One of the most empowering things that you can do to get over a divorce is learn how to spend time alone.
After my divorce I got back on the road and went travelling. It was challenging but having so much time alone taught me to grow. I am such an advocate for solo travel as I know first-hand how empowering it can be. I find that each journey I take, gives me the life lesson that I need at that moment.
Solo travel can be life-changing.
Sometimes as women we hold ourselves back from living the life that is meant for us, due to fear or worry about what others may think of us. Giving yourself the gift of talking time out from what others expect of you is priceless. You’ll return home a more defined person with a sense of who you really are. The confidence that you get from solo travel spills out into other areas of your life too. You begin to take more risks and become a stronger, more empowered version of you.
Why Travel Solo?
If you’re going through a hard time in your life, making plans to travel can help guide you through this bleak period. A change can be the best thing to get you back on the road to recovery and give you a new perspective on life. Don’t allow others or society to pass their judgement onto you about what you should be doing at this point in your life. No one knows what’s around the corner, so giving yourself a change of scenery can only improve your happiness factor and prepare you for a new phase of your life. Who knows, you may even fall in love on the road and decide to take a new path.
What Travelling Alone Has Taught Me
I love figuring it all out by myself and going to countries where I can’t speak much of the language and meeting the local people. When you’re travelling solo you have so many more adventures and more interaction with people than you do as part of a group or a couple. I can be a bit of an introvert so I love spending time by myself in a new country, and opening myself up to the serendipities that it brings.
Travelling has taught me to slow down. To not sweat the small stuff and that around the world, we are all the same. I love learning from other cultures and understanding their ways of life. I realised that people all have the same basic needs: shelter, food and love, no matter where we are in the world. Travel has taught me not to judge and be open to any experience, whether good or bad. It’s a never ending learning curve and each time I feel that I have it all worked out, I learn something new about myself.
How Solo Travel Can Help You After Divorce
I’ve seen first-hand the empowerment and transformation that travel brings. Travelling solo empowers me and gives me a feeling of accomplishment that I don’t get travelling with others. I see it as a voyage of personal discovery and I really get to know myself inside out when I’m alone in the middle of nowhere with no one else except me to figure things out. When you’re solo, the only person you need to worry about making happy is you. There’s no give and take and no compromise so it really feels like self-care which is so essential no matter where you are on your divorce journey.
Advantages
Travelling solo gives you the freedom to choose your schedule, go where you want and with who you want. You can make your own plans, change your plans and create brand new exciting ones without having to ask anyone. You can go shopping if the mood takes you, take yourself off sightseeing for the day, or if you really don’t feel like socialising you can go and watch a film at a local cinema. And with freedom comes flexibility. If you arrive somewhere and really don’t like it then you can just move on, or stay longer and revise your plans.
Whatever you want to do, you can, and you’ll soon learn to take each day as it comes and be back in the flow of life. It teaches you to become self-sufficient and look after number one, as well as not to judge and be open to any experience, whether good or bad.
There’s so many more people choosing to travel by themselves so you’re never short of people to team up with if you need company but if you prefer your own space, it’s perfect!
Taking a Tour
To make travel easier for us singles, there are tours for any kind of activity, such as painting art in Italy, singing holidays in Barbados, learning how to salsa in Cuba, and cooking in France. Plus you can even get active when you travel on bootcamps, yoga ashrams and cycling holidays. Wellness holidays are also a popular choice with solos, as women want to escape the reality for one or two weeks and get back in touch with themselves and their core. * Find tours here
My Tips For Travelling Solo
It’s a big step, deciding to travel by yourself but if you break it down into lots of little ones, then it becomes really manageable and not as daunting. Planning definitely helps take the nerves away. Most of the fear is of the unknown but if you find out as much as you can before you go, you’ll feel more in control.
It’s normal to get nervous about going alone too. The build up is the worse part when you start thinking “what am I doing? what if I don’t meet anyone?” and especially “what if something happens to me?” When those doubts surface it can be hard to get excited about your trip but feeling nervous is perfectly natural.
You can join Couchsurfing (check reviews from other women travellers), or Meet Up to meet others. Join Facebook communities where you can connect with others and get the confidence to go it alone, whether that’s just a weekend away in your home country to get used to dining by yourself or a week away in a different country where you can practice another language.
My biggest tip is just do it. It doesn’t matter what age you are (travel is ageless), or what anyone else thinks, just book the flight so there is no going back. I’ve never let anyone stop me from travelling even though my friends and family couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to settle down after getting divorced, I just went anyway. Be true to yourself and do what you want to do.
My moto is “no regrets.” Life isn’t a dress rehearsal and you can’t please everyone so live your life how you want to. It will be the best thing you ever did.
* Read stories from other women who have travelled solo
Solo Travel Resource
Girl about the Globe is a travel resource that shows what solo travel is really like and how to do it consciously with ‘maximum adventure. Minimum impact.’
We have a Facebook community of solo female travellers if you need any tips or advice, a podcast, a course and a range of books. This is the site that I started when I was going through my divorce to help empower other women to travel alone. Travelling alone helped to empower me after divorce, I hope it helps you too.