I didn’t know it then, but every passport stamp I acquired over the years — from dusty border crossings to minuscule island airports — was quietly training me for motherhood long before I ever planned on it. Traveling through more than seventy countries, you learn to adapt, to trust, to flex instead of snapping. You learn patience, toughness, adaptability and how to find a second of stillness in situations that don’t seem remotely still. Those practices were the very tools I leaned on as soon as I first cradled my child.
Travel has a peculiar way of teaching you the things most people don’t really learn until much later. I had learned to be adaptable long before I ever needed to adapt my life to a newborn’s erratic cadences. There were the sleepless nights on overnight trains, the missed flights, the border delays that turned into full days. All I could do was breathe, accept what couldn’t be controlled and find a way through. Motherhood is awfully much the same: The crying fits you cannot understand, the nights shredded into nap times, the moments when you resign to a new plane of chaos.
I learned patience in parts of the world where time feels stretchy — too stretchy — as I waited for four hours for a bus in rural Indonesia or slalomed through an Indian street market that progressed at a stately pace until it did not. When you’re a mother, patience is the currency. You wait through tantrums. You wait through feeding issues. You sit around waiting for milestones you’re afraid won’t arrive. Travel taught me to be in that uncertainty without panicking.
I gained confidence in moments when I had no other option but to believe in myself. Whether taking a Moroccan taxi when no one spoke my language; hiking through ever-changing weather in Patagonia, where the elements shifted every five minutes; or losing myself — truly lost! — on Tokyo’s backstreets. When you encounter the unknown over and over, you build a quiet kind of belief in yourself. And that same confidence saw me through the early days of motherhood, when every decision felt like it carried the weight of the world.
I learned thrift from countries in which comfort was not a given. In Kenya, Peru, Myanmar or Jordan, I learned that solutions arise as a result of creativity — not convenience. If the lights went out, you worked by candlelight. If the running water ever went out, he said, “you found another way.” Motherhood is just full of those little improvisations: turning a bag into a pillow, a snack into something to do, a tiny moment with your child into an entire strategy.
I learned empathy from seeing how families live around the world. I saw mothers in markets with babies perched on their hips haggling with vendors. I looked out and saw fathers with motorbikes, three kids pinned between their arms as they drove together.” I saw European grandparents escort grandchildren home from school in mittens. In every city, every village, in every airport, I encountered a different shape of family — and it helped me to realize there is no “right” way to parent. Whatever way that is best for your child, within your circumstances, with your heart.
Traveling also taught me emotional flexibility — a trait I didn’t realize would be useful as a parent. And when you find yourself on the other side of the world and a plan collapses, you learn to rebound quickly. You relearn how to recalibrate when things shift abruptly. Motherhood is rife with such pivots: the 3 a.m. fever, the child care day that falls through, the grocery aisle meltdown out of nowhere. The emotional agility I had developed abroad became a lifeline at home.
But above all, trotting around the world gave me an expansive lens — a means to step back and take in the entirety of something. When you’ve broken bread with Laos families, danced at weddings in Brazil, seen the sun rise in Iceland and shared tea with strangers in Turkey, you know how small and transient frustrations can feel, how so much is finite; how beauty and struggle coexist everywhere. Motherhood can be overwhelming, but traveling taught me not to get consumed or swallowed by the difficult parts. They’re just moments.
When people talk about how travel transforms you, they’re likely thinking of adventure or perspective. I didn’t realize it was getting me ready for something completely different — the long game of raising a human. Every country gave me something I didn’t even realize until after I left. Each culture stripped away another layer of what “strength” really means. Every time life took a turn, it shaped the part of me that now shows up for my child every day.
Motherhood is a journey no one can really prepare you for, yet the world — in all its clang and clamor, sweetness and unpredictability, its humanity — wound up being the greatest teacher I ever had.
