“I consider the fog in front of me, how I love writing but itch to break out of my genre into something new. I love the freedom of nomadic living, too, but yearn for the simplicity of home. I grow restless with the humdrum of small, ordinary life, but know it’s in those hours of sorting socks and vacuuming the car where most of life is meant to be lived. I don’t think I am made to do daily extraordinary things, to constantly unearth new sights.”
– Tsh Oxenreider in “At Home in the World”
Appropriately, I started “At Home in the World: Reflections on Belonging while Wandering the Globe” on Friday afternoon on our way to Louisville. I finished this travel memoir on Saturday night while on my mom’s comfy chair in Louisville after the friend’s wedding that brought us into town this time.
Traveling the world with three kids is a good foundation for a story. Tsh does a lovely job of reliving the trip that took them 30 countries and how it bonded them as a family. I appreciated the realness. Kids are still kids and parents still have to parent regardless of where in the work you are.
I struggled to get into one of Tsh’s other books, but I was excited to hear about “At Home in the World” and added it to my ever-long Amazon Wish List. Then I saw the Kindle version was $3.99 the same week it released, so I dove in. {It might still be on sale, so you should check!}
I especially loved reading about the Oxenreiders’ African and New Zealand adventures. I loved the community that came alive for them in multiple African countries and I reminisced about my own trip to New Zealand in 2009 as I read about that part of their journey through the world.
Much like Tsh, I love traveling but I also always love coming home. Greg and I have always taken our kids places – sometimes just a few hours away like Nashville or St. Louis, but other times we’ve gone farther like Florida or South Carolina and one time to we flew across the world to New Zealand with our then-2-year-old girl. Of course, they don’t remember it all, but we try to engage in adventure wherever we are.
Traveling with my family has taught me about belonging despite the location. I enjoyed hearing Tsh echo that message, which managed to encourage me right now in my everyday life.
About the author
Tsh Oxenreider is the founder and main voice of The Art of Simple, a community site that celebrates living slow with passion, and is the host of the top-ranked podcast The Simple Show. She’s the author of “At Home in the World,” “Notes from a Blue Bike,” “One Bite at a Time,” and “Organized Simplicity,” and she thinks a library card, a Netflix subscription, and a passport are some of the greatest parenting tools in the universe.
You can also find her sharing stories on her podcast, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
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I don’t always review books that I buy with my own money and read purely for pleasure, but I wanted to share this one with you because it was different than my usual read and I had these thoughts I wanted to share.
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