October 16, 2023 • 21 mins
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome back to another episodeof the dare to dream physician
travel podcast.
I'm so glad you're listening tous today And if you missed us
last week, I wanted to let youknow and also reassure you that
this podcast is not goinganywhere.
I just had a busy few weeks.
The previous week I went to thisamazing physician conference.
(00:21):
And really appreciated that timeto recharge, to re energize, to
re envision what I want to dreamfor the next year.
And the, the weeks leading up tothis retreat was also a very
busy time, and so I just wasn'table to get an episode out last
Monday.
And if you thought, oh no, whathappened, I really appreciate
(00:41):
that you make us part of yourroutine.
And I assure you it's myintention to keep putting out
weekly episodes.
At this retreat, one of thethings that I committed to do
going forward is to get thateight hours of sleep every night
and to get up earlier than myusual time and do a morning
routine where I get to practicemeditation and have a spiritual
(01:02):
routine and really, get to focuson living out what's important
to me, living out my dreamsevery day.
and I know you're going to lovethis week's episode.
I was a little bit hesitant torecord this episode and I'll
tell you why.
sometimes when we get a chanceto sit and reflect and look in
the past 12 months, all thesefeelings and so many things come
(01:25):
up.
And I had an opportunity in thelast week and a half to really
just reflect.
And I'm actually really amazedat what I've done in the last 12
months.
And so I wanted to share thatwith you.
And as you hear me sharing this,I want to put a caveat in that I
(01:47):
at first didn't want to sharethis because I didn't want
people to listen and say, wow,why does she get to do that?
And, you know, I can never dothat.
I want you to listen andactually hear how.
any doctor can do this.
I want you to be inspired.
I want you to be encouraged.
and I, I truly want to inspireyou to live your travel dreams.
(02:12):
The story really started a whileago about a few years ago my My
family.
Family really likes us nationalpark.
so i got this book by nationalgeographic on National Parks in
the U.
S.
so we flipped through, and yeah,we've been to, you know, places
like Yellowstone, I've been toYosemite National Park, you
know, these are all justbeautiful places in our country.
(02:35):
and I happened to flip to apage, that says U.
S.
Virgin Islands National Park.
And I looked at this entry inthe book, and this thought came
up, that I just made a note of.
and the thought was, we're notthe type of people that gets to
visit that kind of nationalpark.
(02:56):
and it was not an intentionalthought, and I just had that
recollection, the truth wasthat's where my mind lived for
many years.
So, fast forward a little bit,in the fall of 2022.
We were in the grieving processfor my dad's passing.
He had stage four metastaticcancer for four and a half years
(03:20):
Being able to spend that lastsix weeks with him at the end of
his life, was so meaningful.
but yet, I felt like we wereready to have a new chapter in
our life.
and where we were at that timewas...
My husband and I often dreadedtravel with kids, whether that's
flying on a long plane ride or along car trip.
(03:42):
It just seemed like such amountain to climb, like such a
big deal to do.
I had let my own passport expiremany, many years ago.
And our three kids, never gotpassports.
and I had not left thecontinental U.
S.
since I started medical school,which is back in 2005.
unless you count, I think we hadcar trip to Canada.
(04:06):
It was probably to a town thatwas an hour away.
And remember, I work in Vermont,in a town that's just minutes
away from the Canadian border.
and I couldn't recall going on avacation that was more than a
week long.
Maybe if you added in theweekends, it was maybe a week
and a half.
I did take a sabbatical between.
(04:27):
The end of my fellowshiptraining and the, the start of
my first attending job.
but the idea of taking two weeksor more off, when I'm employed,
when I'm actively working as aphysician.
just didn't really, didn'treally cross my mind.
so, fast forward, now, We're inthe middle of Of october 2023.
(04:52):
Three And, we all havepassports, including my kids.
We have many passport stamps.
the kids are pros at traveling.
My kids year, they were...
Age 6, 9, and 13.
And don't even think twice aboutgoing on a cross continental
(05:13):
flight.
even if I am a solo parent withthe three kids.
While working in an employedphysician position and serving
as a medical director to athriving department and meeting
my RVU goals, I also went, inthe past 12 months, on six trips
(05:33):
outside of the continental U.
S.
We were blessed to do some ofthat travel with just the
immediate family and some...
We were able to go with ourextended family, like my aunt,
uncle, and mom, and just createdlifelong memories, memories that
I am just so grateful for.
