Sometimes the greatest discoveries aren't the places we visit—they're the parts of ourselves we rediscover along the way. In this deeply personal solo episode, Sarah reflects on the first half of her family's 10-week journey across the United States and the unexpected lessons that have emerged. From floating down rivers in Texas to navigating heatwaves in Washington D.C., Sarah explores survival mode, burnout, rest, parenting, courage, authenticity, and the quiet return of joy. This isn't simply a travel recap. It's an invitation to slow down, breathe, and ask yourself whether you're merely surviving—or truly living.
"Sometimes survival mode doesn't look dramatic—it just looks like showing up every day."
"The most important discoveries I've made haven't been on a map."
"Maybe the real gift of travel isn't that it changes who we are—but that it reminds us who we are."
00:00 – Welcome and why this episode is different
02:00 – Realising just how long survival mode had become normal
06:30 – Learning that rest isn't something you have to earn
10:30 – What floating down a Texas river taught me about obstacles, courage and control
16:00 – Why Jackson reminded me what pure joy looks like
20:00 – Remembering the version of myself I thought I'd lost
24:00 – Authenticity keeps appearing everywhere I look
28:00 – What if life is about more than simply surviving?
31:00 – Final reflections on joy, family, possibility and coming home to yourself
Sarah Jordan-Ross (00:01) Hey everyone, welcome back to Taboo Talk with Sarah, the podcast that breaks the silence, fosters hope and talks about the tough stuff so you never feel alone.
I'm Sarah and today I'm doing something a little bit differently. No guest, just me and some reflections from the last month. When we left Australia and headed to America, we're traveling across the US for 10 weeks with our boys. And I thought we'll come in here to explore. See New York and Washington DC. We're now in Texas.
Next leg of our journey sees Seattle and then a drive down the coast road to LA when we fly home in August. And I've learned a lot about America, but what surprised me most is what I've learned about myself on this trip. Some of the lessons have come from the places that we've visited. Some have come from conversations with people we've met.
Some from spending time with my family and most from something more simple. Having enough space to just notice things. One of the things I've realized is that I was living in survival mode for a lot longer than I even realized. And not because life was terrible, it wasn't. I love my life. And nothing was falling apart.
Sometimes survival mode doesn't look dramatic and it's not in what's happening in those dramatic moments. Sometimes it's just showing up every day, doing what needs to be done, managing health challenges, raising children, supporting the people you love, building businesses, serving your community, carrying responsibilities, putting one foot in front of the other.
And when we do that for long enough, that way of living becomes normal and we don't even realise that we're doing it. You get comfortable with the uncomfortable, you adapt to life in survival mode, you cope, you keep moving, and then one day something changes. You get a little breathing room, a little distance from the everyday.
A different view, a different perspective. And suddenly you realize just how much you've been carrying. And I think that is probably one of the biggest gifts of this trip. Not that it's solved everything, and life hasn't magically become easy. Granted, right this minute it's pretty great because I'm sitting overlooking a lake and watching eagles fly, and that's one of my favorite things to do. What it has given me.
is the space to hear myself think. Space to notice what was already there. And one of the things I noticed was how tired I was. Not just physically, although there was that, but tired in the deeper sense. The kind of tired that comes from years of carrying things. Years of responsibility. Years of doing what needs to be done.
And I think many of us get so used to carrying things that eventually we stop noticing the weight. Then suddenly, when we put those bags down for a moment, we realize just how heavy they were. And along with that came another lesson. Rest isn't something we earn. For years I've taught people about nervous system regulation, resilience, listening to their bodies.
And here I've been reminded to practice what I preach. There were days when we were in Washington, DC, where the heat really got to us. They were in the middle of a heat wave and we had come from an Australian winterer. I was scraping ice off the windshield of my car the day before we left. And now I'm in what Australians would say was.
Thirty five to forty degree heat and it was hard. And those days reminded us with Harrison with his MS that pushing through that comes with a cost and it's not a cost we're willing to pay. There were days when Jeff and I both realized we're not twenty anymore and we probably can't do as much as we used to do. And the smartest thing we did
It wasn't push harder. It was rest. It was it's too hot out here.
exhibits were blocked off, there was places we couldn't go that we'd have to walk harder, so it's like, okay, this is too hard. Let's go back to the hotel, have a nap, regroup and work out the plan from there. And we trusted that the world wouldn't end if we slowed down. Now I know that sounds simple, but for most of us it isn't. Especially if we've spent years
Measuring our worth by what we achieve, what we produce, what we accomplish. Then for me, yesterday brought that lesson home again. We spent the day floating down a river on inner chips. The boys absolutely loved it. For the most part, so did Jeff and I. But we learned a few things along the way too. One, while tying
Multiple inner chips together sounds like a great idea so nobody gets swept away by themselves. It's great until you're stuck on a rock or you encounter an obstacle that it would be better if you came at it from different angles. That means at one point Jeff Jackson and I were connected. We got lodged on a rock.
Jeff ended up in the river and then Jackson and I we're drifting off downstream without him. Now at that point, if Jeff and I hadn't have been connected, we would have gone around that obstacle on opposite sides and met up on the other side. No problem, no drama. There may be a lesson in there somewhere.
That sometimes you've got to take obstacles from a different direction or a new way of looking at it. Now, while I managed to stay in my tube for the entire trip until right at the end when I tried to get Jackson up onto the beach where we went, then I had what can only be described as a spectacular display of grace and a letters.
That word I can't say. Athleticism. Far from it. I ended up in the river. So did the bag with all our water bottles, sunscreen, insect repellent, and so did the Yankees hat that I just bought in New York a week ago. All ended up in the river.
