For the last five years I have built a life that works across two countries. Auckland and Tonga. Three offices. A marketing agency that does not need me sitting in any particular chair. A husband whose family is in Tonga. A house we built there from scratch. Cows and pigs and dogs on the plantation. A life that I love and that I fought for and that most people told me was impractical.
And now my youngest is about to turn five and all of it is up in the air.
Because school changes everything. School has a schedule. School has a location. School has term dates and drop-off times and a uniform and a lunchbox and a system that assumes you live in one place and stay there. School was not designed for a family that splits time between a house in West Auckland and a plantation in the Pacific.
I have been lying awake thinking about this more than I want to admit. Not because I do not have options. I do. But because every option means giving something up and I am not ready to decide what that is yet.
If she goes to school in Auckland then Tonga shrinks to school holidays. Twelve weeks a year instead of whenever we want. The slow mornings disappear. The plantation becomes a holiday destination instead of home. My husband’s family sees her for a few weeks at a time instead of months. The language she switches into without thinking starts to fade because she is not hearing it every day. That thought sits heavy.
If she goes to school in Tonga then we are there full time or close to it. The agency runs from the island permanently. Starlink and a generator and the team on Queen Street holding things together while I am 3,000 kilometres away. I have proven I can do it. But doing it for a few months at a time is different from doing it as the default. And the Tongan school system is a different curriculum. I have to think about where she ends up long-term and whether I am making a decision now that closes doors later.
Then there is homeschooling. And I will be honest, part of me lights up at the idea. Te Kura runs distance learning through the NZ government. It follows the curriculum. It is funded. I can do it from anywhere. Tonga, Auckland, a container ship if I wanted to. My daughter learns at her pace, in her environment, surrounded by her family wherever we are. She does not lose the language. She does not lose the connection. She does not have to choose between her two worlds because we do not have to choose between them either.
But then the other part of me, the part that runs an agency and manages a team and juggles clients across two countries and writes content at midnight and is already running at 150%, that part says are you out of your mind. You want to add teaching a five year old to this. You want to be the mother and the teacher and the business owner and the wife and the cook and the farmer and the marketer all at the same time. And I do not have an answer for that part yet.
I know women who homeschool and run businesses. They exist. They are not mythical creatures. But most of them do not have 21 clients and a team and an agency that needs them thinking strategically every day. Most of them made the choice before the business got this big. I am trying to figure out if I can make the choice after.
The thing nobody tells you about building a life that does not fit the normal template is that every few years the normal template comes back and knocks on your door. School is knocking. It is not asking if I am ready. It is just arriving.
My husband and I talk about it at night after the kids are asleep. We go in circles. What if we do a split year. What if she does two terms in Auckland and one in Tonga with distance learning. What if we try homeschool for the first year and see how it goes. What if we just pick a school and stop overthinking it. What if. What if. What if.
I do not have the answer yet. I am writing this because I think there are women reading this who have faced their own version of it. Maybe not Tonga. Maybe not homeschooling. But the moment where the life you built bumps up against the system and you have to figure out how to make them fit. The moment where you realise that the freedom you designed has edges and the edges are your children’s needs and you would never trade those needs for anything but you also do not want to give up what you built.
That is where I am right now. Right in the middle of it. No clean answer. No five-step framework. Just a woman with a business and a family and two countries trying to figure out what the next chapter looks like.
I have about six months to figure this out. I am looking at all of it. Te Kura. Auckland schools. Tonga schools. The split year. Homeschooling for the first year to buy us time. I am not rushing this one. I am sitting in it and letting the options breathe because this is not a business decision I can undo if I get it wrong. This is my daughter.
And I think that is fine. I think the not knowing is part of it. I think the mess is where the good decisions come from. I have built everything else in my life by figuring it out as I go. This will not be any different.
I just did not expect school to be the thing that made me question all of it.