Grateful that I could gift to mykids and I know that it will
(05:55):
make a long lasting impressionon them for the rest of their
life.
And it's a, it's a legacy.
I think of this year andstarting this travel lifestyle
as part of my legacy buildingfor my kids, and my family.
So, where do we go?
I did not sit down and plan thiswhole year because when we, when
we went on our first trip, Iwasn't sure how it was going to
(06:16):
go.
So.
This was pieced togetherthroughout the year.
But we started with, the usVirgin islands at the end of
October.
Then we went to Maui Hawaii inJanuary.
And at the end of March, we wentto this off the beaten path
island called Eleuthera and TheBahamas.
And then in early may we took ashort trip to Puerto Rico.
(06:40):
In late may, early June, we hada milestone trip, cross the
globe.
The kids went to a new continentto Asia, to the island of
Taiwan.
Which is just fabulous.
Finally in August, we went onthis amazing adventure to
Australia.
And I didn't plan it this way atfirst, but we ended up having an
(07:00):
island theme where we werevisiting six different islands
around the world.
And it was just so, so amazing.
It's almost hard to believe thatwe did this.
And if you were to tell me ayear ago, That we were going to
do this.
I wouldn't even have believedyou.
But that's the amazing thingabout starting to live your
dream and staying in momentum isthat you start to live a little
(07:21):
piece of it and you start doingmore and more and things become
more doable and more possible.
And everyone, everyone grows asa result of this.
I have grown so much throughthis process.
Not only in traveling, but justin my personal growth journey
and my kids have grown leaps andbounds.
They become so good attraveling.
And even my husband, he doesn'thave as big of a travel bug as I
(07:44):
do.
And yet he's really appreciatingjust the family time, the
quality time and he's alsoembracing the adventure.
So.
What i want to share for therest of this episode is how how
did we do this cause that's whata lot of people ask me.
so I've talked about this eversince the beginning of my
podcast even before we hadswitched to being a travel
(08:05):
podcast and that is to startwith a dream.
For me, it started with awhisper of a dream, a dim vision
that was inside my head, a veryquiet question of what if we
could do this and And just basedon that dim vision, that soft
(08:28):
spoken question in my head, Istarted looking and acting and
then we booked our first trip.
So a few weeks after my dadpassed away, like I said, I got
this feeling that it's time tomaybe try traveling again as a
family.
we didn't have passports.
so when I was planning our firsttrip, I knew I wanted to go
(08:51):
somewhere where passports werenot required, but I wanted it to
be somewhere we had not gonebefore, where it was a little
bit beyond our comfort zone, asa traveling family.
so the first thing we did was wewent ahead and applied for
passports because even thoughthis next trip, I wasn't sure
that we could get or passportsin on time.
(09:11):
I wanted to have it ready forfuture trips.
so I was minding my own businessand mindlessly scrolling through
Facebook, This house popped upon my feed and a physician had
shared a house rental, and thishouse, this villa looked
amazing.
I'd never seen anything likethis before.
(09:32):
I hadn't really looked foranything like this before.
This house was, in the U.
S.
Virgin Islands.
and it had a pool, it had thisgorgeous view of the Caribbean
sea.
It described the house as beingsecluded with privacy, and it
had two jacuzzis.
(09:53):
And they thought, wow, that,that is pretty amazing.
That's really remarkable.
Could we maybe go there?
And so I found the house andwent to the website and looked
at their dates, looked at thedates that were available.
And the house was available for13 nights in late October, early
November.
(10:14):
And he thought, wow, that wouldbe really perfect.
And so I showed my kids, two ofthem really excited.
One of my kids, the kid whotended to be really set in his
ways, despite being only ageeight at that time, was not
happy at all.
Took a lot of convincing for himto even consider going.
(10:37):
I showed the pictures and thelisting to my husband and he was
really excited, by it I knewthat I didn't want to wait too
long, I knew that if I had thisvision, I had to go and live it.
I had plenty of PTO, so, Italked to my practice manager,
this was in August and so thiswas about two and a half months
in advance, and she was reallysupportive and we made it work.
(11:00):
We made those states work.
We were able to put thosepatients at the time.
I think I was booking patientssix months in advance, but we
were able to move around some ofthe other times that I had
blocked off and move thosepatients there.
So I reached out, I booked thetrip.