Thankfully I managed to rescue the important things. Jackson got out of the river safely, and I managed to grab my hat before it went floating off down the river. The water bottles and the sunscreen, however, were not so lucky.
They got claimed. Which is not great because if anybody knows us, Jackson and I really are not very fond of bugs, and both of us are wee bits of mosquito magnets, so hence new insect repellent. Now, today we're feeling it a little bit. Jeff's knees are sore from where he bashed into that rock. My shoulders reminding me I'm not 20 anymore.
We're all a little sore and sorry, but one of the things we noticed yesterday, or that both Jeff and I said yesterday, was there was a time in our lives when we would have climbed out of the river and gone straight back for another run. Not because we felt pressured to, but because it was fun and because well we could have. Yesterday was a reminder that we're not quite as fit as we once were. And while most of it was fun.
There were definitely moments when it wasn't. Moments where it was fun until it wasn't. Where we had to pay attention. Where things didn't quite go according to plan. After Jeff fell in and we got separated, I found myself holding very tightly onto Jackson's kid. Not because he was in trouble, not because I was panicked, but because I had suddenly become very aware.
Of what could happen if either of us ended up in the water. For a few minutes I found myself thinking through all the possibilities. What if he falls out? What if I fall out? What if I can't get to him quickly enough? Nothing happened. We're fine. We went out on a boat today. But it reminded me how quickly that confidence disappears when we're outside of our comfort zone. Courage isn't feeling fearless.
Sometimes courage is simply taking the next bend in the river while carrying a healthy respect for the fact that things don't always go according to plan. The older boys got ahead of us at one point and disappeared from sight. And we simply had to trust that they were sensible enough to get out at the right place. And when we arrived, there they were waiting for us, safe and together. And that reminded me of something.
My boys bicker, they argue, they can debate almost anything including what shade of blue the sky happens to be. But when it matters, they have each other's backs, they work together, they look after one another. And sitting here today, a little sore and sorry for myself, I find myself also incredibly proud of the young men that they are becoming.
My favourite memory from the day though, it wasn't getting stuck on rocks or falling out of my tube or even surviving the river. It was Jackson. The entire way down the river, he's whooping and cheering. The current bounced him through the rocky sections. Every rapid was exciting, every bump was an adventure.
He wasn't worried about anything. He was having the best time and all he had to do was sit back and let himself be carried along. Or Jeff and I were were doing the work. He wasn't trying to optimize the experience. He wasn't thinking, should we do another run? He was just present. Fully, completely, joyfully present.
And watching me him reminded me of something I've been thinking about a lot lately. For years I've been focused on surviving, getting through, managing responsibilities, keeping all the plates spinning, juggling the ninety-nine balls in the air, just hoping that one of them wasn't gonna drop and muck up everything. Somewhere along the line I forgot just how important joy is.
Not happiness, not achievement, joy. That kind that bubbles up unexpectedly, makes you laugh at the strangest things. The kind that makes a ten year old yellow as he gets bounced along by
Watching the birds soaring from a deck at sunrise, floating down a river, spending a day on the lake with my boys has given me the space and the quiet to hear the whispers of my heart again. And those whispers are calling me towards joy, not the kind that comes from achievement or ticking a million things off a list. The simple kind, the kind I saw in Jackson as he whooped his way down the river.
The kind that brings with it a deep sense of peace. The kind that reminds you there is more to life than simply getting through it. If this trip has taught me anything so far, it's that I want more of that for my boys, for Jeff, and for me. Because the peace that comes with that kind of joy, it's pretty great. Another thing this trip's reminded me of is how much I love.
Exploring. Not just new places, but new ideas, new people, new perspectives. Travel reconnects me with parts of myself that get buried when life becomes crowded. It reminds me to be curious, to pay attention, to wonder, to figure things out. Years ago a friend of mine told me she missed the version of herself that lived in London.
At the time I knew what she meant on an intellectual level, but I hadn't experienced it for myself yet.
Now I have, I understand it in a completely different way. I found myself missing the Sarah that lived in Bath or the Sarah that lived in Parry Sound. Not because I want to go back because I don't, but because I missed something about who I was during those seasons.
The curiosity, the possibility, the space. Everything was an adventure. I got to look at the world with childlike wonder and I want more of that. And this trip has reminded me that those parts of me, they were never actually gone.
They were just hiding beneath everything else I was carrying. And perhaps that's why another theme keeps reappearing everywhere I turn. Authenticity. It came up during leadership week. It came up with podcast guests. It appears in my writing. It keeps showing up over and over again. The idea that authenticity and vulnerability are not weaknesses.
They are strengths, not because they make life easier, but because they allow us to live more honestly, to stop performing, to stop pretending, to stop trying to be who we think everyone else needs us to be, and instead ask: Who am I really? What matters to me? What kind of life do I want to create?
Because perhaps the biggest thing I've noticed is this. For a long time my focus was on getting through, getting through grief, getting through health challenges, getting through busy seasons, getting through responsibilities. And there are seasons where that's exactly what we need to do. But lately I found myself asking a different question. What if life's about more than just surviving?
What if it's okay or more than okay to dream again? What if possibility is what's waiting on the other side of survival mode? I don't have all the answers yet. This trip is still unfolding. There are still places to see, conversations to have, lessons to learn.
But what I do know is this I came to America to explore places, yet some of the most important discoveries I've made haven't been on a map. They've been about rest, authenticity, family, belonging, joy, and possibility. Remembering the parts of myself I'd almost forgotten. And maybe that's the real gift of travel.
Not that it changes who we are, but that it reminds us who we are.
Until next time, take care of yourselves, take care of each other, and remember, your story matters, so share it. Because your story might be the thing that changes someone else's life. Bye for now.