodies and it was always ‘our thing’ to go to lovely restaurants before having children. Sharing food with my family makes my heart happy.

…how much I adore being in a town before it ‘wakes up’. Being up early with the girls meant we were wandering the streets before shops and even some cafes opened up. I feel like you see a different side to places when you are viewing it before the bustle begins. It really is a special kind of magic.

…the simplicity of getting a little bit ‘lost’ and just following a pathway because it looks interesting. With time to just walk and explore we found alleyways with pretty doorways, bridges over small canals and pathways with wild flowers. It filled up my curious soul.

…a slower pace suits my nervous system. Walking with small children means you don’t get anywhere particularly fast - and the benefit of that is that there is time to truly look around and notice things. While there is so often a need to ‘get somewhere’, there is something about being away and in a new space that brings a slower pace that really, really suits me.

…that I need rhythms, but not rigid structures. We let the children guide us to a rhythm that worked for them instead of trying to enforce a specific timescale. This meant a half hour nap in the sling ‘earlier’ than normal for Vesper instead of her 1.5 hour ‘lunchtime nap’, a dance-off in the square ‘way past bedtime’ because they were having so much fun, ice creams, snacks at strange times and contact naps on the plane. And you know what… everything was fine! I can get a little too attached to timed structures - and this trip showed me that we can loosen the grip on them and I felt liberated as a result.

…the parts of me that need to see new perspectives in order to feel full. Full of inspiration. Full of joy. Full of excitement. Full of hope. Full of my SELF. I had forgotten just how much traveling, and exploring new places gives me life force and ironically makes me feel more at home.

And so this is where the question from the start comes from…

‘How, as a Mama, do I dance with the deep desire to plant roots and create a home for my family AND satisfy this innate NEED to explore and seek adventure out in the world?’

How?

A treasured moment from our trip…

Holding duality

While there is this deep longing for travel and adventure, I also know that having a home is important to me and I adore that I am creating a space for the girls to grow up in, with roots planted in an area that I have lived my whole life.

I long for walking along a faraway beach at sunset AND I dream of the kitchen we will build here and the feasts we will share together.

I crave exploring distant landscapes and new-to-me streets AND I can’t imagine not walking the familiar path to my local lake on an almost daily basis.

I need mountain views, and seascapes, sandy toes with sunshine AND I wouldn’t want to lose the way the light creeps through our bedroom blinds every morning to remind us that the sun is rising.

The duality seems almost impossible to hold… but maybe it isn’t? Maybe I can hold them both? Can I? Can we?

How do we co-exist with these both/and pieces internally?

I don’t have an answer… do you?

Landing home

Re-anchoring myself is a practice I have always made sure I make space for when I return from travel. The integration is vital.

After the practical bits of our trip were done - the unpacking and the washing loads put on, a food shop delivered and a night’s sleep for everyone (well except me because… well we all know by now that full nights are a thing of the past for me in this season). I dropped my eldest at pre-school, my youngest was with her Nanny, emails answered and my head wrapped around creative tasks for the week…

Time for me to land.

I made myself a cup of Cacao (I am currently using this one which is so soft and mellow and I have really come to love it), I took my shoes off and walked around my garden to land back here.

Even though we were only away from Thursday to Monday so much has changed.

The first rose that blooms is transitioning from a tight green bud to show it’s coral pink petals. The sunflower seedlings that Sophia and I planted have grown at least an inch. The lilac is finished and the apple blossom is coming towards the end. The primroses have vanished and the bluebells are in their final days. The ferns that were in a tight spiral have unfurled and expanded.

The earth felt warm.

I sat. I breathed. I let my muscles relax.

I took the first sip of my cacao and her warmth settled into my heart space - an instant sense of softening.

I am home. Perhaps for the first time in a long, long time. Not because I am in my physical home, but because something within me has been remembered. I don’t know exactly what it is, but I feel it.

It feels good to be here AND I am already dreaming of places I am yet to see.

Landing back with Mama Cacao and the garden at home

Maybe this writing was simply about embracing the multi-dimensional pieces of me and allowing them to co-exist? Maybe it was about returning to wholeness and calling back the fragments of my soul that have been scattered in the chaos and wildness of Motherhood? Maybe it is yet another piece of my soul-puzzle just slotting gently back in to place?

How do the words feel for you?

Until next time…

With so much love,

Lauren

xxx

I am extremely honoured to be part of the lineup for the incredible Mental Health & Motherhood Virtual Conference organised by

Chanel Riggle

. You can read more about it here.

The second part of the beautiful Motherhood Musings series by

Emma Del Rey

landed last week and shares so many beautiful truths from other Mamas. Read it here.

Recent offerings you might have missed…

• Merging the inner and outer worlds - a podcast episode with Laura Hart Swann

• Vesper’s Birth Story part 1 - Letting go of the birth I hoped for…

• A softening of our edges - learning to devote my life to living softly

Hello to anyone who is new here… I am Lauren, a Mother of two daughters, a Writer, Coach, Soulful Business Mentor, Website & Branding Creator, Human Design Guide, Sacred Space Holder and multi dimensional human being. You can find out more about my work here. Please do subscribe to join the journey, and if you enjoy this, and you do have the means, I would be so grateful if you chose to support my creations for £5 a month…