Oh, and then I should alsomention at this time because I
didn't really have a travelbudget.
(11:21):
we hadn't gone on any majortrips, and I wasn't really all
that concerned about a budget,We were financially responsible.
We were saving for retirementSaving for investments and We
could certainly move differentbuckets to make a travel budget,
I wasn't planning, you know,three or four or five trips for
the year.
(11:41):
so, for those who don't know,the U.
S.
Virgin Islands is very expensiveand this amazing villa that we
stayed at was also reallypricey.
Since then, I don't think I'vebooked.
A vacation rental for the sameprice again, but it was still
affordable.
We're still being financiallyresponsible and really the
highest priority was to go on atrip that's outside of our
(12:03):
comfort zone, have an amazingtime and start living this very
dim vision that I had that was,that only existed in my head at
the time.
And so two months came by.
In late October 2023, I justremember the excitement that I
felt as we got ready to fly tothe U.
S.
Virgin Islands.
(12:24):
It was a very long trip.
We started in, I think, theBurlington, Vermont airport.
Which takes two hours to driveto from our house.
And then we, had a layover, Ithink it was in, Newark, and
then from Newark we flew to St.
Thomas in the Virgin Islands,but we didn't end there because
(12:44):
the house that we rented is inSt.
John, which is a differentisland from St.
Thomas, so then we got to theairport in St.
Thomas, and it was, you know, 80degrees, so much warmer, so
sunny, so different from whatwas happening in Vermont at that
time when in, in, in late fall,it was really just, just getting
(13:06):
there was so amazing and then,from the St.
Thomas airport, we had to We hadto get a taxi, and then we had
to get on a ferry to go to St.
John Island, and then when wefinally arrived in St.
John Island, we got picked up bythe car rental company to then
go pick up our rental car.
(13:26):
And then we started theadventure of driving to the
other side of St.
John Island to get to ourvacation rental.
Needless to say, it was a reallylong day and I, my husband and I
were so tired.
My kids were so tired, but wedid it and it was really, really
amazing.
And I've done a podcast episodeon our trip to this, US Virgin
(13:49):
Islands.
There's so much more that can besaid about the experience that
we had there.
But I will just say of howamazing it was to have that
moment where we stood in frontof the US Virgin Islands
National Park sign and toremember.
to realize, wow, we are here,the entire family is here, the
(14:13):
three kids and us, we are here,and I just remember how I looked
at the entry in that NationalGeographic book and thought to
myself, we're not the type ofpeople that would visit that
park.
We just, it seemed so out ofreach at the time, when I was
sitting in a room in Vermont,going through that book.
(14:36):
And so that was, you know, that,that was the beginning.
That was the first trip of many.
And it was just this moment offeeling how amazing it was to
have a dream become reality.
And it's the same thing in otherparts of life, when you imagine
something in your dreams, andthen you start to act toward it,
(14:57):
you start to work toward thatdream, you plan it, and You make
it happen and the moment ofreality where you are standing
in your dream where you'reliving that dream and it's just
amazing and I just will say thereality of the dream is even
better than the imagination andpart of that is a choice because
(15:20):
you know, I could have we couldhave stayed in We could have
been really discouraged by someof the lessons that we were
learning.
Like, wow, that was too long ofa travel.
And we were all tired and crankyand hungry.
But we recovered in a couple ofdays.
And, and we were here, we werein paradise and we, and we chose
(15:44):
to focus on how, Wow, look atthose Caribbean waters.
I had never seen the ocean likethis before.
I had never seen aqua bluewater.
I had never seen the visibilityof the water where you can see
from from all the way to thebottom I'd never seen the, the
(16:07):
coral.
I'd never seen tropical fish.
It was just out of this worldand, seeing our first sea
turtle, It was the stuff ofdreams and, it still has such a
big impression on me.
And so, so, so that was when westarted having momentum.
And, and here's an importantdecision.
Here was an important decisionthat I, in retrospect, that I
(16:31):
made at the end of that trip.
And there's no right and wrong,there's no right and wrong here,
but after such an amazingexperience, I I thought to
myself, Oh yeah, I'm going tobook this again for next year.
we're going to come back.
We're going to come back.
We're certainly coming back andwe're going to use the exact
(16:51):
same car rental company.
We're going to rent from theexact same house.
We're going to work with thesame people.
and honestly, that would havebeen really amazing.
