Push-Back

It’s been almost exactly one year since our two years abroad. The re-integration into the American culture has been an adjustment, and I’ll be honest, I feel like I say “No” more than any other time in my life. This has been purposeful, as I see what my life was like before leaving and it was absolutely nuts. I do not want “nuts” to define the way I live my life even when those around me say it is completely normal. 

I miss traveling. I miss the adventure, the excitement, the unknown of what’s to come. Leaving our nomadic life was really a bitter-sweet time for me. It felt like I had just finished my favorite book. This was a book I did not want to end; I wanted it to just keep going. I realize now that I was grieving what I felt was the end of an incredible adventure. 

Presently, I feel as though I am swimming against the current of our cultural norms. Just the other day a woman at my son’s baseball game cornered me in front of him trying to convince me that my 14-year-old needed to have his own phone. She was very upset with me that I had not given him a phone yet and even tried to convince me that phones are not all that expensive. Now, we have our own reasoning's for not giving him a phone yet and I did not feel like I needed to explain all of our reasoning's to a complete stranger. I also did not feel like I needed to explain to her that we were already planning on giving him his first phone for his birthday, but that is beside the point. Swimming against the current of our cultural norms will be met with push-back.