We decided a few years ago that we were not going to raise our family in a city. I grew up in London and my husband in the USA. After our engagement, we knew we needed to travel as much as possible to decide where would be best for us to raise our family away from the rat race of mainstream society.
Our vision has always been not be tied by money but to lead a holistic life, in every sense of the word. To live a life we didn’t require a holiday from. There will always be challenges in life, it’s the by-product of growth, I guess. The question was ‘how do we set ourselves up so that these challenges don’t steer us away from our goal?’ ‘How can we create an environment in which we can take on these challenges and thrive?’
Our children are and forever will be our motivations. Our aim is to raise them in a way that always encourages them to stay true to themselves. To lead by example because children will do what we do, not always what we say. . I am from a culture where the children take care of their elderly so we needed to set up a life where we are able to be sustainable enough to take care of our parents when they reach the age where they need us.
Over the years we have lived in three different continents with a variety of different people, some of the most incredible experiences we could have ever asked for. It was during this time that we discovered the best balance for our family was to live a decentralised life. We love to travel but didn’t want to be tied to the grid or have our lives entangled with one country’s rules & regulations. Freedom is the ultimate goal, without the compromise on a comfortable & enriched life. Living a sustainable & holistic life doesn’t need to be limited to living on a bus/trailer that runs on biogas or living in a city with solar panels and buying organic foods. Most of my life I spent in a city & there are some comforts I don’t see necessary to ditch, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t get my hands dirty whether it be clearing the land ourselves, organising our veg garden
“Decentralisation in a day-to-day setting means doing a little bit each day, start growing a few bits whether it is on the balcony or your garden. Do your research on different places in the world that you feel align with your journey as a family”
We are currently in Belize, Central America, building our first home on this continent. On the land we are growing a variety of fruit trees from mango, coconut, soursop to soap nuts & cotton (technically a bush). We are also growing vegetables such as cassava, pumpkin etc.
We are in the process of building a woodhouse, which will eventually become a guesthouse for family and friends that visit, our family home will be a rammed earth house and we will use solar energy. Sustainability to us is more than just what food we eat, it is important to us that the spaces we live in are also sustainable and environmentally friendly.
Assessing our finances has been a crucial step in us choosing to live this way of life. We both had comfortable paying jobs in London, we weren’t sure how leaving it all behind with our savings was going to work. We knew we had done a lot research and had multiple streams of income to prepare for different scenarios. It was definitely a risk but we knew we didn’t want to put all our eggs in one basket. Diversifying our finances was one of the most important steps we took, as 2020 and Covid has shown us.
One of the greatest challenges starting off is being away from family and friends. As a single couple it may not prove to be as hard, but it does truly take a village to raise a child. Not having the support system/safety net of family to help with the kids whilst we are tending to the land, building a house and having multiple streams of income takes it’s toll. This has proven to be one of the hardest challenges we’ve come across, and can understand to be the main reason why some families like ourselves struggle to leave the country in which they have family/friends to help with the kids.
The flipside is we’ve found incredible new friends that overtime become like family. One example are our neighbours, a family that have three generations under one roof. From the kids playing together everyday to the grandmother sending over plates of food and checking in on me when I had our youngest. Hand embroidered blankets, to holding our baby, so many different things I can’t begin to list. You never know what you might encounter when you take the leap.
We’ve had family come visit on various different occasions throughout the year, which has been so wonderful especially for our parents. At the end of each day, when we put the kids to bed and sit on the porch together to take a breather we always have so many things to laugh about that happened that day. Not once have either of felt concerned about the decision we’ve made. We go to bed physically tired but happy and in gratitude. Knowing that the life we are building is attracting our tribe and we are setting up another option for our family whilst broadening our children’s life experience is the number one things that keeps us going.
Choosing to live this way of life is one aspect of our children’s education. Education in my understanding is the sum of everything a person learns throughout their life to enable them to live a meaningful life. We are raising them in an environment that teaches them respect for nature, the importance of hard work, follow-through, understanding that knowledge can be acquired any and everywhere, and most importantly never giving up on your dream.
With the encouragement of our family and friends we started a blog to document our journey www.decentralisedlife.com
We are learning so much on this journey. This way of life might not be for all but for those that share our dream, my advice is this:
- Take a deep breath,
- Think deeply what you want out of life; what is your soul purpose?
- Research, research and more research
- Trust yourself and take the leap.
We’ve found it’s so worth it.
Lots of love Asli xx