Mom Finds Inner Peace While Raising 4 Kids to be Mavericks

She Who Wanders

Feb 8

A convo with Alison from Raising Mavericks

Meet Alison. Wife, mom to four kids, psychotherapist by day and explorer at heart, she is paving her own path and showing her kids that they don’t have to follow the paths of others but can create any reality they want in life. Inspired by her sister and resolving to carry on her legacy, she chooses to embrace the chaos that comes with running a business, homeschooling her kids, activities, sports and plenty of outdoor adventure and is determined to live every single day to the fullest as she juggles it all. She shares all her tips for homeschooling the wild and free way, family travel, getting kids outside + finding adventure off-the-beaten path in their converted van to help others who are seeking more adventure and meaning in their lives.

Tell us a little about you and your family like where you’re from, where you live now, how old are your kids and anything interesting or unique you’d like people to know.

We are the Humphreys Clan – Ron, Alison, Teagen (13), Willow (12), Weston (10) and Stone (8). We live in Maryland and are a part-time travel, full-time adventure family. We left our traditional jobs to run our businesses so we could homeschool our children and spend more time together as a family going on adventures, traveling, and spending time in nature. We love adventures big and small and really love exploring off the beaten paths. Our children have never attended school and since we both work from home, it took them awhile to understand why other people were excited about the weekend since we tend to do more work and formal learning on the weekends so we can adventure during the week when places are less busy.

The Great Wanderlust is all about moms stepping outside of the box and diving deeper in both travel and in life. The mission is to inspire mamas and families to feel fully alive through adventure and exploration! What is your great wanderlust? What most makes you come to life??

I feel most alive when I am on the road with my family in our bus – exploring new places and spending time in nature. As a psychotherapist, I think getting out of one’s routine regularly and finding inner peace and joy is so important and healthy. That is why we do a lot of local adventures throughout the week and jump in our bus and head on the road as much as possible. One specific time I felt my great wanderlust was when my whole family and I took the cog railway up to the top of Mount Washington. To be up that high up with no buildings in sight and be surrounded by nothing but mountains in all directions, made me feel both a great sense of peace and extremely invigorated.

What is the meaning of the word “maverick”? Why did you choose that word to represent your vision for your kids? Share with us about your passion behind it.

To me, a maverick is an independent-minded, daring, innovative, influential person who is willing to take chances and who wants to achieve what has never been achieved before. In a world that often encourages children to follow along with what others are doing, my hope for my children is that they develop the confidence to follow their dreams and take their own path in life. A big goal of mine as a parent is to raise children who think for themselves, dream big, are courageous, do things their own way and take a path in life that makes them happy. Picking the handle @raisingmavericks seemed to encompass what we were trying to do as parents and the message we wanted to share with others – that they too could raise mavericks.

It can be scary and uncertain to build a life that is off-the-path of what is considered “normal”. Do you ever feel doubt or question yourself on the choices you’ve made for your family? How do you stay focused on and confident in the vision you have and the life you’re creating?

Do I ever question my choices as parent? Yes. All. The. Time. I think a lot of that is because society had me convinced for a long time that there was a “right” way of doing things. But I didn’t want to do life that way. I didn’t want to send my kids to daycare and school and not be a strong presence in their life so I could go work for someone else that didn’t value me as much as I would have liked. So, we chose to take our own path in life. It is both freeing and frightening. But whenever I have doubts about my choices, I remind myself why I made the choices I made - why we are homeschooling, why I am working from home so I can be with my family more, why we have prioritized traveling, adventure, and time outside - and it helps to center me.

Tell us more about what a typical day looks like for your family? Between homeschool/unschool with your kids, working from home, keeping up with the house and just generally staying on top of life, how do you fit it all in in a way that works for you and your family? Do you have a couple of tips you’d give other moms who are trying to juggle a career and homeschooling?

