How Road Trip Life With an Autistic Child Changed Our Family

We started out as your average American family of five. We were excited to start a family, buy a home, raise our kids, and build a business. And for the first twelve years of our marriage, we did just that. But something wasn't working. Most of life looked good on paper, and most of it worked for most of us. But one of our kids didn't fit the mold, and as time went on, caring for our autistic child became harder and harder.

We spent years searching for answers, sitting in offices with professionals, reading every resource, listening to every recommendation. We learned a lot, and we met countless families facing similar struggles. But we never found the help our son really needed.

So, with a little faith and a lot of uncertainty, we tried something different.

We sold almost everything, bought an RV, and set out on a family road trip. At first, we tried to travel like many RV families do, hopping from one big, bustling park to another. But that didn't work either. Eventually, we discovered our rhythm in the quiet places: national forests, small towns, and out-of-the-way campgrounds where we could breathe, and our kids could just be themselves.

How Writing Helped Us Process Life on the Road

We never planned to start a blog about life with autism; we barely even had a social media presence. But after seven months on the road, we realized that most people didn't have a good way of keeping up with us. In fact, many didn't even know what we were doing. While that was mostly okay, more and more people began reaching out. They wanted to know what we were doing. They wanted to know why we were doing it. Some thought we were a little crazy; others wondered if this was just an excuse to travel.

Early on, we started a journal. Brittney was already an avid journaler, and before long we both were. At first, it was simply about keeping track, what was working, what wasn't, and the kinds of adventures we were experiencing as a family. We knew these early days of life on the road with our autistic child were worth remembering. Soon we were journaling a lot, and sometimes we'd share entries with family and friends. But copying and pasting those updates quickly became tedious.

That's when we started exploring what it would take to have a blog. From there, everything grew. The more we wrote, the more we realized how much it helped us. Writing out our thoughts, our feelings, the lessons we were learning, and the experiences we were having didn't just create a record, it helped us process, stay grounded, and find motivation to keep going even when things were hard. Road trip life with an autistic child didn't fix everything, but it changed how our family functioned, connected, and breathed.

Our Story Continues Here

At May There Be a Road, we'll be sharing the ups and downs of life on the road, parenting, and navigating autism as a family. If you've ever felt like your family doesn't quite fit the mold either, we hope you'll feel at home here.

Thanks for joining us at the beginning of this journey. We share our full story of parenting a child with PDA and autism when nothing worked. We also share what nomadic life with autism actually looks like for our family day to day.