Meet Naomi White

Today we’d like to introduce you to Naomi White.

Hi Naomi, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start, maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers. 
I was born 60 miles from the geographic center of North America in Grand Forks, ND. At a casual glance, it would not seem that I was destined for great international or linguistic aspirations. 

HOWEVER. 

By the time I was a teenager, my family had been living in Ypsilanti, MI, for several years, and I was enrolled in public high school. I took Spanish 1 from Señora Ongaro. That first class was the cover of a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book where each choice, each page, took me deeper and deeper into adventures that wouldn’t seem logical or possible for someone born smack dab middle of the continent. 

High school Spanish greased the wheels for a Honduran mission trip, which flowed into a Spanish + Secondary Ed major at Eastern Michigan University. I spent time in Mexico and Spain and added 3 semesters of Latin just for fun. I taught high school Spanish for several years at my alma mater (with Señora Ongaro as a colleague!) and walked across Spain on the Camino de Santiago multiple times. The year I walked the Camino, beginning in Le Puy, France, I discovered that French was reasonably easy to pick up with Spanish and Latin already tucked in my pocket, and Italian wasn’t a far reach either. 

This past summer, I spent a week with my younger sister, Judith, who lives in southern France with her Chilean husband, Max, and their two trilingual children. We schemed and dreamed of a business that would give us an excuse to collaborate professionally and spend time together more than once every couple of years. We wanted to combine and share all the things that we loved, and that came easy for us: Travel. Language. Journaling. Art. Culture. Yoga. Food. Naps. Sunshine. The sea. France. 

Since we’ve both been teachers, have traveled extensively, and worked together at a junior high summer camp every summer for years and years, the idea of creating a tour company that’s basically the most marvelous grown-up summer camp EVER (complete with afternoon rest time, naturally) on the shores of the Mediterranean seemed very logical and absolutely perfect. 

While in the sun-washed town of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer doing research for our new business, Wild Thyme Travel Company was named in honor of the herb that grows prolifically in this region. I wanted our motto to be “More Thyme, Less Wild,” but Judith didn’t want to completely eliminate the possibility of “wild,” so we’re currently at a motto stalemate and using the placeholder #thymeofyourlife in the meantime. It’s been delightful brainstorming and exhaustive (exhausting?) list of hashtags involving “thyme”. (#thymeforfrance, #thymetotravel, #thyme4wine…) 

Since creating the business, we’ve eaten in the restaurants, stayed in the hotels, ridden the tourist trollies, toured the museums, greeted the local pink flamingos and white horses, enjoyed the Gipsy Kings covers being played life in every bar, and hired a bubbly and bilingual city tour guide. We have three trips set up for 2024 – two in the spring and one in the fall. Fun research aside, our website is a luminous thing of beauty, and my sister is becoming the Empress of Excel while I’m working on my skills as Marketing Mistress. 

And best of all – guess who the very first client to sign up is? 

Yep. 

Señora Ongaro. 

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The on-site research portion of the business process was utterly delightful. Magical, in fact. The town where we spend the majority of our tour is the home to the Gipsy Kings, I band I’ve loved and listened to for years. Our last night there just happened to be the first time that they’ve done a home-town concert in the arena that sits on the beach, meters from the shore. We watched a full moon rise and sang along to well-loved tunes. And wept from the sweetness of it. 

That and other full-heart moments with my sister have been the juice that’s kept me going when I’m frustrated with learning how to create a website, business banking complications, legal paperwork, plunging into learning how to make reels, spending more time in social media. I’ve been forced to grow in ways that feel uncomfortable and that aren’t a natural fit for me. Not like learning Italian, French, or Latin. I’m really looking forward to growing this business to the point where I can hire folks to do these things for me, and I also know that learning how to do these things myself is important. 

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar, what can you tell them about what you do?
One of the things that I learned as a high school teacher was how important it is to set students up for success in the ways that I’m asking them to learn and work. This includes something called scaffolding, which really just means helping them connect all the dots in the mastery of a new skill and not asking for cognitive leaps that are too large. 