There is no such thing as a typical day for us! Some days we are home and doing some more structured learning in the mornings and then the kids have free time in the afternoons to play their instruments, draw, play outside, play Legos or whatever else they want while I get some work and laundry done. The kids do sports and activities so many nights we go to practices or classes. On other days we get up and spend all day outside hiking and playing in the rivers. Other days we take a trip to DC or Phili and spend all day exploring museums. And then there are the days when we are traveling and are in national parks, state parks or new cities and we spend our days learning through exploring together as a family.

The reality is some days are chaotic. I am lucky because I have a great partner in my husband who helps with the housework and does most of the cooking. And the reality is no one can do everything perfectly every day so that is not my expectation for myself. I accept that some days I will be a great homeschool mom and my kids will learn a lot and be engaged with all day. Other days I will be a great psychotherapist and college professor and work with my clients in one-on-one sessions and grade papers. And some days I will get my house clean. Just kidding. With 6 of us working and learning at home, the house is never clean! 😊 But really, my best advice is to be gentle with yourself. Find a rhythm that works for your family and keep at it until it doesn’t work anymore and then find a new rhythm. Learn to be flexible and set realistic expectations.

There are so many different ways to make travel a priority as a family, and it’s so interesting and fun that you’ve chosen to travel in a bus, especially as a family of 6! How and why did you decide to foray into bus travel? What is the most memorable trip you’ve had in it?

Literally one day my husband asked me if we should buy a paratransit bus and convert it into a travel bus for our family. I said yes and the rest is history! My kids affectionately named our little, only partially converted bus KiKi and inside she is covered in stickers with all the places we have visited. As our children have grown over the past few years, we have realized that our little bus will not be big enough for our family of 6 much longer. We will probably be adding a pull behind camper to our set up in the somewhere near future.

It is hard to pick just one trip we loved in our bus. We had a great time driving all through New England in the bus a few years ago going from Connecticut all the way up to Acadia National Park and then to Mount Washington. We also spent a week in the Great Smoky Mountains this past Fall and absolutely fell in love with the area. We have also taken our bus to NYC several times and my husband drives it through the city and parallel parks it in the middle of the city like a champ!

I love your outlook about embracing the detours in life and choosing to instead view them as adventures. But when challenging or unexpected situations hit, it can be hard to actually do. Take us back to a situation in your life where you were able to implement this. How did you use that experience as a positive force in your life?

Four years ago, my older sister was diagnosed with Stage 4 Metastatic Breast Cancer. We lost her just 12 months later on 1/1/20. She didn’t get a chance to do many of the things she wanted to do as she thought she had time to do them since she was still young. During her last year, we spent a lot of time talking about what she thought she would have had time to do “one day.” I promised her that I would start doing the things I wanted to do “one day,” now and that I would start viewing life as one big adventure and live each day to the fullest for both of us. This major loss for me came after my husband lost both his father and step-father in the 12 months prior to me losing my sister. These three major losses really showed us how precious life is, how we are not guaranteed tomorrow and really impacted how we view life. So we took these losses and use them as our motivation to live life to the fullest and to be fully present and enjoy our children’s childhoods to the fullest.

Where are you off to next and what are you most looking forward to about it?

We are not sure what our next big trip will be (there are so many places we want to go and we are currently mapping out which we will do next), but we are very much thinking about heading out West or taking the kids out of the country for the first time which are both very exciting prospects.

Is there a question you wish I would have asked or anything else you’d like to share with other mamas relating to travel or life?

I think it is important for mamas who are just getting started traveling with their little ones that all trips don’t have to be the epic trips you see on Instagram. Trips can be local, small and not at all epic and still be absolutely amazing and life changing.

Who inspires you to dig deeper in life? Do you have a few recommendations of someone I should feature next? :)

So many of the women who inspire me have already been featured on your page! You have seriously done such a great job of covering so many incredible women! Some other amazing women are: Kristin @raisinghikers, Dineo @dineodowd and Maya @travelwiththesmile