Lizette (43) from Goirle already traveled to around sixty countries around the world, from Sri Lanka to Kyrgyzstan, and in a large part of it her very young children went into the baby carrier. Anyone who sees Lizettes wrists will see a story about traveling, about desire and about dealing with loss and motherhood.
The Wishlust started in 2005. “I had just graduated and said to my parents: I’m going to backpack in Thailand. They didn’t like it,” she laughs. “But my father bought a good backpack for me.” That first journey was the start of everything. “I knew immediately: this is what I want to keep doing. And nothing will stop me.”
“Everyone says that backpacking is over when you have children, but I want to prove the opposite.”
Traveling was a step away from daily life: “You can better reflect if you are from your own environment, and so you come up with new insights about yourself, about each other and about the world,” says Lizette.
Even children didn’t get her off her path. “Everyone says:” Just wait until you’re a mother. “But I just wanted to show that you can go out,” she says firmly. “I turn my children into small world travelers.”
Only Lizette but did not get pregnant, to great sorrow. “We entered a heavy medical process, which we also stopped years later. I thought: if it already succeeds, there will be nothing left of my relationship by that time.” They planned a world trip for five years, but not much later she became pregnant in a natural way.
That did not get her off the travel path: their son Mats made twelve travel before his first birthday and took his first steps on a hut in Sri Lanka when he was 15 months old. “We will never forget that again,” says Lizette. “With him in the baby carrier we saw leopards and elephants. That moment we recorded by having his name tattooed in the Sri Lankees, to the country where he made his first long journey.”
“When we planned that backpack trip, we did not know that we would take a baby and two children with us.”
Their second son Sem went to Prague for the first time in the camper, and his name came to her wrist in Hebrew (after a visit to the Jewish neighborhood). But Job’s tattoo, the youngest, is the most special story according to Lizette. “It was the journey we planned five years ago, when we thought we couldn’t have children. I had just gave birth to the third and was even on maternity leave. Yet I thought: we’re just going!”
The world trip was shortened something: not the world around but to Asia. Three months of backpacking with a baby, and two children aged two and four. “When we started saving for this, we never dared to dream that we went here as a family,” Lizette proudly says.
The journey ended in Malaysia, where she had the tattoo put from Job’s name in Chinese. A family they had met there helped them check if it was well written.
‘Behind the perfect picture is a road full of loss, choices and love’
Anyone who follows Lizette Online and sees photos of her family in the jungle of Indonesia or in a tent on a mountain in Kyrgyzstan, sees the adventure. But behind all journeys there is also a story of uncertainty and loss: “Not knowing if we could have children, my father, loyal travelup porter, who just died before the birth of Mats, and my mother who had COPD,” says Lizette softly.
“I am everything she could not be because of that disease: energetic, restless and always on the road. She always said,” Don’t forget to breathe sometimes. ” And so Lizette put the word Breathe on her wrist, in her mother’s handwriting: “A reminder to sometimes stand still for a moment.”
That makes the journeys more than an adventure for her, but also a place to mourn, reflect and recharge. People sometimes ask what she does, all those trips. Lizette shrugs: “We make different choices. Less things, save hard and then travel.” Because that taught her what is important: “Time. And that will arise on a journey.”