That would have been reallyamazing.
That was my first reaction.
That was my first plan.
I paused for a moment afterthinking that, and maybe over a
(17:11):
few days or a few, a couple ofweeks, decided that what if,
what if I don't do that?
What if I try something new eachtime?
What if I, what if we branch outof our comfort zone, because now
going to the US Virgin Islandsis very comfortable, and we go
(17:32):
somewhere we've never beenbefore.
And we see something new, and wejust have a new adventure, what
if we do that?
And that ended up being what we,what I chose to do, and, and I'm
so grateful.
I'm so grateful.
And like I said, There's noright and wrong answer.
I think you could, you know, ifI had decided to go back to that
(17:55):
same villa and rent the samevacation rental and do the same
exact trip a year from now, itwould still be amazing.
but there's something, but therewas something else I think that
I really wanted that I didn'tquite even recognize myself yet,
I didn't even say to myselfbecause it seems so out of
(18:16):
reach, which is I want to seethe whole world.
I want to I want to travel.
I want to bring my kids and seethe whole world.
and There is a very, as yourkids grow up, there is a very
limited period of time when youcan really make an impression
with them, where you can reallyinfluence them, and it's, it's,
(18:39):
it's shorter than we think, andbeing that my oldest child was,
was 13 at the time, it's only 5more years until he becomes an
adult, and so that was the firstpart of the decision that I
made.
And so I, even though it wasreally easy to book that trip
(19:01):
again, while they had openingsand I had my choice of dates, I
didn't do it.
I didn't do it.
Okay, so that was number one.
Start with a dream, even if it'sa very quiet dream, even if it's
just a question of what if wecould do this?
What if we do this?
And then go and book it.
Go and book that dream.
Find, find something that'sincredible and book it.
(19:29):
Okay.
So when I first planned out thistalk I thought I was just going
to do an episode and I realizedthat I had so much to talk about
that I'm going to split thisinto two episodes.
So that wraps up part one of mystory from zero to six lessons,
I learned from a year ofextraordinary travel with my
family while still working as adoctor.
And if you liked this week'sepisode you're going to love
(19:50):
next week's episode so staytuned for part two It will be
dropped next monday on the dareto dream position travel podcast
Welcome back to another episodeof the dare to dream physician
travel podcast.
I'm so glad you're listening tous today And if you missed us
last week, I wanted to let youknow and also reassure you that
this podcast is not goinganywhere.
I just had a busy few weeks.
The previous week I went to thisamazing physician conference.
(00:21):
And really appreciated that timeto recharge, to re energize, to
re envision what I want to dreamfor the next year.
And the, the weeks leading up tothis retreat was also a very
busy time, and so I just wasn'table to get an episode out last
Monday.
And if you thought, oh no, whathappened, I really appreciate
(00:41):
that you make us part of yourroutine.
And I assure you it's myintention to keep putting out
weekly episodes.
At this retreat, one of thethings that I committed to do
going forward is to get thateight hours of sleep every night
and to get up earlier than myusual time and do a morning
routine where I get to practicemeditation and have a spiritual
(01:02):
routine and really, get to focuson living out what's important
to me, living out my dreamsevery day.
and I know you're going to lovethis week's episode.
I was a little bit hesitant torecord this episode and I'll
tell you why.
sometimes when we get a chanceto sit and reflect and look in
the past 12 months, all thesefeelings and so many things come
(01:25):
up.
And I had an opportunity in thelast week and a half to really
just reflect.
And I'm actually really amazedat what I've done in the last 12
months.
And so I wanted to share thatwith you.
And as you hear me sharing this,I want to put a caveat in that I
(01:47):
at first didn't want to sharethis because I didn't want
people to listen and say, wow,why does she get to do that?
And, you know, I can never dothat.
I want you to listen andactually hear how.
any doctor can do this.
I want you to be inspired.
I want you to be encouraged.
and I, I truly want to inspireyou to live your travel dreams.
(02:12):
The story really started a whileago about a few years ago my My
family.
Family really likes us nationalpark.
so i got this book by nationalgeographic on National Parks in
the U.
S.
so we flipped through, and yeah,we've been to, you know, places
like Yellowstone, I've been toYosemite National Park, you
know, these are all justbeautiful places in our country.
(02:35):
and I happened to flip to apage, that says U.
S.
Virgin Islands National Park.
