I Didn't Tell Anyone - She Travels Simple

I tiptoed into it. Quietly. On purpose.

No big announcement. No Facebook post. No sit-down conversation with family. I just started making moves and kept my mouth shut, because I already knew what was coming the minute I opened it. Opinions, worry, and questions I didn’t have answers to yet. And honestly, I wasn’t ready to defend something I hadn’t even done yet. So I didn’t. Looking back, I think that was one of the smartest decisions I ever made.

The hardest person to eventually tell was my father.

I knew before I even said it that I was disappointing him. Not the loud, dramatic kind of disappointment. The quiet kind. The kind where he just didn’t tell people what I was doing. Didn’t bring it up. Like if he didn’t say it out loud, it wasn’t really happening.

That hurt more than any argument would have, but here’s what I know now that I didn’t know then: his discomfort was never really about me. It was about a version of life he understood, and a version of me that no longer fit inside it. That’s not something I could have fixed by staying home.

When people did find out, the reactions were pretty much exactly what you’d expect from a small town.

The older crowd. Married couples. People who had done everything the way you’re supposed to do it. They were kind, I’ll give them that. Nobody came at me directly. But you could feel it. That tight smile. The slight pause before they asked how things were going. The way they’d change the subject.

I had a friend who’d get a few drinks in him and just say it flat out. You’re just a dirty hippie. Like living on the road meant I’d stopped showering. Like I was going to pull up to some commune and disappear into the woods. It used to bother me. Now I think it’s kind of funny, honestly, because that guy has not left a thirty mile radius in the last decade and I’ve been to places he’s never even thought about visiting.

I remember coming back from a trip once and someone stopped me in passing and said, “You’ve been to more places than 90% of the people in this county.”

I don’t know if that number was accurate. But I know it stopped me in my tracks.

Because I wasn’t doing it to collect places. I wasn’t doing it to have something to brag about. I was doing it because something in me needed it. Needed to move. Needed to see. Needed to meet people who weren’t just going through the motions of a life they never actually chose.

And at some point, without even realizing it, I had become someone who just went.

Coming home after trips was always a strange experience. I’d be driving back through Pennsylvania, through Delaware, getting closer to New Jersey, and I’d feel this shift. Not in the traffic. Not in how people were driving. Just in the energy. A heaviness.

I’d be out somewhere and people around me were just complaining. About everything. And I kept thinking, why? I had just spent time with people who were genuinely happy. Not perfect, not without problems, but actually interested in their lives. That contrast is hard to unsee once you’ve seen it.

Travel doesn’t fix everything. I want to be honest about that. But it does give you a measuring stick. And once you’ve measured, it’s hard to go back to just accepting whatever is in front of you.

I started going to Tiny House festivals when they were still a relatively new thing. In the beginning I was one of the only people who showed up with a bus. A converted school bus, which people in that world call a skoolie. I got plenty of looks. Plenty of questions. A fair amount of skepticism.

But then more bus people started showing up. And I started meeting my people.

Eventually I met Michelle Mattson. She invited me to something called the Skoolie Swarm, and I showed up in February 2021 not really knowing what to expect. I walked into a gathering of hundreds of people who were living the exact life I had been quietly, sometimes apologetically, building for years.

I have not looked back since.

Honestly, I wish I had found that community from day one. It took me three years to get there. But the thing about the Skoolie Swarm, and communities like it, is that they don’t care when you arrive. They just make room. No judgment about your rig, your experience level, or whether you have any idea what you’re doing yet. If you go alone, good. There are people there who are also alone and looking for exactly the same thing you are.

Find your people. It changes everything.

Here is what nobody tells you about the side eyes you’re going to get. They don’t last, and they turn around faster than you’d think. Yes, at first you’ll get the looks and the worry and the “I just don’t understand why you’d want to do that.” Let them have it, because people are allowed to not understand your choices and you don’t need their understanding to move forward.

But give it some time. Those same people, or people just like them, will circle back. And they’ll say things like, that looks like so much fun, or I’ve always wanted to do something like that, or honestly I’m kind of jealous.

And then one day, a woman will pull you aside quietly and say, I’ve been thinking about doing something like this. Can I ask you a few questions?

And you’ll realize you weren’t just living your life. You were giving someone else permission to live theirs.

That’s the part that gets me. Every time.

If you’re the woman who hasn’t told anyone yet, I get it because I was you. What I want to tell you is that you don’t have to announce it, you don’t have to defend it, and you don’t have to have every answer before you take the first step.

Find a Facebook group and show up to a meetup. Sit in a parking lot full of people who chose the road and just watch how it feels. There are people out there right now who are waiting for someone exactly like you to say hello. You’ve been waiting for permission, but you’re not going to get it from anyone else, so give it to yourself and go.