Freedom, with Only Ourselves to Blame

Walking Away

It felt like a crisis. Government policy had shifted, pushing us past an ethical boundary we refused to cross. Staying in our jobs was no longer an option. Yet looking back, I’m strangely grateful for that push. It stripped away the status quo and forced us to radically reevaluate our lives. With the old path closed, we had no choice but to build something new.

The Alternative

To be clear: quitting my job and personally, not just raising, but schooling, three kids was not a path I had previously considered. I would have worked quite happily until retirement. I loved my job and absolutely believed that having our children enrolled in an expensive school was exactly the kind of thing any good parent would want. But once Plan A was off the table, we had to start thinking about Plan B—and somehow, in a surprisingly short space of time, Plan B—Worldschooling our kids for 500 days while we figured things out—started to look pretty good.

Thinking about What’s Important

Once we recognized we couldn’t continue as we were, our thoughts immediately shifted to our three children, Charles (4), Henry (6), and Isobel (8). We began to weigh how quitting our steady, lucrative government careers might impact them. The more we turned the idea over in our minds, the more we wondered if this disruption might actually be the greatest gift we could give them. Pulling them from their routines to show them the world is a massive gamble, and we’ve yet to see whether they will end up liking our decision. I’ll do my best to keep you honestly informed.

Time with the Family

On a good day, I used to get about ninety minutes with my little ones. Ninety minutes while rushing to cook dinner, managing divergent bedtime routines, and asking about their days while pulling out pajamas. It never felt like enough. Especially not when the collective wisdom of every older parent I knew echoed the same warning: “It passes in the blink of an eye.” These empty nesters said that suddenly your kids are grown, gone, and you are left wondering if your presence was enough for them. You already know it wasn’t enough for you.

The Champagne Decision

The turning point for my husband and me arrived after months of uneasiness and late-night talks about the future. In September 2025, my husband sent me a message that confirmed our shared feelings and changed everything: “Should we just officially decide that we’re done?” he wrote. Nervously elated, I typed back: “If yes, can I buy some champagne?” When his reply came back, a definitive “Yes”, I detoured on the way home to pick up that bubbly. A new chapter was set to begin, and we were stepping into the unknown together.

Next Steps and Sacrifices

We began winding down what had been, by all traditional metrics, two pretty successful careers. This wasn’t just my exit; my husband was walking away from his own career path as well. Between us, it meant walking away from decades of combined investment, a wealth of gained knowledge, comfortable dual incomes, and most consequentially, a very clear roadmap for how we planned to support and raise our family.

Counting the Cost

Stepping into this new lifestyle meant answering the most practical question of all: how do we pay for 500 days on the road? The answer required a hard transition in how we view security. Leaving behind the steady safety net of dual government paychecks to watch our bank balance flow strictly in one direction is terrifying, but it’s the price of buying both time, and peace of mind.

My husband and I are now learning to navigate this shift as a team, operating without the institutional badges we wore for years, both of us transitioning from working as dedicated professionals to  full-time co-teachers and travel strategists. There’s a strange comfort in sharing the novelty, but also a steep learning curve as we divide up subject areas, manage logistics, and realize neither of us has an administrative staff to delegate to anymore.

Home without a Home

The question then became what raising a family looked like when we were both out of a job. Settling down had always been a puzzle for us; coming from different hemispheres and both loving to travel, we had never known where to put down roots. After moving around for the last twenty years, the traditional milestone of buying a home sounded suffocating. So, for better or worse, we decided to ignore the whole “putting down roots” thing and continue traveling the world with our three young passengers.

The Fear of Fading Identity

Am I terrified? Absolutely. It is daunting to walk away from public service jobs equipped with massive benefits and predictability. When you leave a career in which you’ve been fulfilled, you also leave behind professional affirmation. I knew I would miss the weekly validations, the casual chats with the team over morning coffee, the predictable rhythm of annual project cycles, and the status of a title. Do you get that kind of validation as a parent teaching an energetic eight-year-old, a dreamy six-year-old, and a distracted four-year-old ? Not a chance. In fact, world-schooling is arguably much harder.

Naturally, there is a deep sense of loss in stepping away from the identity of the working parent. You lose your connection to the workplace and the daily solidarity of colleagues, people who are on the exact same page, who understand your specific professional world, and who know precisely why you are working so hard. Trading that peer camaraderie for the isolated world of family travel requires an entire rewiring of where you seek affirmation and community.

Reexamination of the Day to Day

I have quickly realized that teaching three kids of vastly different developmental stages, from phonics for the four-year-old, to math for the eight-year-old is far more demanding than smiling in the background of a high-level briefing. Your children are never going to look at you at the end of a grueling afternoon and say, “Hey Mum, your guidance on fractions today was incredibly impactful.”

A Change in Operations

In the end, there are many things I worry about. One is the temptation to run our family travel and education like an office project, expecting our young children to respond like a team of seasoned professionals. I can already see myself over-scheduling our itineraries and stressing over traditional school milestones, desperately trying to prove that our kids aren’t falling behind because we ended our careers.

Success in a New Light

Knowing that traditional benchmarks are gone, my husband jokes: “What do you need? An annual performance review?” I’ve had to redefine what success looks like. I am trading the validation of a successful workplace event for my children’s enthusiasm when they discover something new. My sense of purpose can no longer be tied to a government paycheck. It belongs to us, our kids, and the way we choose to experience the world.

Freedom to Fall

The idea of total autonomy sounds great until I consider the fact that if it all falls apart, my husband and I have only ourselves to blame. I can’t put a failed experiment down to a difficult boss or an unexpected administrative restructuring. The next 500 days will be a testament to our adaptability and our conviction that we can make this work—not just for our kids, but for our own sense of purpose as well.

Lasting Impressions

By letting go of traditional metrics and embracing life on the road together, I hope to find validation in watching our children become globally minded individuals. There will be a million ups and downs, but I’m confident that the predictable world we left behind will eventually be replaced by an exceptionally tight-knit family unit. We will raise kids who understand the values we thought we’d forever champion in our professional lives.

Future Prospects

Can we make it work? I sure hope so. But as we step out into the unknown, the champagne cork popped and ready to see the world, I know we are securing something that matters. In the end, even while recognizing the chaos and conflict we’ll encounter, there are more rewards out there than you’d expect. As I write this, we’re in the middle of nowhere in northeastern Thailand. My sleepy four-year-old just ‘journaled’ “I saw bugs!”, which makes me feel pretty great, even if I’m the only one who can read it.