As everybody knows, teaching is stressful and challenging (and lovely! and rewarding! and SO IMPORTANT!). I reached a point where my health was beginning to suffer, so I took a year off to travel and regroup. I have lots of people I love in many parts of the world, so the $20k I was able to scrape together by cashing in my retirement savings took me to five continents over 9 months. 

The week after I got home (with $54 in my bank account – whew!), it was as if I got a download in my spirit for an ultra-scaffolded, body-based, creative mindfulness travel journal. One that would allow people, whether they loved to journal or didn’t even like stringing sentences together, to effortlessly create a journal that would immediately connect them back to their most cherished memories while also gently (sneakily!) guiding them mindfulness. Into being able to truly inhabit their ALL moments more deeply. 

It would take a few years to fully flesh it out, to learn that graphic designers are the magicians who can take an idea from a page and get it onto the computer, to learn that the same designers aren’t crazy about endless changes and can and will leave you high and dry to learn Adobe InDesign all by yourself to finish the project. To learn that less is more and that watercolor pencils are definitely less intimidating than actual watercolors. Finally, in the summer of 2021, I self-published, and my journal was born. I named her Illuminated Journey, added a leather cover and several fantastic art supplies, and the project was complete. 

Two months later, my best friend and I traveled out to CA for a writing workshop with Julia Cameron (of The Artist’s Way fame), Anne Lamott, and SARK (one of my most beloved and favorite authors ever). I decided to bring SARK a journal kit as a way to thank her for saying yes to her calling as a writer and for all the ways I’ve grown and healed as a direct result of her faithfulness to her craft. 

During her time at the podium, SARK told us a story about her young writer self-contacting Dr Maya Angelou and asking for an endorsement. And SARK’s utter surprise and delight at hearing a rich voice roll out of the answering machine one day “Hello SARK, this is Dr Maya Angelou, and I’d be delighted to endorse your work!” I figured if SARK could ask Dr Angelou, I could ask SARK. So, 6 months later, once I had a website, I was proud of, I sent her an email and asked for a product endorsement for my testimonials page. I received an enthusiastic yes, but most importantly and flabbergastingly, her assistant told me that I had inspired SARK, that she wanted to mentor me, and was I interested? (I’m in the beginning stages of that mentorship right now.) 

One of the things that multiple people have said to me is this: “Naomi, lots of people talk about doing things, but you – you make shit happen.” 

That’s what I’m proud of. Being somebody who can walk her talk and actually make things happen. On second thought, maybe grateful is a better word – I’m profoundly grateful that I have a relentless flow of ideas and the confidence, the courage, the encouragement, the creativity, the resourcefulness, the drive, the work ethic, the belief, and the vision to birth them into being. 

Many of these ideas have felt like spiritual imperatives, and as we know, spiritual imperatives ALWAYS come with their own mysterious and unexpected support. (Like the invitation to be interviewed by you!) 

Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
1. When I’m not working at my regular job (massage therapy), I struggle big time with anxiety that sometimes feel paralyzing

2. After reading Children’s Past Lives by Carol Bowman, I’m now convinced that reincarnation is real. I feel really comforted knowing that I might actually have a shot at being a blues singer in a next life. (Won’t work this time around – my bedtime is usually 10 pm). I would like to create a solution for our healthcare system that includes weekly massage therapy. Also, I want to reform the education system so that teachers work half the hours that they currently do for generous full-time pay so they can hang on to their mental and physical health AND have a rich and juicy life outside of the classroom.

Pricing:

• $6,800/$7,600 (Wild Thyme Trips)
• $135 Illuminated Journey Travel Journal Kit

Contact Info:

• Website: www.wildthymetravelco.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wildthymetravelco/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/zxPq95FHmgQYw1fU/?
• Other: https://illuminated-journey.myshopify.com (This is for my travel journal)

Image Credits
Naomi White