“You’re so brave.” It’s a phrase Jessica Belair heard regularly from friends and even casual acquaintances when she announced her family’s plan to spend a year living abroad.
Friends in the grocery store would stop her to say, “Wow, you’re so courageous,” when they learned about her upcoming adventure. At first, Jessica was puzzled. “Why are we courageous?” she would wonder.
Uprooting her life in Montreal – leaving a comfortable home, stable careers, and a familiar routine – didn’t feel particularly brave in the moment, just necessary. But as she reflects on the journey, Jessica has come to understand what others saw.
True courage, she realized, is “having an idea and the guts to do it, even if it’s scary, even if you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into”. This is the story of how Jessica and her family found the courage to redefine their lives, one country at a time, during their gap year with Boundless Life.
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Inspiration From an Instagram Post
Jessica Belair and her husband Danick Arbour had what many would consider a wonderful life in Canada – successful corporate careers, a home with a big yard, two healthy kids. And yet, a persistent feeling nagged at them. “We liked our life, but I had the feeling that I think there’s more,” Jessica admits.
For a few years, they toyed with the idea of making a big change. “We’d been talking about, should we move a year somewhere just to try something,” she says. It was an exciting but intimidating thought. What would “something more” even look like for their family of four?
The turning point came one day when Jessica stumbled upon an Instagram post. Suddenly she was hearing about Boundless Life and learning what it was all about!
The concept seemed like a wish come true. “I was like, whoa, okay, that’s exactly what we need – the kids going to school, moving to different places, exploring different cultures,” Jessica recalls. Boundless Life offered the change they were looking for as a family, but also the safety net they needed to take the leap.
“If you move somewhere then you need to make new friends. But with Boundless, you already have your community. So I thought it’s like the perfect thing for us,” she explains, noting how it would allow them to test out life abroad with their children. So in June, without overthinking it, they decided to go “all in” on a one-year family gap year.
When their acceptance email arrived, “I started screaming,” Jessica laughs. She called Danick immediately to celebrate: “We got it… we’re doing this year!”. Their dream was no longer someday – it was happening now.
Just Going For IT!
In the whirlwind of preparing to leave, it was easy to ride the high of excitement. But inevitably, as their departure date drew near, the nerves set in. Jessica remembers the mix of emotions that hit about two days before they left Montreal. “Oh, it was mixed emotions,” she says of that final 48 hours.
“You’re excited, but anxious a little,” she explains – excited to embark on this dream, yet “anxious because you don’t know what you’re doing with the kids and everything.” Even on travel day, as they hauled a year’s worth of essentials in just a few suitcases, Jessica had a moment of disbelief: “Oh my God, we’re leaving for a year… with one suitcase,” she thought to herself, equal parts thrilled and terrified.
In those moments, all the well-wishers calling her “brave” suddenly made sense. It was brave to do this – to walk away from a comfortable life and step into the unknown. “I understand now why people say we’re courageous,” Jessica reflects. “It was really stressful…” leading up to the leap. But courage is not the absence of stress or fear; it’s feeling those things and deciding that something else matters more.
Fear 1 - Timing
What gave Jessica and Danick the courage to push through their anxieties were the deeply held reasons they had for doing this in the first place. “We have to do it – the timing is perfect… Next year, we’re going to have another reason not to do it,” she told herself, recognizing how easy it is to postpone big plans indefinitely.
The couple thought about their kids growing up fast – “our kids are getting older, and the time we spend with them is so short.” Jessica urged. They also had a stark reminder of mortality: “We’re healthy. Danick’s mother passed away when she was 50… that’s like 13 years from now [for us]. So let’s do it while we can,” Jessica said, determined not to take the present for granted.
All of these insights fueled their resolve. Yes, it was a risk to their comfortable status quo, but the bigger risk was to miss the chance entirely. “I read somewhere… my 80-year-old self would regret it if I didn’t this,” Jessica shares. “And that’s why I did it – because I know I would regret it my whole life if we never tried.”
Fear 2 - The Budget
There were more practical fears to contend with as well – chief among them, finances. As Canadians, taking a year off to live abroad with a program like Boundless Life was not cheap.
Jessica and Danick knew they were making a significant investment in this experience. “For us, as Canadians, our money is really not good compared to other currencies,” Jessica explains frankly. But she refused to let money be the thing that stopped them from living their dream. “I said, you know what, I’ll figure it out,” Jessica resolved. “This is too big of a life-changing experience.”
In other words, they would find a way to budget, earn, or save to make it work – because the value of the journey outweighed the cost. This mindset of “we’ll manage somehow” was another hallmark of Jessica’s courage. It’s not that the fear of running out of money wasn’t there; it’s that she chose to believe in their resourcefulness rather than be paralyzed by “what ifs.”
As Jessica puts it, “People… are afraid they’re going to run out of money, they’re afraid that people are gonna judge them… They’re afraid of a bunch of stuff. So it’s courageous to do what you want to do, to leave everything behind.”
