A Trip to Your Child’s Birth Country. What Are The Goals and Desired Outcomes of Your Family’s Heritage Journey?
If you’ve attended any of my workshops, you know that I talk about the need for setting goals and considering the desired outcome of a trip to your child’s birth country a LOT!
Before I took my daughter to China in 2011, I had never thought in terms of goals or outcomes that were important to us while traveling. After that trip, which should have been much better, it consumed me. I knew as a travel planner and especially as a mom, I should have considered what my daughter needed before we embarked on such an important journey. For several years and through hours and hours of research, I dwelled on questions like:
What had I missed?
What should I have done differently?
What kind of trip would fit her better?
And most of all, why hadn’t I thought of all this BEFORE taking her to China?
Yeah, I beat myself up a lot about that trip. But you shouldn’t have to. That’s why I’m here – to help you plan a Heritage Journey that will benefit you and your children and inspire many years of positive memories!
So back to the goals …
During my research I realized that there are some very tangible goals that can be achieved on every Heritage Journey and if you’re like me, you want this once in a lifetime experience (the FIRST time you take your child back to his or her birth country) to be monumental!
A Heritage Journey can and should be – at a minimum:
- A way to connect more deeply as a family unit.
- An opportunity to build self-esteem and a positive self-image.
- A journey that cultivates pride in your family’s multi-cultural heritage.
These are the main themes (goals) that I spend most of my time reflecting on when I plan a Heritage Journey for a family. Best of all, they are achievable! I promise. It takes an investment of time, energy, forethought and background knowledge to make sure we accomplish these goals, but they are doable.
And what better time than a trip to your child’s birth country to deepen family connections, build self-esteem, help your child developed a positive self-image and cultivate pride in your family’s rich multi-cultural heritage?
So when you are ready to design a trip that will accomplish family goals, call me. It’s my forte and I would be thrilled to help you plan the trip of a lifetime. As a side note, this is a great time to book travel! There is still availability during spring break and if you’re looking at summer, we can typically get better prices for booking early. Flights will definitely be cheaper for summer if you’re booking them now!
As I mentioned last week, I’ve had several families ask me about trip planning tools. I am currently in the process of developing my newest creation, A Guide To Your Heritage Journey. This will include a one on one with me as a family coach; 12 monthly downloadable guides that contain country-specific information and activities to help you build deeper connections with your child; access to exclusive tips and travel vouchers; plus, a quarterly members-only Q & A. If you’re interested, shoot me a note so I can reach out to you specifically when it’s ready for launch.
If you are ready to plan a trip to your child’s birth country sign up for a 30-minute Discovery Session with me and we’ll figure out how to get the ball rolling. You can sign up at calendly.com/bambi.
PS – If you want some more information on why goal setting is so important, check out these previous blog posts about designing a Heritage Journey for your adoptive family:
https://motherlandtravel.com/adoptive-family-travel/heritage-journey-childs-birth-country/
https://motherlandtravel.com/heritage-journey/designing-heritage-journey-part-two/
https://motherlandtravel.com/adoptive-family-travel/designing-heritage-journey-part-3/
https://motherlandtravel.com/adoptive-family-travel/designing-heritage-journey-part-4/
Bambi Wineland is the mother of two internationally adopted children, a traveler, a Certified Professional Coach, and the Founder and CEO of Motherland Travel. Motherland Travel began by designing Heritage Journeys for families with internationally adopted children. The emphasis of those Heritage Journeys has always been on deepening family connections, building self-esteem and cultivating pride in a family’s multi-cultural heritage. Motherland Travel also uses the philosophies of transformative Travel for designing family trips with purpose – building rich connections, with each other and the world! Read more about her here >> http://motherlandtravel.com/