And I looked at this entry inthe book, and this thought came
up, that I just made a note of.
and the thought was, we're notthe type of people that gets to
visit that kind of nationalpark.
(02:56):
and it was not an intentionalthought, and I just had that
recollection, the truth wasthat's where my mind lived for
many years.
So, fast forward a little bit,in the fall of 2022.
We were in the grieving processfor my dad's passing.
He had stage four metastaticcancer for four and a half years
(03:20):
Being able to spend that lastsix weeks with him at the end of
his life, was so meaningful.
but yet, I felt like we wereready to have a new chapter in
our life.
and where we were at that timewas...
My husband and I often dreadedtravel with kids, whether that's
flying on a long plane ride or along car trip.
(03:42):
It just seemed like such amountain to climb, like such a
big deal to do.
I had let my own passport expiremany, many years ago.
And our three kids, never gotpassports.
and I had not left thecontinental U.
S.
since I started medical school,which is back in 2005.
unless you count, I think we hadcar trip to Canada.
(04:06):
It was probably to a town thatwas an hour away.
And remember, I work in Vermont,in a town that's just minutes
away from the Canadian border.
and I couldn't recall going on avacation that was more than a
week long.
Maybe if you added in theweekends, it was maybe a week
and a half.
I did take a sabbatical between.
(04:27):
The end of my fellowshiptraining and the, the start of
my first attending job.
but the idea of taking two weeksor more off, when I'm employed,
when I'm actively working as aphysician.
just didn't really, didn'treally cross my mind.
so, fast forward, now, We're inthe middle of Of october 2023.
(04:52):
Three And, we all havepassports, including my kids.
We have many passport stamps.
the kids are pros at traveling.
My kids year, they were...
Age 6, 9, and 13.
And don't even think twice aboutgoing on a cross continental
(05:13):
flight.
even if I am a solo parent withthe three kids.
While working in an employedphysician position and serving
as a medical director to athriving department and meeting
my RVU goals, I also went, inthe past 12 months, on six trips
(05:33):
outside of the continental U.
S.
We were blessed to do some ofthat travel with just the
immediate family and some...
We were able to go with ourextended family, like my aunt,
uncle, and mom, and just createdlifelong memories, memories that
I am just so grateful for.
Grateful that I could gift to mykids and I know that it will
(05:55):
make a long lasting impressionon them for the rest of their
life.
And it's a, it's a legacy.
I think of this year andstarting this travel lifestyle
as part of my legacy buildingfor my kids, and my family.
So, where do we go?
I did not sit down and plan thiswhole year because when we, when
we went on our first trip, Iwasn't sure how it was going to
(06:16):
go.
So.
This was pieced togetherthroughout the year.
But we started with, the usVirgin islands at the end of
October.
Then we went to Maui Hawaii inJanuary.
And at the end of March, we wentto this off the beaten path
island called Eleuthera and TheBahamas.
And then in early may we took ashort trip to Puerto Rico.
(06:40):
In late may, early June, we hada milestone trip, cross the
globe.
The kids went to a new continentto Asia, to the island of
Taiwan.
Which is just fabulous.
Finally in August, we went onthis amazing adventure to
Australia.
And I didn't plan it this way atfirst, but we ended up having an
(07:00):
island theme where we werevisiting six different islands
around the world.
And it was just so, so amazing.
It's almost hard to believe thatwe did this.
And if you were to tell me ayear ago, That we were going to
do this.
I wouldn't even have believedyou.
But that's the amazing thingabout starting to live your
dream and staying in momentum isthat you start to live a little
(07:21):
piece of it and you start doingmore and more and things become
more doable and more possible.
And everyone, everyone grows asa result of this.
I have grown so much throughthis process.
Not only in traveling, but justin my personal growth journey
and my kids have grown leaps andbounds.
They become so good attraveling.
And even my husband, he doesn'thave as big of a travel bug as I
(07:44):
do.
And yet he's really appreciatingjust the family time, the
quality time and he's alsoembracing the adventure.
So.
What i want to share for therest of this episode is how how
did we do this cause that's whata lot of people ask me.
so I've talked about this eversince the beginning of my
podcast even before we hadswitched to being a travel
(08:05):
podcast and that is to startwith a dream.
For me, it started with awhisper of a dream, a dim vision
that was inside my head, a veryquiet question of what if we
could do this and And just basedon that dim vision, that soft
(08:28):
spoken question in my head, Istarted looking and acting and
then we booked our first trip.
