3 and a half weeks in, how it's really going?!

Emily Bagaric
7 days ago
3 min read

We're off on some big adventures-

Come and follow along as I document life on the road.

All things parenting, relationships, home schooling and life learning.

All amongst the calm and the chaos of family life, squished into a van.

It will be messy and imperfect as I navigate the realities of meeting my needs alongside my family.

Hello there,

So we’re three and a half weeks in, and maybe you're wondering how it's really going?

Well it certainly hasn’t been all rainbows and sunshine, but there has been some very beautiful and pleasantly surprisingly moments that we’ve experienced.

This has been such a radical change for our family.

It’s huge for Dom and I and our dynamic and relationship.

Dom for our entire relationship has worked for someone, which has meant he’s away from the home 5 days a week, breakfast lunch and not all, but a lot of dinners.

I had some deep concerns about what this time could mean for us.

How would we go with spending so much time together?

Would I feel lonely without much connection with others, particularly women in my life?

Would the boys miss their friends and home and life too much?

Well all of those have been felt, but like life constantly shows me, we can experience 2 things at once.

So yes the boys have had some tricky days, missing the familiar of our day to day life, friends and family, but also they’re having the time of their life.

I have not felt too lonely, and have managed to slow down and lean into not filling my spare time. It was tricky at first. I found myself for the first time in a while with solid chunks of time to myself.

The urge to be productive, to work on my business, to try and push and make some money, what can I do? What should I be doing?

It took a week of that and then I began to slowly shake that old cloak off.

Can I just be?

Can my business be in a season of rest?

As for Dom and I, we’re doing ok. I’m actually surprised and maybe a bit proud! I mean we’ve had some questionable moments but I feel we are finding some flow in this new way of being together. Of course we have tonnes of room for improvement, there’s definitely been some unconscious communication and lots of reactivity.

But as the days go on, we’re finding that life as a unit with less rush and more space is very pleasant.

I do think with each and every day I’m slowly realising how big this is and just what we’ve gone through in the past 12 months to get here.

I’m also realising what I already knew but now getting a felt sense of how much better life and mothering and parenting is when we’re together.

There is time apart, we’re not spending 24/7 together; Dom is outside most days, checking, feeding the cattle, fencing, working in the shed.

And I’m between inside; cooking, food prep, washing, tending to the boys and donkey pats and walks outside and helping with the cattle.

The boys spilt their time between helping Dom on the farm and being with me and we have adventuring days together, it’s no longer just the boys and I.

I know this is not everyone’s reality to be doing parenting and life with another,

But also wanting to acknowledge how much mothers do carry on their own. And how ‘solo’ I felt in a lot of moments when we were back home.

I’m get rather emotional thinking about the precious time we get to gather for meals now, even amongst the imperfections and the mis-communication or the moments of misaligned parenting. Because they are still present!

But having Dom around had been something we’ve dreamed of for so long, and now it’s our reality. We never really know how much time we have with each other, so I'm savouring the small and mundane and feeling very grateful, that even in the face of all our fears and uncertainty we took this leap to radically change our lives.

We’ve got another month here on the farm, before packing up and heading north on to the next adventure.

Stay tuned, I hope to pop in semi regularly, as we navigate life on the road.

House/farm sitting might be something we do a bit more of in between van life.

It’s pretty bloody liberating to not have many plans for the next 6 to 12 months.

Stay well and remember connection in whatever way you can get it,

with yourself, with your loved ones, with your kids.

Much love,

Emily x