Freedom Looks Like This – solo travel for women over 40 ready to choose themselves

Most of us say "I can't afford it" about a trip before we've ever sat down and worked out what it would cost. What if the number you keep saying no to is one you've never actually looked at? Jillian Johnsrud, author of Retire Often, has taken more than a dozen mini retirements, and she explains why a month away rarely costs what we imagine. She gives us a surprisingly easy...

Even when the place is beautiful and you are grateful to be there, a trip can still leave you depleted. I used to think that meant I had chosen wrong.  What I have come to think is that it is a question of fit, between what a place asks you to carry and what you were already carrying when you arrived. This one is from the vault, and it starts with a very long day in Kandy. In this episode: The twe...

I was on a walkway in Brazil, soaked through, my raincoat sitting on the bus, walking back as fast as I could and repeating under my breath, "This is crazy." Most weeks I talk about solo travel as practice for self-trust. But that Saturday at Iguazu Falls wasn't about practicing anything. And it made me wonder why so many of us need a reason before we let ourselves have the thing we...

By the time I actually landed in Lagos, everyone else had already been there for a full day because my visa came through late. Once I was there, surrounded by family for my stepmother's 61st birthday, the same skills solo travel built in me were still firing, in taking Uber to the grocery store, in figuring out a food delivery app alone in my room. How could this trip be mine as much as it wa...

I was standing in the corner of Edinburgh airport with two suitcases, a backpack, a side bag, and no visa, making call after call that went nowhere. The plan had been for my whole family to fly to Lagos together for my stepmother's 61st birthday. I had to let go of that plan at eight in the morning and what actually got me through the experience wasn't the thing I expected. In this episo...

I'm bringing this one back from the vault. I recorded it in April, before this month took me through Nigeria, Ghana, and Rwanda, and before I missed an episode for the first time because I didn't have reliable internet. It still holds up. The next two episodes are going to get specific about this trip, the Nigerian visa that almost didn't come through in time, and what I learned abo...

You never find somebody who's just like you, not even twins. My guest today, Kristine Madera, has backpacked solo through China, Russia, and the Baltics during the fall of the Soviet Union, served in the Peace Corps in Papua New Guinea, taught English in Japan, and spent years since teaching other travelers how to belong in cultures that were never built around them. We get into the two-minut...

I recorded this one a while back, and in it I explore a feeling so many of us have after 40, where you walk into a room and somehow nobody quite registers that you're there. Back then I thought the answer was to be seen again, to be noticed, and that if I could just be visible then the rest would sort itself out. I'd say it a bit differently now. I've pulled the episode from the vau...

A lot of us have a list somewhere, in a notes app or just in the back of our heads, of places we'd like to visit. Every place on it sounds lovely, and not one of them is an obvious yes. So we keep researching, and we keep not choosing. What if the way you've been choosing where to go is the very thing keeping you home? The best destination for you probably isn't the one the lists ke...

Safety can become a giant question, one that seems to require a single answer before we are allowed to book the trip. But that is not how it works when you are actually travelling. What matters is the judgment you build in the small moments: where you stay, how a street feels after dark, whether someone takes your question seriously, and what you need in order to settle into a place. This is an ep...

People often ask me if I get lonely when I travel on my own, and it's a fair question. But after more than 40 solo trips, I realize that being alone and being lonely don't really have much to do with each other. I took myself to see The Devil Wears Prada, the musical, in London, on my own, with two empty seats beside me and a very tall woman right in front of me. What happened in that th...

We plan our trips around the famous sights, the must-do list, the things we'd feel a little silly skipping. And then we come home exhausted, having seen everything without focusing on enjoyment. What if the trip you'll actually enjoy is the one you subtract down to yourself? Think about the best afternoon you've ever had on a trip. I'd bet it wasn't the landmark everyone p...

We keep telling ourselves we'll take the trip we actually want once we've finally figured everything out. What if you have that backwards? You will not think your way to your next chapter from inside the old one, and the clarity you keep waiting for tends to arrive out in the doing, on the trip itself. This is the adult gap year, reimagined, and it does not have to be a year, or a leap,...

Solo travel as a 40-year-old looks different from solo travel at 25 in ways that have very little to do with the budget or the boutique hotel. By 40 you already know what you want clearly enough to design a trip around it, and the work at this stage is to stop overriding yourself when something cheaper or more convenient shows up. This week Damianne tells the story of walking out of a Sapa travel...

The small decision on a Sunday morning, the park or the cafe or the hotel room, is building something that will help you for your solo trip. I took myself on an overnight trip to Olomouc in the Czech Republic, a city about three hours from Prague, because I was tired and I knew from experience that if I stayed home with a free weekend I would work. What the trip made visible was this: between wher...

I'm sharing a conversation from Kellie Stirling's podcast Talkin About Midlife where I'm visiting as a guest rather than a solo host or interviewer. We started from the very beginning: Saint Lucia at birth, Canada at 12, then India for my first teaching job, then Sudan, Japan, and finally Prague, where I've been for thirteen years.  Somewhere in all of that, a Sufi teacher in I...

Most women have a definition of solo travel in their head, and it's usually the thing keeping them from taking the trip they dream of. If solo means handling every unknown by yourself with no one to call on, of course you're not booking the trip.  Gina Cambridge built her business as a travel coach on the gap between that definition and what solo travel can actually look like. In this ep...

Maybe you've been thinking about a trip for months, looking at flights, reading about the destination, knowing roughly what's there. And still not booking. Or you've already been on the trip and running a calculation the whole time: how do I make this count? Was this worth it? Both versions have the same problem. The question you're asking doesn't close. It just generates...

You probably have a condition before you'll book the trip, something that needs to be true first. But if you look back, a version of that condition has likely already been true. You met it, and then something else came up. The timing wasn't right, and then it was, and something else came up. There was always something. This is what practising deferral looks like. Every time you defer, yo...

Each of us has a default response to unexpected moments, often without noticing it. I watched mine during a recent trip in Japan, paying attention to where I used to smile and keep moving versus where I'm now stopping, staying in the conversation, and letting things land. A place moves forward without you while you're away, and so do you. You don't just come home with experiences. Y...

Sometimes people tell me they don't know where to travel solo. I want to sit with that for a moment, because I think that when most people say it, they mean something closer to: I don't trust where I want to go. The destination is usually already there. It has been there for a while. The gap between knowing what you want and actually believing that what you want is the right answer, that...

I can feel right away when something is slightly off and I have to decide, quickly, what I’m going to do with it. Do I say something. Or do I let it go. I think you know that moment, the one where you’re still in it, and you’re already deciding what it means, whether it’s worth your energy. Sometimes you don’t say anything. But later, you’re still thinking about it. This episode starts with someth...

Most people think experiences speak for themselves. But something else is happening while you’re inside them. On this trip to Japan, I noticed three very different moments: a sand spa where I couldn’t control anything, a sushi dinner where I stopped managing and just responded, and a slow tour where I caught myself subtly adjusting to belong. Each one showed me something I hadn’t fully seen before...

People think meaningful travel comes from big moments, the kind you plan for, experience, and remember as highlights. But some of the days that stay with you the longest don’t look like much at all. In this episode, I share a day trip to Awaji Island with a friend and her family,  a day that wasn’t supposed to be particularly exciting. It included small stops, simple meals, and moments that didn’t...

Have you ever stayed somewhere longer than you wanted to… just in case? Just in case something important happens at the end.  Just in case leaving early seems rude.  Just in case you’re ... fill in the blank. On a recent solo trip through Japan, I started noticing this instinct in a few different places. It showed up in a moment on a bus when I realized I was sitting on the “wrong” side to capture...