At home in the world with Tsh Oxenreider
The last time I spoke with Tsh Oxenreider, she and her family had just returned to the States after a year-long, round-the-world adventure, and I was completely taken with the idea of long-term family travel. I’ve since spent many (many) hours thinking about the logistics of a big adventure and the idea excites me a lot.
In the 18 months since she was last on the show, Tsh has turned her family’s adventure in to a beautiful new book called ‘At Home in the World’ where she talks about the paradox of being a wandering homebody - someone who feels at home on the road but also yearns for the deep roots of community.
In today’s episode Tsh and I talk about that tension, and the freedom she discovered when she embraced both sides of her personality - the homebody and the wanderer - and why she is now happy to be deep in a home phase of life as she and her husband renovate an old house in a small Texas town.
We also talk about community and what it means to Tsh. Her definition, “A place where we know, and are known,” leads us in to the topic of finding community in a new place. How can you cultivate community in a place you’re new to? How can you feel part of a community if you’re only going to be there for a few weeks?
Both of us are big fans of slow travel so we also discuss different ways we each find that thread of community in a place, even if we’re only staying for a short while. I love visiting libraries and markets, doing very normal things like grocery shopping, as they all help tie us more closely to the heart of a place than sticking to the bucket-list items alone.
I also ask Tsh one of the most common questions I receive but am unable to answer: how to encourage older kids (tweens and teens, specifically) to embrace a simpler way of life. Social media makes the issue of ‘fitting in’ even more pressured for today’s kids, and with that often comes more stuff, more wants, more extracurricular activities, more stress… Tsh’s eldest daughter is now 12, so it was fascinating and very helpful to get her views on how best to encourage simplicity in kids that age, while also accepting that there will be tension there sometimes.
Such a great, wide-ranging conversation that left me both yearning for adventure and completely content with my life at home. Enjoy!
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Things to Check Out After Today’s Episode:
- Tsh Oxenreider on Slow Travel - Episode 29 of The Slow Home Podcast
- The Art of Simple
- At Home in the World - Reflections on Belonging While Wandering the Globe
- Tsh's podcast - The Simple Show
- Connect with Tsh: Facebook | IG | Twitter