Ethos
I didn't stop being a traveler when I became a mother. I just had to figure out how to bring him along.
I'm Catherine. I live in San Diego with my son, a front yard kitchen garden, and a completely unreasonable number of airline miles. I'm gritty by nature, it’s how I was raised — practical people, outdoor people, people who don't believe anything is an excuse. It shows.
I‘ve spent 18 years as a technical program manager, I optimize systems for a living. I am good at it. I am also the person who figured out how to fit a Nile cruise, an Antarctica expedition, and a half marathon in Vancouver into a working parent's PTO calendar without anyone at the office noticing I'd left.
My son has slept on every continent. He completed his seventh before his seventh birthday. He packs himself. He has opinions about altitude acclimatization and hotel breakfast buffets. He corrected an Egyptologist at Tutankhamun's tomb, which I did not expect to be a parenting milestone, but here we are.
This is not a mommy blog. It's not a "we quit everything and travel full time" blog either. I didn't quit my life to travel — I travel inside my life. There's a difference, and it matters.
The trips I write about are real. The logistics are real. The fatigue is real. So is the fact that it was always worth it.
I don't believe in the perfect moment to start. I believe in the camping trip when your baby is 10 weeks old, the overnight flight you board with a teething toddler and a prayer, the yes you say before you're ready.
Your child joins your life. You don't join theirs.
The archive starts 2018. Ten weeks postpartum, one night in a tent, my husband doing everything while I remembered who I was. It moves chronologically from there. Every continent, every age, every flight that went sideways and the ones that didn't. Death, COVID, layoffs, real life. I'm not writing backwards from the highlight reel. I'm writing it in order, so you can watch it compound.
The longer stuff lives on Substack. The solo parent math, the food poisoning in Vietnam, the philosophy underneath all of it. Subscribe here.
If you want to do the big trip and you'd rather not figure it out alone, I work with families on that.
Start wherever you are.