THE STORY BEHIND THE TRAVELING DVM

Helping busy families make room for meaningful travel

Hi! I’m Willow—a veterinarian, wife, mom of two, and the travel creator behind The Traveling DVM.

I created this space for working parents who want to experience more of the world with their families but aren’t sure how to fit travel into an already-full life.

Our family doesn’t travel full-time. We plan trips around careers, school schedules, limited vacation time, real budgets, and all the responsibilities waiting for us at home. I know how overwhelming it can feel to plan a trip when you’re already exhausted—but I also know how transformative it can be when you finally take one.

I’m here to show you that there is no perfect time to travel. Every stage comes with different challenges, but every stage is worth experiencing.

About Us

We’re a Wisconsin-based family of four with two children who are four years apart.

At home, I work full-time as a small-animal veterinarian—a career I have loved for more than a decade. My husband and I are raising our daughter and son while balancing careers, school, activities, family responsibilities, and all the ordinary demands that make life feel very full. We also have a dog, a cat, and a bearded dragon.

We take international vacations, road trips, long weekends, points-and-miles adventures, mother-daughter trips, couples’ getaways, and occasional trips with friends. Some are carefully planned months in advance. Others happen because we find an opportunity that feels too good to pass up.

Our travels aren’t always easy, seamless, or perfectly curated. We have experienced delayed flights, motion sickness, tired children, abandoned plans, and plenty of moments when the hotel pool was more exciting to our kids than the activity I spent hours researching.

But travel doesn’t have to be perfect—or easy—to be worth it.

Why I started The Traveling DVM

The first trip that made me realize how much I needed travel came after our daughter was born. We went to Key West, and something about being there brought me a sense of peace I hadn’t realized I was missing. We have returned several times since then, and we continue to find that same feeling every time we go.

At that point in my life, I was exhausted. Between veterinary medicine, parenting, household responsibilities, and constantly caring for someone in one way or another, I felt as though I was always needed but rarely restored. I love being a veterinarian and a mother, but both roles require an enormous amount of physical and emotional energy.

Then we would take a trip—even a short getaway—and I would come home feeling like a new person. Travel reset me in a way nothing else could. It made me feel more present, energized, and connected. It helped me return home as a better mother and a better doctor.

I didn’t want to get away from my children or escape my responsibilities. What I wanted was uninterrupted time with my family. Travel gave us that. Away from the routines and demands of home, we could experience something new together, talk without rushing to the next responsibility, and reconnect in a way that was harder to do during an ordinary week. Once I understood what travel gave back to me—and what it could give our family—I knew I needed to make it a priority.

Travel has always been part of my story

I was born on Bruny Island in Tasmania, Australia, where my parents had based themselves after traveling. We returned to the United States shortly afterward, but movement and exploration were woven into my life from the beginning.

My first true vacation memory is sailing with my family from Maine to the Bahamas on our sailboat. As I grew up, my mother and I moved to different places across the United States, but I always returned to Maine for the summer.

Travel was something I loved, but it was generally limited to one vacation a year and usually somewhere within the United States. I never stopped wanting to see more of the world—I simply didn’t yet understand how to make that dream fit into everyday life.

It wasn’t until I became a mother that my desire to travel grew into something more intentional. I didn’t just want to see the world for myself. I wanted to show it to my children.

How points and miles changed what was possible

For years, travel was something we enjoyed but still treated as a luxury. Then I learned about points and miles. That knowledge changed our lives and dramatically increased how often we could travel. It allowed us to turn everyday spending into experiences that previously felt out of reach, including international trips, memorable hotels, and opportunities to travel more frequently as a family.

I began hearing the same comments and questions repeatedly: “You travel so often.” “How do you make this work?” “I wish we had time to do that.” “I wouldn’t even know where to start planning.”

I realized that many families didn’t lack the desire to travel. They lacked the time, energy, information, or belief that it could realistically fit into their lives.

The Traveling DVM originally began as a place outside my private social media pages where I could showcase our family travels and share the information people kept asking me for. It has since grown into a resource for anyone who needs that same escape, connection, or reset and wants help believing it is possible.

Points and miles are one part of our story, but this is not solely a points-and-miles website. They are simply one of the practical tools we use to make our travel goals more achievable.

How we really travel

We don’t wait for unlimited vacation time, an empty calendar, or a stage of parenting when travel suddenly becomes effortless. We travel within the life we already have.

That may mean using a school break for a larger family vacation, fitting an adventure into a long weekend, taking a mother-daughter trip, or occasionally making room for an adults-only getaway. Sometimes we use points and miles. Sometimes we pay cash. Most often, we combine different strategies to take the trip that makes sense for our family at that moment.

Our children are four years apart, and traveling with them has looked different at every age. The toddler years required one kind of preparation. Traveling with school-aged children brings completely different personalities, interests, energy levels, and challenges. There is no perfect age to begin. Every phase of family travel asks something different of us, but every phase offers something we will never get back in quite the same way.

I share our trips honestly because I never want another parent to look at a beautiful photograph and assume the entire experience was effortless. Sometimes the most memorable day includes a meltdown. Sometimes we change the itinerary. Sometimes the activity the adults love is not a hit with the kids. Those realities don’t mean the trip was a failure. They are simply part of traveling as a family.

My goal is not to convince you to travel exactly as we do. It is to give you the information and encouragement you need to create trips that work for your own family.

Why travel matters to me

I keep making room for travel because experiencing the world—both nearby and far away—shapes us in ways that nothing else can.

Travel introduces our children to places, people, cultures, foods, and ways of living beyond what they encounter at home. It teaches flexibility, curiosity, patience, and confidence. It gives our family shared experiences that become part of our story.

It also gives me space to step outside my identity as the person responsible for caring for everyone and simply be present with the people I love.

I don’t believe we have to wait until our children are old enough to remember every detail. Them remembering was never the only point. The experience shapes our relationships and who we are becoming together, even when the memories eventually become hazy. Childhood is already happening.

There will always be work responsibilities, school schedules, financial considerations, logistical challenges, and reasons that waiting might feel easier. But there is no perfect time to travel, and there is no age when every challenge suddenly disappears. The challenges simply change.

So do the experiences—and every phase is worth it.

Ready to make room for your next trip?

Whether you’re planning an international family vacation, a weekend closer to home, a meaningful trip with one of your children, or a getaway that helps you feel like yourself again, I hope The Traveling DVM makes taking that next step feel less overwhelming.

Spend less time wondering whether you should take the trip—and more time making memories together.