Sarah is our traveler Spotlight this week! She is a midwestern girl like myself, that moved to Texas for an English teaching job. She is now teaching her kids the importance of travel through stories, yearly family trips, and missions trips. The entire time I was reading this I kept saying “Preach it” and “Amen sister!” She is a role model for her kids, but she is also a role model for even the most seasoned traveler.
Tell us a little bit about you!
“Hi! My name is Sarah Styf. I am a high school English teacher, a wife, and a mom to two kiddos and two dogs. I was primarily raised in the Midwest but I took a teaching job in the Houston area five years ago, so now we are midwestern transplants to Texas. In the years since moving here, we’ve discovered that, in this area at least, it is a very common thing. I love reading, writing, outdoor exercise (running, hiking, and biking), and camping.”
How many countries have you traveled too?
“Eleven. I just added Costa Rica to a list that just included North America and Europe. Before I went with my students on a pre-coronavirus spring break mission trip to Costa Rica, it had been nearly 20 years since I had last been out of the country for more than a couple hours.”
What’s your favorite mode of travel? (Plane train cruise car walking ect.)
“Since my favorite kind of travel involves camping, I will say that traveling in our truck is my favorite mode of travel.”
What’s your dream travel destination?
“It’s a tossup between Ireland and Australia. I want to be able to return to Ireland with my husband since he didn’t go with me when I was in college and I’ve wanted to go to Australia since I was in high school.”
How has traveling helped you manage a healthy mentality?
“I’m a homebody and an introvert but traveling with just my husband or with our whole family refreshes me for facing the next life challenges. When we go too long without even a weekend camping trip, we can tell that our family is extra edgy. We just need to spend some time away from the everyday stresses of home and get out into nature.”
“I believe that as a country we would be a lot healthier mentally and have a much healthier perspective of those different from us if we just stepped out of our immediate surroundings more often.”
-Sarah Styf
What are some ways you use travel as a coping mechanism?
“When I’m home I find something to do, whether it’s work-related, home-related, or just a distraction from what I should be focusing on. When we are traveling, I can’t worry about how messy our house is or what papers I haven’t graded or what lessons need to be planned. That has to wait until I get home. It helps me focus on my marriage and my family.”
How do you choose who you travel with? Does it impact your trip?
“My husband and I try to make time for each other about once a year. It isn’t easy, especially now that we live so far from our parents, but it’s important for us to remember who we are as a couple instead of just who we are as parents.
Last year, after we returned from Las Vegas to celebrate my 40th birthday, I wrote a piece that got published in Scary Mommy. It isn’t that I don’t love traveling with my kids. I do. I just needed that time with him. We also get to pick places that we don’t want or need to do with kids, Las Vegas, and the Kentucky Bourbon Trail being excellent examples. Otherwise, it’s the whole family. I love showing our kids the country and giving them a wider perspective of the world around them. Our kids are almost 11 and 9 and they have traveled outside of their home state every year of their lives. I believe that is an important part of creating a better world.”
Do you have a favorite destination?
“The American West (Colorado, Wyoming, Utah). We’re Michiganders and I love Lake Michigan, but my soul resides in the American West.”
When you travel do you make more friends than when you are at home?
“No, I’m a true introvert, which might be why any mention of a cruise gives me hives.”
How has anxiety or depression affected your travels negatively?
“When current life pressures get to be too much I have been tempted to cancel plans so that I can stay home and get things done. The problem with that is my brain and body clearly need a break so that I can function more wholly. Thankfully my husband doesn’t usually buy it and forces me to get out of town. I can’t think of a time when I haven’t been thankful that he did that.”
How has anxiety or depression affected your travels positively?
“Traveling helps me get refreshed so that I can be the woman, wife, mom, and teacher that I need to be. When I don’t travel, I don’t get that refreshing life perspective. Since I hunger for knowledge and experience, traveling fulfills that personal need as well.”
Do you feel that traveling is a coping mechanism for a lot of people? Does your family or friends use traveling as an escape from reality the same way you do? Or do you feel that they travel for other reasons?
“When I was a kid traveling was mostly for visiting our large extended family that lived around the country (and my grandparents in Canada). We did get to have new experiences, but I never really saw it as a family escape and my parents never left us for overnight trips. Those that we know now, who do travel, either do it out of necessity (to see family) or because they want new experiences. I don’t know if it is a coping mechanism so much as something that some of us do as Americans and some of us should do but don’t.
We also have this false notion that finances should determine whether or not we travel. Yes, that can make a huge impact on our ability to travel (a family without a car isn’t going to be able to drive out of town), but I believe we can narrow the idea of what travel means and start out small and do what we are financially capable of as a family. I believe that as a country we would be a lot healthier mentally and have a much healthier perspective of those different from us if we just stepped out of our immediate surroundings more often.”
What’s one thing you can not travel without.
“My camera. I love taking pictures of EVERYTHING.”
What’s your number one travel tip for our fellow travelers out there?
“Dream big but start small. Figure out what you can do and what your family can do and just make that a standard part of your life. And do something new. Travel abroad is great, but the United States is vast and has SO many things to see, the National Parks system being my personal favorite. Just pick a place and do it.”
Here is how to get a hold of Sarah!
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sarahstyfwriting
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarah.styf/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sarahstyf
Website: https://acceptingtheunexpectedjourney.com/
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This is what life is truly all about. Creating memories with your family and getting out of the everyday bubble. There’s so much we can learn through travel. Thanks for sharing!
Great post! I love the quote you shared about gaining new perspectives.