A Mom Shares The Village She Found While Traveling

by Jamie Kenney

TikTok

Sometimes, something goes viral for the best possible reason. TikTok user @notaregularnanny — who calls herself Gabs — posts about “solo mom things,” which, as you can imagine, can often be challenging. Babies are small but even with an extra pair of hands, caring for them can be exhausting under the best of circumstances. Add even one new factor into the mix and things can quickly spiral from challenging to “just not worth it.” In other words, there’s a reason a lot of your friends with small children don’t do a whole lot of traveling. But Gabs pushes back on the idea that traveling alone with a kid means you don’t have any help.

In a video that’s been more than 4.7 million times and liked over a million times (as of press time), Gabs begins with the statement “I’m scared to travel alone with my son, we have no village to help us.” But as she shares moments from a long journey, which included subways, trains, planes, and Ubers (to say nothing of the SNAFUs and setbacks that were out of her control, like flight delays) she points out all the people — strangers, mostly — who helped her along the way.

From “the old man” who let her son look out the window on his lap to the little boys who played with him at the airport, the dad who ran to the store to get her son milk and the friends who gave them a place to crash for the afternoon. The whole thing is just incredibly wholesome. Even Gabs says she was “sobbing” as she put the video together.

“You had like 8 of the best possible human experiences in one trip,” writes TikTok user @mattc9123.

“If I’ve learned anything recently, it’s that humanity isn’t as awful as it is portrayed to be,” agrees @ak.spook. “May we all take care of one another.”

“My childhood trauma has taught me to trust NOBODY,” commented @ayyo1983. “I cried my eyes out watching this because exchange of compassion and love by strangers. Thank you for healing a part of me! This is so beautiful!”

Lots of people shared similar sentiments, and many others related their own stories of unexpected but vital kindness. It just goes to show that even amid scary, tragic, and heartbreaking news, there are a million small acts of kindness that happen every day that we’ll never know about, and that too makes a difference.