We were racing to keep up with our packed family schedule. Days blurred into school, work, gymnastics, birthdays, and dinner parties — energizing in theory, exhausting in reality. We were scraping by.
I remember peak multitasking: listening to my 6-year-old read aloud while making breakfast, and trying to finish putting on eyeliner while the eggs finished cooking in the pan.
My husband and I longed for wide-open days to actually connect, but school holidays were never long enough to decompress. We could see how easily the years might slip by, buried in logistics, until suddenly the kids were packing for college.
We wanted to freeze time. So we hatched a plan to leave our “normal” life for a year and have a wild adventure together as a family.
We came up with a plan
In July 2024, we rented out our London home, stored our belongings, and took the bus to Heathrow with two backpacks and a carry-on.
We weren’t wandering aimlessly. We planned to live in three locations, traveling for five weeks before and after each stop.
I pivoted my marketing consultancy toward travel writing and speaking, while my husband’s academic research guided our shortlist of places we wanted to live. His research enabled legal residency which allowed the girls to attend school. We chose Japan, the US, and the Netherlands, staying three to four months in each.
We picked Tsukuba, Japan, to immerse ourselves in a completely unfamiliar culture; Great Neck, New York, near where we’re both from, to give our daughters a taste of American life and spend rare time with family; and Leiden, the Netherlands, to experience its bike- and water-centered lifestyle.
Residency came with a lot of admin.
Provided by Lisa Lucas
For Japan, we had originally planned to homeschool. Our 8-year-old surprised us by asking to attend a local Japanese school, despite only knowing a few phrases she had picked up during the three weeks we spent traveling around the country.
The school welcomed both girls. Like their classmates, they walked to school alone, changed into indoor shoes, helped serve lunch, and cleaned the classrooms.
In New York, we lived with family outside the city. The girls rode a yellow school bus for the first time, while my husband commuted by train. It was a stark contrast to London — no uniforms, more complicated mornings, and the sobering reality of active-shooter drills.
In Leiden, the girls attended a small international school. Students biked along canals and tended their own garden plots as part of a Dutch gardening program.
Provided by Lisa Lucas
We packed light
Living out of backpacks forced minimalism. I loved escaping the endless to-do list of home life and focusing on actually living.
I wore a single black maxi dress almost every day in Asia — biking through alleys or hiking through the jungle — and it somehow worked.
If anything, I’d bring even less next time. With fewer possessions, our mental bandwidth expanded. We could focus on fun, without guilt.
Parenting on the road
When we first told the girls about our plan, our youngest cried. They loved their friends, their teachers, and the rhythm of school. They couldn’t imagine leaving and not coming back. We tried tempting them with volcanoes and snorkeling in Indonesia.
They came around, somewhat. They loved most moments, but they also always wanted to go home. We promised it would only be a year.
Provided by Lisa Lucas
Our priority was making them feel safe and secure. We talked about adaptability as a life skill, but we also held them close and reminded them they were loved.
Most days, we’d say, “We’re still on the trip,” and it made us feel like a team. The girls learned how to be the new kid, make friends, and settle into unfamiliar rhythms. They learned you can reinvent your life more than once.
The intensity bonded us. We had waterfalls to ourselves, watched wild snow monkeys, and made friends who invited us to visit them in Cozumel. I celebrated my usually grim January birthday on a Thai beach.
In the US, we were present for heavy family moments, including my grandfather’s passing.
We were still on the trip — until we weren’t
Returning to London after 13 months felt surreal. Our 6-turned-7-year-old kissed the ground at Heathrow.
The trip changed us. It gave us shared memories — Hokkaido cream, a road trip from New York to Miami, sunsets from an Alpine hut — but more importantly, it clarified what matters: slow time together, not renovations or packed calendars.
We’re happy to be home, blender included. But we’re already dreaming about our next extended adventure.
Do you have a story about taking a gap year that you want to share? Get in touch with the editor: [email protected].
