I've Had a Job Since I Was 16. Here's Why That Makes Me Qualified to Take You to France.
This is just one of my jobs. Batman's not amused. Neither am I.
I'm the eldest daughter. I am also the eldest granddaughter. If you are one of us, then you know what that means. If you're not, lemme educate you. It means we've been the back up moms to everyone long before we could reach the top cabinet without a step stool (although who am I kidding…I still have a step stool).
My parents split when I was 5. My mom worked two jobs to keep us going, which made me a latchkey kid before I understood what the word meant. I actually don't remember having a key, now that I'm thinking about it. The sentiment remains.
At 16 I got my first job and it was very glamorous. I spent my weekends ringing people up at K-Mart (so long ago they're not even in business anymore sigh) and from there, I've just always worked. In college I was the only one of my roommates with a job; they were playing power-hour while I was slinging pizzas and pitchers of Bud heavy. I was also the first person in my family to graduate from college. Then the first to pack up and move across the country by myself, no one waiting for me when I arrived, no plan B if it didn't work. Just a 3 month internship in a state I'd never visited and a local paper with listings for rooms to rent.
And that was just the beginning. Turns out, I can't stop won't stop at one thing, I'm an adder (not the snake, the person who adds things. It's a new word, Merriam-Webster, call me). I think maybe it's because I'm a little bit of a lunatic. Nursing degree, on top of the job. Motherhood, on top of a new career. I moved again. Then culinary school, because all of that other schooling apparently wasn't enough. I started a business (high-end baked goods for small restaurants that couldn't justify a full-time pastry chef). I ran it. Got overwhelmed at its quick success. I closed it. I went back to school for a masters in public health. I pivoted to health tech. I got laid off. I started a consulting business. I said yes to a strange little stint as a travel planner, and that's the job that introduced me to the idea that people would actually pay me to build dream trips — and it was life changing.
Every one of those things got added to a life that was already full. Not swapped in, added. I did it because I'm one of those people who's always curious. Multi-passionate, I think they call it now (doesn't that sound nice?). And I have just enough grit, thrown in with maybe a little touch of delusion, to think: ummm new field, new skill, new business? Sure, why not, I'll figure it out. And I always have.
Unfortunately, the part nobody tells you about being the oldest daughter, the oldest granddaughter, the one who always has a job and a plan: you get so good at doing all the things that rest starts to feel like the one thing you're not allowed to do. Not because anyone told me to keep going but because stopping felt like it needed a better reason than "I want to." It took me until my 40s to take a week that wasn't attached to a degree, a business, a client, or a kid. Just a week, for no reason except I wanted one. And to understand that taking it didn't make me a selfish mother, a selfish wife, a selfish daughter. It made me whole enough to keep being all of those things without running on empty.
So now I build the trips I wish someone had built for me and I take other women on them. Adventures with no sunrise yoga sessions or journaling prompts. Just real weeks, in real places, with real people, and good food and good wine and nowhere you have to be.
For me, I picked France because it's where I first remembered I was a person and not just a role. And I'm building this for you because I know exactly what it takes for you to say yes to a week away. I know about the childcare logistics, that stupid creeping guilt that shows up the second your flight takes off, the never-ending mental list of everyone else's needs that doesn't go away just because you're on a different continent. That stuff.
Woof.
I've been carrying a version of a never ending to-do list since I was a kid letting myself into an empty house after school. And to all my fellow adders out there, I want you to know that when I say come spend a week with me, I know exactly what I'm asking you to hand over for seven to ten business days. And I promise you, I don't take that lightly.
