Roots & Wings: the Key to Intentional Family Travel

I’ve followed my fair share of family travel influencers over the years, complete with linen-clad, smiling kids on beaches, parents sipping espresso in sun-drenched courtyards, captions full of wanderlust. It was beautiful. Aspirational, even. But something always felt off.

For a while, I couldn’t quite name it. Then it hit me: their version of travel wasn’t my version of travel.

I didn’t want to (a) sell all our belongings and hit the road full-time, or (b) race through 100 destinations just to say we did it before the kids graduate. I wasn’t looking for an escape, or a highlight reel. I wanted something deeper.

That’s when my own family travel philosophy started to take shape. It’s a belief that there’s more to travel than checking things off a list. We travel to build connection, facilitate growth, and prioritize presence.

Travel as Roots and Wings

Travel, at its best, helps us reconnect with who we are. It grounds us in our values and strengthens the bonds we share as a family. It gives our kids stories and traditions to carry forward, and not just the grand, glamorous kind.

Sure, a trip to our ancestral homeland is on the dream list. But some of our most meaningful moments have happened closer to home: hiking the same trail every summer, visiting the grandparents’ small town for July 4th, even pulling over to watch a sunset just because we could.

Roots remind us where we come from. They’re the quiet throughline in all our adventures.

Image shot in Rovaniemi, Finnish Lapland

Wings are the spark. The curiosity. The courage to go somewhere unfamiliar and say, “Let’s figure this out together.”

Travel pushes us (kids and adults) out of our comfort zones and into resilience. It challenges us in small, unpredictable ways. Like the time we landed in Helsinki just before Christmas… and the airline lost all of our luggage. Hats, gloves, coats, boots. It was zero degrees. We had to navigate a frozen city with our carry-ons and our wits. (The luggage arrived the next day. We survived!)

Those moments are where the wings grow. Building resilience and confidence little by little through our family adventures gives our children wings that will empower them when they’re ready to leave the nest.

The real magic of family travel isn’t found in a guidebook or itinerary. It’s found in the balance.

It’s in setting intentions for your trip—Are we here to reconnect? To explore? To rest?—and then leaving enough space in the schedule for spontaneous magic to sneak in.

It’s in pausing at a cafe to watch the world go by. In laughing over a shared plate of something new and possibly terrifying. In knowing when to push and when to pause.

It’s in choosing experiences over checklists.

It’s a work in progress. Still, we’re learning to see travel as not a break from real life, but an extension of it. A tool for teaching our kids how to be curious, kind, and brave. A way to grow stronger as a family and lean into wht matters most.

Every trip doesn’t have to be epic. But every trip can be meaningful.

Because when we travel with both roots and wings, we show our kids that the world is big and beautiful, and that they belong in it.

And honestly? That might be the greatest souvenir of all.