I’m here to tell you a secret; traveling is not all glamor. Hard to believe, isn’t it?
I remember when my kids were little and my husband had to travel for work conferences. I’d be exhausted when he came home and he had the nerve to be exhausted too! How could that be when he’d had a hotel to go to sleep in, meals provided, banquets to attend, no children to wake him up in the middle of the night, no carting the kids back and forth between childcare plus work? Now, I’ve discovered why as the shoe is on the other foot.
Because it is my company that I travel for, no one is planning my dinners for me at lovely restaurants when I’m away. And, like many of you with food allergies and intolerances, I cart my own food with me so that I can eat safely and healthfully and try to book hotels with a microwave and fridge wherever I can. I’ve been traveling so much in the last 3 months that I haven’t spent more than 10 days at home at a time. At one point, I looked out of my plane at the city beyond and forgot where I was (Vancouver)!
So you might ask, why do I do it? Here are the things that keep me going:
The eleven year old boy at the Canadian Celiac Association’s National Conference in Winnipeg who mowed through all of our samples once his mom had determined all of our products were safe for his Celiac disease, peanut allergies, egg allergies and dairy allergies. What a smile on his face and his mom’s too!
The lady at Choices gluten free fair in White Rock who found out we’re free of sulfites and dairy. She told me that she was in love with our company.
The store owner who came up to our booth at the Canadian Health Food Association’s Expo West who said she can’t keep our Energy Explosion trail mix on the shelf, people love it so much.
The lady who’s been a customer for years who introduced herself at the Celiac Disease Foundation’s Annual Conference in Los Angeles in May. It felt like I was meeting an old friend.
But it’s the same in all that we do isn’t it? We handle all of the education and anxiety necessary to deal with our family’s food allergies and at times it can be really overwhelming. We plough on, sometimes just putting our heads down and marching ahead because it’s really all we can do. But then we get those moments of bright light; that small thing that may not mean much to someone not in our shoes but can mean the world to us. A new safe product, a medical situation handled well, excitement over finding someone else who really “gets it”.
Small things – they’re really what makes the world go round.