The Eat Pray Love effect: Prom vs. Machu Picchu

Part 5 of a Monitor cover story about how families hit by the Eat Pray Love effect leave it all behind. But it’s not all paradise, such as when the prom looms larger than Machu Picchu.

By Eilene Zimmerman, Correspondent / May 27, 2011

Doug Brown helps identify a fish that his son, Henry Wyatt caught. The family left it all behind – selling their house near San Diego to buy a home in Baja California, Mexico to use as a base for a year at sea. Henry Wyatt told his mom that their Eat Pray Love experience has been the best of his life. Some families who have done the same temper their praise of the experience, noting that it’s not all paradise – such as when a teen's prom looms larger than Machu Picchu.

Courtesy of the Brown Family

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Pulling up stakes and leaving it all behind may be the dream of everyone from the first-grader chafing at the bounds of school and parents with work stress, but extended travel is not all Eat, Pray, Love, as the gauzy movie may have suggested. Traveling together 24 hours a day, seven days a week can present challenges for even the closest of families.

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Tara Russell, a San Francisco-based certified life and career coach specializing in long-term travel, tells her clients that extended travel is not the solution to family dysfunction: “Whatever is dogging you here will dog you 10 times more on the road.”

For example: A missed prom might trump Machu Picchu in one family member’s mind, or a flat tire in a windstorm might spark a family spat.

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Rainer Jenss, who left an executive position at National Geographic to travel through 28 countries for a year in 2008 with his family, says spending so much time with his wife magnified some of their issues. “We have very different parenting styles, but it never affected us that much. When we were traveling, though, it was harder to work out.” But, he adds, “You develop patience on a much deeper level.”

Craig James, corporate communications consultant who took his family on the road for a year in 2008, says his kids had a tough time when their friends from home would communicate with them by e-mail or on Facebook. “They could see what their classmates were doing and it hurt. My daughter was supposed to be starting high school and she was very connected to her friends.”

When she missed her first homecoming dance, having boyfriends, or a new “Twilight” movie, he explains, “she would be depressed.... Never mind we’d been to Machu Picchu that day, when there was a party she had missed.”

In April, during a week when the Podlesny family was traveling in their mobile home through Texas, and the wind was blowing at 70 miles per hour, they got on each other’s nerves, says Danielle. In fact they had to reschedule their interview for this story to change a blown tire, the third one that week. The windy conditions made it impossible for the family to get out and explore. “It was frustrating, and we were feeling cooped up,” she says.