I have always been devoted to manuals.  I used one to prepare me for Caroline’s birth.  And after bringing her home, I consulted another about how to actually care for our new baby.

But here’s the thing: my in-car frantic final stage of labor was not in the book.  And none of those words in the baby-raising guide were really getting me any closer to feeling like the good mom I wanted to be.

The longer I kept my brow furrowed over things I read, the longer it took me to trust myself and my own experience.

I am embarrassed to say that in preparation for our trip I repeated this same mistake yet again and spent countless hours studying what to expect when you are traveling around the world with your family for a year.

How should we segment our time to include schoolwork?  What shoes should I take?  Should we schedule hostels well in advance, or do it on the fly?  I would read enough to have it all worked out and things would all run seamlessly.

Yet, no matter how much I’d read, until we actually got on the road, just like when we brought home that new baby, I couldn’t possibly have known what to expect.

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