So a few weeks after my dadpassed away, like I said, I got
this feeling that it's time tomaybe try traveling again as a
family.
we didn't have passports.
so when I was planning our firsttrip, I knew I wanted to go
(08:51):
somewhere where passports werenot required, but I wanted it to
be somewhere we had not gonebefore, where it was a little
bit beyond our comfort zone, asa traveling family.
so the first thing we did was wewent ahead and applied for
passports because even thoughthis next trip, I wasn't sure
that we could get or passportsin on time.
(09:11):
I wanted to have it ready forfuture trips.
so I was minding my own businessand mindlessly scrolling through
Facebook, This house popped upon my feed and a physician had
shared a house rental, and thishouse, this villa looked
amazing.
I'd never seen anything likethis before.
(09:32):
I hadn't really looked foranything like this before.
This house was, in the U.
S.
Virgin Islands.
and it had a pool, it had thisgorgeous view of the Caribbean
sea.
It described the house as beingsecluded with privacy, and it
had two jacuzzis.
(09:53):
And they thought, wow, that,that is pretty amazing.
That's really remarkable.
Could we maybe go there?
And so I found the house andwent to the website and looked
at their dates, looked at thedates that were available.
And the house was available for13 nights in late October, early
November.
(10:14):
And he thought, wow, that wouldbe really perfect.
And so I showed my kids, two ofthem really excited.
One of my kids, the kid whotended to be really set in his
ways, despite being only ageeight at that time, was not
happy at all.
Took a lot of convincing for himto even consider going.
(10:37):
I showed the pictures and thelisting to my husband and he was
really excited, by it I knewthat I didn't want to wait too
long, I knew that if I had thisvision, I had to go and live it.
I had plenty of PTO, so, Italked to my practice manager,
this was in August and so thiswas about two and a half months
in advance, and she was reallysupportive and we made it work.
(11:00):
We made those states work.
We were able to put thosepatients at the time.
I think I was booking patientssix months in advance, but we
were able to move around some ofthe other times that I had
blocked off and move thosepatients there.
So I reached out, I booked thetrip.
Oh, and then I should alsomention at this time because I
didn't really have a travelbudget.
(11:21):
we hadn't gone on any majortrips, and I wasn't really all
that concerned about a budget,We were financially responsible.
We were saving for retirementSaving for investments and We
could certainly move differentbuckets to make a travel budget,
I wasn't planning, you know,three or four or five trips for
the year.
(11:41):
so, for those who don't know,the U.
S.
Virgin Islands is very expensiveand this amazing villa that we
stayed at was also reallypricey.
Since then, I don't think I'vebooked.
A vacation rental for the sameprice again, but it was still
affordable.
We're still being financiallyresponsible and really the
highest priority was to go on atrip that's outside of our
(12:03):
comfort zone, have an amazingtime and start living this very
dim vision that I had that was,that only existed in my head at
the time.
And so two months came by.
In late October 2023, I justremember the excitement that I
felt as we got ready to fly tothe U.
S.
Virgin Islands.
(12:24):
It was a very long trip.
We started in, I think, theBurlington, Vermont airport.
Which takes two hours to driveto from our house.
And then we, had a layover, Ithink it was in, Newark, and
then from Newark we flew to St.
Thomas in the Virgin Islands,but we didn't end there because
(12:44):
the house that we rented is inSt.
John, which is a differentisland from St.
Thomas, so then we got to theairport in St.
Thomas, and it was, you know, 80degrees, so much warmer, so
sunny, so different from whatwas happening in Vermont at that
time when in, in, in late fall,it was really just, just getting
(13:06):
there was so amazing and then,from the St.
Thomas airport, we had to We hadto get a taxi, and then we had
to get on a ferry to go to St.
John Island, and then when wefinally arrived in St.
John Island, we got picked up bythe car rental company to then
go pick up our rental car.
(13:26):
And then we started theadventure of driving to the
other side of St.
John Island to get to ourvacation rental.
Needless to say, it was a reallylong day and I, my husband and I
were so tired.
My kids were so tired, but wedid it and it was really, really
amazing.
And I've done a podcast episodeon our trip to this, US Virgin
(13:49):
Islands.
There's so much more that can besaid about the experience that
we had there.
