Welcome! I’m so glad you’re here!
My name is Molly Brown, and I started this project in February, 2023 in advance of a 13 month around the world journey I took with my husband, the cutest man alive, Quintin.
On this 400-day journey, Quintin and I traveled 78,767 miles, visited 25 countries, dealt in 31 different languages, slept in 127 beds, and took 29 planes, 50 boats, 22 trains, and 60 buses.
You can find stories from each country we visited in the BLOG section of this website, and you can see photos from each country in the PORTFOLIO section.
We’ve since returned from the Radical Sabbatical ™ but the project lives on, cataloging our shorter international travels, until we’re able to set sail on The Radical Sabbatical Part II ™.
So what inspired the Radical Sabbatical?! I’m so glad you asked!
My sister was an emergency room nurse and she once had a patient who when asked the ever standard “so what brought you into the ED tonight” answered with “wellll, maa’aam, you know I was a home birth.” My sister didn’t know this man was a home birth, nor was she interested in the 90 year backstory of what brought him in. Allow me to take y’all back to my figurative home birth…
When I was 18 years old I had every intention of taking a gap year in between high school and college, spending it backpacking through South America. It didn’t happen because I felt pressured to go to college right away, fearing the financial aid package would not be the same a year later. When I was 22, I had the same intention of taking time off before entering the professional workforce to do the same backpacking trip through South America. It didn’t happen because I felt pressure to accept a lucrative job, believing I would never get the same opportunity a year later. Once I entered the workforce, life happened. I got a new job, a new promotion, a new house, a new husband and all of the sudden I wasn’t so charmed by the idea of backpacking through South America.
And then COVID happened. And like so many of us, it rearranged my way of thinking. It was the clearest reminder that plans for the future aren’t promised and what’s physically in front of you, your day to day material being, is the only thing that matters.
Since 2019, I’ve made major changes in my material being. In the process, I gained the courage to start being the woman I am in my imaginary world (pretty sure we all have her, right?!)
In making these changes, that old dream of backpacking through South America started creeping back into my periphery. Twelve years had passed since I first imagined that trip and to make it feasible the trip had to be reimagined (it simply won’t be me breathing a youths air in a dorm room hostel).
Through this blog, I hope to inspire you and connect you to the people, places and stories we encounter on the road.
