It isn’t all puppies, bubbles and rainbows…

When we made the decision to take this trip across the US and Mexico I made the assumption that my daughter was as flexible and as adventurous as I was.  I have learned from this improvised year on the road that she is not. She craves structure, she misses her friends and she is in pain. For a six year old and specifically, for my six year old— pain comes in many forms and hers is in the form of screaming, saying hurtful things, kicking, biting and what I like to call, giving the stink-eye when she doesn’t get what she wants. It has been incredibly hard and sometimes I have felt like a failure of a parent. Yes, there have been amazing moments and tender moments and moments that I would have never had without this trip. I do, however, question if her pain and her behavior will even out somehow. It breaks my heart but I/we will keep moving forward one day at a time. The one thing I love about Mexico is that if you need a village, all you have to do is ask and people(strangers) will stop what they are doing and help.

Today, I am in Colorado working at Naropa (yes, because we still have to work). And Gary is in Guanajuato City and is having one of those hard parenting days along with a hard RV day. Right now where the RV is presently parked, we have street puppies but we don’t have WiFi and when your livelihood depends on the ability to communicate with the outside world, it can be hard. So, as I write this in my cozy house with plenty of connection, perhaps too much connection to the outside world, my husband is struggling to find out why his email has been hacked for the 2nd time within the 30 mins. my daughter is in her Spanish class (one that she loves by the way– so there is that sprig of hope).  We don’t have a car either, which make transportation hard and not so easy to just zip over to an internet cafe to hop online or to the mercado for groceries.

These moments of frustration sometimes suck and having to figure out how to get groceries, pay the bills and find cat food have been like a large jig-saw puzzle at times. It definitely takes more planning, more walking, more doing and definitely less complaining. All-in-all I am humbled by our experiences in Mexico so far. It is a beautiful, giving and colorful country that I hope my daughter will start to settle into. If not, we can always turn around and drive North.