How I Fought For My Family (and How You Can Too)

Have I told you about the time we blew off billionaires to fight for our family?

It sounds crazy, but I swear it's true.

The year was 2015 - our first year of full-time family travel outside of our home state. We had taken a work-camping job in south Texas to help manage a hunting camp for one of America's wealthiest and most well-known families, and we were so excited about the possibilities that awaited us there.

A few hours into the job, though, we knew we'd made a big mistake.

Because of the non-disclosure agreements we signed, I cannot tell you which of America's billionaire families we worked for, but I can tell you that they have immense resources.

We thought living and working on their wild and wonderful ranch at the Mexican border might be a wonderful adventure for our family.

We were wrong.

On the first day, when the family's property manager mocked three things I highly value (women, education, and children) within the first couple of hours of talking with us, I honestly thought he had to be joking. When he assured me he wasn't, I knew we were in trouble.

And then when he said, "Oh, you won't be working with your husband, darlin'; the women work in the kitchen and the men work outdoors," I had to bite my tongue to keep from biting his head off.

The next few weeks weren't any better. We had taken the job to enjoy a new part of the country and be together more because that's what so many work-camping jobs provided. It quickly became obvious, though, that we were in for quite the opposite.

I'll spare you many of the depressing details, but I will share that although we were promised a four days on, three days off schedule, my husband worked seven days per week and I was only allowed to take breaks to teach homeschool to my boys. There were large rattlesnakes that frequented the property, meaning that none of us were able to go for long walks or wild adventures and our kids were not able to play outdoors very much at all. Border patrol was a constant companion as were the young, desperate immigrants we were expected to report. The heat and dust were unbearable. And the worst part was the emotional abuse that took place daily from the other staff and many of the owner's family members.

We had spent our entire lives being respected and valued, seen as intelligent and bright young people, and spoken to as equal to every other human, but it was obvious we would not be treated that way there.

I'm not a crier, but I cried every single day while we were there. I barely saw my husband, but when I did, all we could do was look at each other with tears in our eyes and whisper about how we could get our family out of there. My stress got the better of me most days, giving me migraines and chest pains that were almost unbearable. I couldn't eat or sleep from stress. I was worried about our safety, worried that my kids were suffering, worried that we wouldn't be able to recover from being treated like servants, less-than, lower-class humans.

And yet, we had committed to work there for 3 months. We had signed contracts, incurred expenses, and we had no other jobs or places to live during that time. They needed us and we needed them, so we tried to make it work.

We lasted six weeks.

To this day, it's the only commitment we've ever skipped out on, but when it became obvious to us that they had misrepresented the job that was advertised to us and had put our family in danger instead of providing the safe, healthy work environment that should be everyone's right, we started speaking up and advocating for ourselves.

Then, when we were shamed and ridiculed for saying that we expected decent working conditions, we tossed our keys on the table, hitched up our Airstream, and left the property so fast it made their heads spin.

It was after dark, we were in the middle of nowhere, and we had nowhere to go, but we left anyway.

We had very little money and no job opportunities in sight, but we left anyway.

Here's why: It was the only way to fight for our family.

One of my favorite moments from that horrible season was when I opened up to my boys one day and said, "I'm so sorry we brought you here, so sorry all I can do is cry most days right now. You are truly seeing your mama at her worst," and my oldest replied, "It's okay, Mama. If this is your worst, it really isn't that bad."

But it was bad.

We couldn't let our kids see us being treated so poorly lest they believe it's okay for them to be treated poorly one day too - or worse, lest they believe it's okay for them to treat someone so poorly themselves.

We couldn't sit on our hands and bite our tongues while the people around us spoke poorly about children, immigrants, and people in desperate situations.

We couldn't spend three months with no family time, no space for educating our children, and no freedom or control over our own lives.

So we left. No amount of money could have kept us there.

And I became thankful for the experience, thankful for the lessons we learned and taught our kids through it, and so thankful that we stood up for our family and left those billionaires in the dust. (I still get a kick out of the blog I wrote about it at the time.)

But still, we had no money and were seriously wondering if we'd have to go live in our parents' driveway and eat their groceries for a while to recover.

What happened next still gives me chills to this day.

Just two days after leaving south Texas, I was offered a way to work remotely for an organization I adored, giving us the freedom to head out West and have some of our very best family adventures yet.

We visited Big Bend, Guadeloupe, and Carlsbad Caverns in the western part of Texas. We became rock hounds in New Mexico and learned about old West legends in Arizona. We saw a saguaro cactus for the first time, visited the Taylor Guitar Factory, and spent Valentine's Day looking at the Pacific Ocean in Carlsbad, California. We learned about Joshua trees, took our boys to Las Vegas (maybe not the best decision), and went skiing and snowboarding for the first time in our lives. We saw the Hoover Dam, the Grand Canyon, Sedona, and Zion National Park.

We fell in love with national parks, made memories that will last a lifetime, collected junior ranger badges, and rediscovered our sense of hope and wonder and a family togetherness we never knew existed.

And we never would have been able to do it if it weren't for that horrible experience with the billionaires - and for us leaving them in the dust to fight for our family.

Have you ever had to fight for your family?

Are you in a situation right now where you need to?

It's not easy, and you may experience tears, fears, and even heartbreak, but I can tell you there's a new kind of family togetherness on the other side.

You've got this, mama.

And just in case you need some encouragement, that's what I'm here for. Hop into our email group and one of our programs and tell me about how you're fighting for your family today and how I can support you.