Last week I was in New York catching up with a VC friend. I mentioned that my in-laws were traveling with my parents to Greece over Mother's Day. She looked at me and said, "That's one of the craziest things I've ever heard."
She's not wrong. It's a little strange. But we're lucky.
That kind of thing doesn't happen by accident. It exists because of a long chain of women who believed that showing up in the world together was worthwhile. I didn't know it at the time, but they were also teaching me what I'd spend my career building.
My Grandma Hanes planted the seed.
She and my Grandpa took the whole family to Bermuda when I was young. That trip is still one of the most vivid collections of memories I carry. Snorkeling a shipwreck just off the coast with a shark moving through the shadows beneath our boat. Catching what I thought were fascinating giant toads on the island, only to send the whole family into a full panic that I'd been handling poisonous frogs (they were not). Finding an octopus tucked into a concrete pier just off the beach like it was the most normal thing in the world. The pink sand beaches, so distinct they looked invented. We filled Christmas ornaments with that sand and brought it home.
She loved it so much that when her 50th anniversary came, she went bigger. Alaska. All of us on a cruise, watching glaciers. What an adventure it was.
My Grandma Shull found her own version of this same joy. She and my Grandpa traveled for golf. They crisscrossed the country chasing courses and collecting friends, and lost golfballs, along the way. They loved cruising Alaska too.
But my Grandma Shull never needed a passport to inspire something international. She was pen pals for years with a woman named Norma, a Welsh police officer who had to step down from the force when she got married, because that was what convention required back then. Two women on opposite sides of the Atlantic, writing letters by hand for years. To this day they play Words with Friends together on Facebook. When our family lived in the UK, we visited Norma and sent the photo below to my Grandma. That friendship existed entirely because my Grandma decided a stranger on the other side of the world was worth knowing.
My mom expressed all of this a little differently.
She was the spontaneous one. The person who surprised us with a weekend trip to Mackinaw Island without much warning. My dad is the planner in our family. The logistics, the itinerary, the spreadsheet. He is very good at this. He is not, famously, the person who surprises you with a trip on a Friday afternoon. That was my mom. That was my Grandma Hanes. The women in our family loved spontaneous adventure.
We went on to see a lot more of the world together. Mexico, UK, Croatia, Cornwall, Honduras, Europe in pieces. And then Meghan came into my life, and with her, a family that carried the same conviction.
Meghan came from the same tradition. When we were dating, her parents did something that tells you everything about who raised her. They invited the person dating their daughter on a 3-week trip to South Africa. Everyone, apparently, thought I was going to propose on that trip. I didn't (that came 3 months later). But that trip changed me in ways I'm still accounting for.
It was also the trip where I almost quit my job.
I worked remotely from South Africa the whole time, keeping crazy hours to make sure nothing slipped at home. And I was still made to feel guilty for taking time off, even around the holidays, even from another continent. I remember thinking: this can't be what work is supposed to feel like.
I didn't know it then, but all of those moments were leading somewhere.
At Tern, we work incredibly hard. Our team works nights, weekends. When something matters, people show up without being asked. But we also make sure they have time to experience the world. We're a travel company. That means something. I'm proud that because of Tern, 1 of our employees took their very first flight. A few have left the country for the first time. As a company, we are inspiring a whole new generation to look at the world around us with awe, inspiration, and a sense of possibility.
Today, more than 250,000 travelers book their trips through a Tern advisor. And the stories I love most aren't about features or booking flows. They're about what advisors make possible for the people they serve.
The person who is terrified to fly. The advisor who spends weeks figuring out exactly what that person needs to hear, and gets them on the plane.
One story has stayed with me. An advisor was planning a trip for a mother and daughter, both in remission from breast cancer. She understood what this trip meant. The travelers asked what a business class ticket might cost. Retail was nowhere close to reachable. So she started searching wholesalers. Every night for weeks, looking for a fare that didn't exist yet at a price that could change everything for this family. And then it did. A business class sale, half of retail. She booked it before it disappeared.
That mother and daughter flew in style for the first time in their lives. Those memories don't fade. They get told at dinner tables for decades. Even more than the fancy seats, the fact that someone would do that for them is what sticks. They become part of a family's story about itself.
The American Society of Travel Advisors reports that 80% of travel advisors are women-owned or operated. The industry that makes these moments possible runs on the expertise, the hustle, and the deep care of women. That deserves to be said plainly today.
I also want to acknowledge something harder.
Not everyone is celebrating today. Some of you are missing your mom. Some of you are carrying a grief that this day makes heavier.
Some of you are in the middle of a journey to become a parent that hasn't gone the way you hoped. That's where Meghan and I were this time last year. It's where some of our closest friends still are. I know how much weight today can carry when you're in that place. And I think the partners walking alongside that journey deserve to be seen today too. It's not only a mother's grief to carry.
What I know is this: the longing for connection, for family, for showing up somewhere new together, is real. It's worth honoring. Whenever you're ready, the world is there.
This one hits a little differently for me.
It's my first Mother's Day where we’re celebrating Meghan. The twins are a few months old. I don't have the words quite yet for what this year has felt like. But I think I finally understand, in a way I couldn't before, what every woman in this story was actually building. It wasn't just trips. It was a way of seeing the world they wanted their families to live in.
I hope I do the same for ours.
Happy Mother's Day to every woman who showed someone that the world was worth seeing.
And to Katie, my co-founder, who became a mom this year and has somehow managed to do that while also building Tern. Watching her crush both at once has been something to see.
To all the moms and moms to be at Tern, you’re an inspiration to me and your kiddos every day. Together, I hope we bring the world a little closer to each and every one of them.
And to Meghan, celebrating her very first Mother's Day with our twins this year: watching you become a mom has been the best thing I've ever had a front-row seat to. I already know you'll do what the generations before you did. You'll inspire a sense of wanderlust in those kids that sends them somewhere none of us can predict. I can't wait to watch.
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