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Fears Shift to Confidence
When the Arbour family finally boarded that plane, they carried all those emotions and fears with them – but they also carried confidence in their decision. And almost as soon as they arrived at their first destination, those fears began to melt away.
The Arbours’ gap year journey kicked off in Kotor, Montenegro – a location that, ironically, hadn’t been their initial top choice but is shaping up to be a magical start. Stepping off the plane, Jessica felt a wave of relief and wonder. “Honestly, when we arrived… sometimes you have this feeling like, ‘Oh, did we do the right thing?’ You’re not sure,” she says. “But when we arrived in Kotor, I didn’t get that feeling. I was like, wow, okay, this is amazing.”
Surrounded by rugged mountains and sparkling sea, she knew in her gut they were exactly where they were meant to be. Even the little challenges, like figuring out grocery shopping in a foreign country, became part of the adventure.
By the end of the first week, Jessica found herself doing something as mundane as taking out the trash and realizing it made her oddly happy. “I walk, I see the mountains… I’m like, this is so great,” she says, describing how even a simple chore reminded her “I’m living the life.”
It was the feeling of being fully alive in a new place, the very feeling she had been searching for. “I probably would have never come to Kotor if I didn’t have that option. And I love it. Honestly, it’s perfect,” she gushes. All the doubts and anxieties are now eclipsed by the beauty of new experiences and the affirmation that they have done the right thing.
New Experiences Turn to New Routines in Kotor
The Arbours quickly settled into a fulfilling new rhythm abroad. A gap year with Boundless Life has provided an immediate community. In Kotor, “the community here is so strong,” Jessica notes. They all lived in the same apartment complex, so instead of feeling isolated in a strange country, the Arbours are surrounded by like-minded parents.
Jessica describes how easy it is to connect with neighbors at any time of day. Impromptu social gatherings have become a norm. One of the mothers in the group happened to be a fitness instructor and started offering a morning yoga class for others – Jessica gladly joined these communal workouts, finding comfort in the routine and camaraderie.
Danick teamed up with another dad for 5 AM gym sessions, jogging through the historic streets together before sunrise. In the afternoons, when the childre finish at the Boundless Education Center, families converge outside. “Often after school a bunch of families will just meet up at the beach,” Jessica shares.
The children would swim or race around on scooters while the parents chatted, all reveling in the fact that this was real life and not just a vacation.
The Boundless Life Education Center
For the children, the benefits of this lifestyle shift were almost immediately clear. Both Mia and Nathan are thriving in ways that go beyond academics. “They love their teacher,”Jessica notes, delighted by how engaged her kids are in learning.
In Boundless Life’s project-based curriculum, Mia is currently creating an elaborate scrapbook about Montenegrin culture, while Nathan is building a series of sensory “calm down” boards for his classmates – creative endeavors from which they are feeling a great sense of pride.
Outside the classroom, the kids are embracing activities they’d never tried in Canada. In Kotor, the Boundless cohort offers sailing lessons for the children. “Sailing… is something that we probably never would have tried back home. But I mean, we’re here. So they tried sailing.”
These are the kinds of growth experiences – building confidence, adaptability, and curiosity – that she had hoped a gap year would offer her children. “They’re learning about life,” she emphasizes, “learning about culture… they’re going to learn so much about life, about themselves.” The world is becoming their classroom, and Jessica can already see the impact.
Jessica's Mantra
One phrase in particular has become a sort of mantra for Jessica: “If you want something you never had, you have to do something you never did.”
Jessica explains, “I want this feeling that I never had back home, but I have to do something different… It’s not staying home that I would get something new.” By doing something alternative – taking her family across the world – she indeed found the “something more” that had been missing.
Every day, whether they are working from a co-working hub, or hiking to a hilltop fortress with the kids on the weekend, or simply enjoying a coffee with new friends from different countries, Jessica and Danick have felt a rush of gratitude. This is the life they had envisioned in those restless moments back in Canada, and they had been brave enough to make it real.
Living Intentionally, Without Regrets
As the family gap year unfolds, Jessica now sees courage and growth as two sides of the same coin. By daring to do something different, her family is becoming closer, more resilient, and more open-minded.
And importantly, they have no regrets. “Maybe after a year, I’ll say, ‘Well, I miss back home and that’s the life I want,’ maybe. But at least I tried it out. I’m never gonna regret it,” Jessica says firmly. If their grand experiment ends with a return to their old community, she can accept that – because she’ll return a richer person, armed with clarity and without the painful what if of an unpursued dream. “At least I tried it… I’m not gonna have any regrets,” she emphasizes.
Jessica Belair’s story is a testament to the power of intentional family travel and the courage it takes to break away from the expected path. In choosing to spend a year abroad with her husband and kids, she is daring to do something many only daydream about.
The comment she heard so often, “you’re so brave,” has taken on a deeper meaning now. It’s not just about boarding a plane or moving to a new country. It’s about the quiet bravery of listening to that inner voice that says life can be more, and answering yes.
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