When I was young, I never considered traveling or studying abroad. I grew up in a military town and sure, I knew plenty of people who had lived in other countries because of the military. But I didn’t know many people who had vacationed internationally, outside of maybe the Bahamas or Jamaica.
I went off to college and studying abroad never crossed my radar. I went into the military and still didn’t think much about traveling out of the country except to transfer to a new duty station, if I were lucky enough to get assigned.
My first real consideration of traveling/living abroad came as I was leaving the military and looking at job opportunities. Some of those were in places like Japan, Germany, Italy, and I started to get intrigued about the possibilities for my daughter and I. But as I moved up and learned more in my career field, my anxiety of travel began to grow. I constantly saw all the bad things that could happen to me or my daughter because of my position, access, and knowledge and grew paranoid of the dangers and never thought that I could ever enjoy traveling out of the United States.
So when my 10 year old daughter came to me and said that she wanted to go work on a farm in France, my first instinct was to say “Absolutely not!!” But I couldn’t do that. Here I was trying to raise a young black girl to be independent, open-minded, passionate, and willing to try new things. I couldn’t tell her that traveling abroad was too dangerous and I was too afraid of something bad happening to her!
I had to get over my own fear and paranoia so that I could be supportive of a dream of hers that could help her grow in perspective and capabilities. And so I set off to do what I have always done best – researching everything I could possibly research, and trying to predict every possible outcome so that I could prevent and counter any and all negative consequences my daughter might face while traveling internationally.
I put my career skills to work and began investigating and evaluating everything I could find online to help prepare young people like my daughter to travel abroad safely while giving parents like myself more peace of mind.
Ultimately, I ended up not only figuring out how to use this information to identify threats and dangers to travelers, I also started overcoming my own fear. I started to see that once I analyzed the information and developed a plan that would prevent and minimize the risk, even someone as paranoid as me could travel abroad and enjoy myself without fear hanging over my head. I set out to help my daughter and ended up helping myself.
As of today, I’ve been able to take solo trips to places like South Africa and Colombia, implementing my own advice and having a wonderful time. Have the trips always gone smoothly? No. But because of the system I developed for learning, assessing, and preparing, I wasn’t hindered by paranoia, fear, and anxiety when undesirable events did occur. Twelve years ago, an undesirable or unplanned negative event may have caused unbelievable stress and trauma, ultimately causing harm to me physically, as well as mentally. And while an undesirable event still brings with it some stress and anxiety, I am far more confident in my response because I know that I’ve done all that I can do to prepare and prevent the consequences, and can do what I need to do to soften the impact an undesirable event can have on my life..
We can’t not live life, or not travel, because something bad might happen - no one can control everything. All we can do is pray for the best and plan for the worst. I learned that once I do this, I can fully appreciate the culture, the food, the beauty and the memories gained with letting go of fear and putting myself in a position to immensely enjoy the great things life and traveling have to offer. It has truly been a weight off my shoulders and I’m so thankful that I can finally go out to explore this fascinating world.
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