But I will just say of howamazing it was to have that
moment where we stood in frontof the US Virgin Islands
National Park sign and toremember.
to realize, wow, we are here,the entire family is here, the
(14:13):
three kids and us, we are here,and I just remember how I looked
at the entry in that NationalGeographic book and thought to
myself, we're not the type ofpeople that would visit that
park.
We just, it seemed so out ofreach at the time, when I was
sitting in a room in Vermont,going through that book.
(14:36):
And so that was, you know, that,that was the beginning.
That was the first trip of many.
And it was just this moment offeeling how amazing it was to
have a dream become reality.
And it's the same thing in otherparts of life, when you imagine
something in your dreams, andthen you start to act toward it,
(14:57):
you start to work toward thatdream, you plan it, and You make
it happen and the moment ofreality where you are standing
in your dream where you'reliving that dream and it's just
amazing and I just will say thereality of the dream is even
better than the imagination andpart of that is a choice because
(15:20):
you know, I could have we couldhave stayed in We could have
been really discouraged by someof the lessons that we were
learning.
Like, wow, that was too long ofa travel.
And we were all tired and crankyand hungry.
But we recovered in a couple ofdays.
And, and we were here, we werein paradise and we, and we chose
(15:44):
to focus on how, Wow, look atthose Caribbean waters.
I had never seen the ocean likethis before.
I had never seen aqua bluewater.
I had never seen the visibilityof the water where you can see
from from all the way to thebottom I'd never seen the, the
(16:07):
coral.
I'd never seen tropical fish.
It was just out of this worldand, seeing our first sea
turtle, It was the stuff ofdreams and, it still has such a
big impression on me.
And so, so, so that was when westarted having momentum.
And, and here's an importantdecision.
Here was an important decisionthat I, in retrospect, that I
(16:31):
made at the end of that trip.
And there's no right and wrong,there's no right and wrong here,
but after such an amazingexperience, I I thought to
myself, Oh yeah, I'm going tobook this again for next year.
we're going to come back.
We're going to come back.
We're certainly coming back andwe're going to use the exact
(16:51):
same car rental company.
We're going to rent from theexact same house.
We're going to work with thesame people.
and honestly, that would havebeen really amazing.
That would have been reallyamazing.
That was my first reaction.
That was my first plan.
I paused for a moment afterthinking that, and maybe over a
(17:11):
few days or a few, a couple ofweeks, decided that what if,
what if I don't do that?
What if I try something new eachtime?
What if I, what if we branch outof our comfort zone, because now
going to the US Virgin Islandsis very comfortable, and we go
(17:32):
somewhere we've never beenbefore.
And we see something new, and wejust have a new adventure, what
if we do that?
And that ended up being what we,what I chose to do, and, and I'm
so grateful.
I'm so grateful.
And like I said, There's noright and wrong answer.
I think you could, you know, ifI had decided to go back to that
(17:55):
same villa and rent the samevacation rental and do the same
exact trip a year from now, itwould still be amazing.
but there's something, but therewas something else I think that
I really wanted that I didn'tquite even recognize myself yet,
I didn't even say to myselfbecause it seems so out of
(18:16):
reach, which is I want to seethe whole world.
I want to I want to travel.
I want to bring my kids and seethe whole world.
and There is a very, as yourkids grow up, there is a very
limited period of time when youcan really make an impression
with them, where you can reallyinfluence them, and it's, it's,
(18:39):
it's shorter than we think, andbeing that my oldest child was,
was 13 at the time, it's only 5more years until he becomes an
adult, and so that was the firstpart of the decision that I
made.
And so I, even though it wasreally easy to book that trip
(19:01):
again, while they had openingsand I had my choice of dates, I
didn't do it.
I didn't do it.
Okay, so that was number one.
Start with a dream, even if it'sa very quiet dream, even if it's
just a question of what if wecould do this?
What if we do this?
And then go and book it.
Go and book that dream.
Find, find something that'sincredible and book it.
(19:29):
Okay.
So when I first planned out thistalk I thought I was just going
to do an episode and I realizedthat I had so much to talk about
that I'm going to split thisinto two episodes.
So that wraps up part one of mystory from zero to six lessons,
I learned from a year ofextraordinary travel with my
family while still working as adoctor.
And if you liked this week'sepisode you're going to love
(19:50):
next week's episode so staytuned for part two It will be
dropped next monday on the dareto dream position travel podcast
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