Natalie and her two kids, aged 11 and 14, traded a planned Italian summer for two weeks in Galle, Sri Lanka, joining the Family-Friendly Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation program and teaching at a local kindergarten. Here’s how it went, in her own words.
The itch I couldn’t reach
It started with that familiar itch, the one that’s been there for ages and you can’t quite reach. That nagging dread of waking up to deadlines, pushy competition, and the endless hamster wheel of schedules and “success,” measured by a yardstick someone else made up. As if happiness comes in one size.
I was literally asking ChatGPT which expensive hotel to book in Positano, Italy, for our family summer holiday when I stopped. Nope. I wasn’t going to swap one version of the same life for another, or chase another exotic, Instagram-worthy family photo. I felt exactly like the penguins in Madagascar when they finally reach Antarctica: “Well, this sucks.” And it was clear as day. This wasn’t the life I wanted to remember when it was time to kick the proverbial bucket.
I wanted to feel alive, and I wanted more. More for myself and my kids than a disconnected expensive vacation where you come home with just more… stuff. I wanted out of the emptiness that was quietly choking me in a 4,000 square foot McMansion in sunny, perfect California.
Leaving the bubble
I live in Orange County, a bubble within a bubble. From the outside, life looks easy and elegant. But I didn’t like the entitlement I was seeing in my kids, or the lack of real empathy and gratitude, and I wanted to pivot before it became normal. Before it became who they were going to be.
I wanted them to see what rich actually looks like: a close-knit community where tolerance, patience, flexibility, trust, kindness, and empathy are the norm, not the exception.
So I pressed a very big reset button. Waking up at 6:30am every single day, eating unfamiliar food in a canteen, keeping an open mind, and working hard. Does that sound like a fun way to spend your summer vacation when you’re 11, 14, and 48? Stick with me.
We’d already traveled to over 107 countries across six continents. This time I wanted travel with impact and purpose. So the three of us flew 9,500 miles from home to Galle, Sri Lanka, for two weeks of sea turtle conservation and teaching at a rural kindergarten. Both feet in, terrified and exhilarated.
Life at the turtle hatchery
Our days at the hatchery meant cleaning tanks, feeding, and helping the team look after turtles recovering from all sorts of things: lung disease from swallowing plastic, eye infections, flippers damaged by fishing nets. We helped move eggs safely into the hatchery so more hatchlings get their shot, knowing only around 1 in 1,000 make it to adulthood. We supported awareness and education work in the local community, conservation research, and clean-ups that filled kayaks with trash.
A big chunk of the work is cleaning tanks by hand, one section at a time, and forming a human chain to carry heavy pails of seawater and sand from the ocean back to the hatchery, so these gentle, gorgeous creatures have room to recover. It’s sweaty, physical work you do again and again until it’s second nature. And it’s the foundation everything else in conservation stands on. Without it, the wildlife we love, on land and in our oceans, wouldn’t have anywhere to thrive.
It’s hard work. It’s also deeply satisfying, rewarding, meaningful, and absolutely unforgettable.
Embrace the suck
Our fellow volunteers were anywhere from 9 to 50 years old, from 34 different countries: the USA, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Britain, Spain, Hungary, Russia, all corners of the world. All of us there to grow, to be brave, to find our own inner strength, roll up our sleeves, and just “embrace the suck.”
And there’s plenty to embrace. Brutal jet lag. Uneven pavements. Power cuts. Monsoon rains. Heat. Mosquito bites. Food that isn’t Mom’s home cooking. Wet sand in every crack, and being sweaty, all the time. It tests your grit, your patience, and occasionally your sanity, every single day.
That’s kind of the point. You learn to solve real problems together, in real time, with limited resources and a positive mindset. You learn to laugh in the middle of chaos, and to make something magical out of it with people who speak and dream in different languages. And you get curious about the people around you, about what journey brought them to this exact spot, standing right next to you.
The kindergarten
Then there’s the kindergarten. You’re communicating with four and five year olds on the other side of the world who’ve never heard your language, and you’re helping them with gross motor skills, eating their breakfast, cleaning up on their own, and showing respect for each other. You play with them on the playground, do crafts for their fine motor skills, sing nursery rhymes, and teach them colors, numbers, words, songs, and English.
And you watch, in awe, as something lights up and clicks. You learn their personalities, how smart they are, how much they want to learn, how emotionally regulated and loving they are. They keep coming back for the tightest, most open-hearted hugs and high fives, asking you not to go and to come back tomorrow. The way they say “I love you,” so effortlessly and so genuinely, made every hardship worth the 30 hours it took to get to this little coastal town of Unawatuna.
You’ll probably never see them again. But you hope you planted a seed.
What my kids took home
You’re not talking about kindness and compassion anymore. You’re actually doing it, and your children are watching you do it.
I sleep better knowing my kids now have the confidence to be independent, to push through hardship, and to figure things out in any corner of the world, without the umbrella of our money and comfort. They’ve seen that the best of humanity is often the kindness of strangers who have very little and still find a way to look after you.
That goes for us parents too. We’ve forgotten how powerful it is to let yourself be vulnerable and actually receive help and kindness, not just give it. It’s one of the biggest heart openers there is.
If you’re thinking about it
To love, and to be loved, is the only thing worth exploring in this short time on earth. Everything else is noise.
So go. Jump into a conservation trip with both feet, fearlessly. You’ll wake up with a childlike energy you haven’t felt in years. It will break your heart, mend it again, expand it 3,000%, and then settle somewhere it stays open for good. Stop fighting your life and fall in love with it. And watch your kids discover a life of service, with small moments of connection you didn’t know you were missing.
You will return a different person. It will change your life. I’m willing to bet mine on it. 😉
Want to give your family a summer like Natalie’s? Explore the Family-Friendly Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation program in Sri Lanka and let us help you find the right fit.
