I think of myself as a lover girl.
I love being loved. I love loving deeply. I thrive on meaningful connection, shared experiences, and building a life alongside people who matter to me. For most of my life, I have viewed connection as one of life’s greatest gifts.
But somewhere this summer between countries, multiple airports, unfamiliar streets, and a solo journey that I hadn’t fully anticipated needing, I discovered something unexpected:
I also love being alone.
Not lonely.
Alone.
There is a difference.
For a few weeks, life as I knew it was placed on pause. The demands of home, the routines, the expectations, and the endless responsibilities that come with being a mother, a professional, a partner, and a caregiver faded into the background. I still worked. I still wrote. I still answered emails and attended meetings. Yet everything felt different.
For the first time in a long time, I was responsible only for myself.
There were no schedules to coordinate. No one waiting for me. No emotional labor to manage. No competing priorities demanding immediate attention.
Just me.
And surprisingly, that felt like freedom.
There is a profound peace in not being responsible for the heartbeats of others.
That realization startled me.
As women, many of us are conditioned to become caretakers of everyone else’s emotional well-being. We monitor moods, anticipate needs, solve problems, and carry invisible burdens that often go unnoticed.
We become so accustomed to being attached to other people’s needs that we forget what it feels like to hear our own thoughts uninterrupted.
Travel gave me that gift.
Not because I stopped loving the people in my life. If anything, distance deepened my appreciation for them. But temporary detachment created room for something I didn’t realize I needed: breathing space.
The kind of space where your nervous system finally relaxes.
The kind of space where you remember who you are outside of your roles.
The kind of space where you realize your identity extends far beyond what you do for others.
Freedom Is an Emotion
We often think of freedom as a circumstance.
Freedom is financial security.
Freedom is retirement.
Freedom is an empty calendar.
Freedom is independence.
But what I experienced taught me something different.
Freedom is also an emotion.
It is the feeling that arises when boundaries dissolve and expectations temporarily disappear. It is the shift from obligation to possibility.
You feel it in your body before you can explain it with words.
A loosening in your shoulders.
A deeper breath.
A quieter mind.
A sense that, for this moment, there is nowhere you have to be except exactly where you are.
Freedom feels less like gaining something and more like releasing something.
The Gift of Perspective
Travel has a way of humbling you.
Stepping outside of your own environment and into someone else’s reality reminds you how large the world truly is, and how small your assumptions can be.
Whether I was walking through communities with vastly different resources or simply observing how people approached daily life, I found myself constantly reflecting on privilege, resilience, and gratitude.
Perspective is one of travel’s greatest gifts.
And contrary to popular belief, you don’t need an international itinerary to find it.
Sometimes perspective lives a few hours away. Sometimes it lives in a neighboring state. Sometimes it lives in a small town with a pace of life completely different from your own. The destination matters less than your willingness to leave your familiar surroundings long enough to see the world through a different lens.
Borrowing Freedom
There is something almost bittersweet about realizing how difficult it can be to feel free inside the life you’ve worked so hard to build.
Home carries beauty. But home also carries responsibilities (the dishes, the laundry, the routines, the endless mental checklist).
Travel temporarily suspends those expectations.
It allows you to borrow a different version of yourself.
A version that follows curiosity.
A version that wanders.
A version that orders dessert first, changes plans spontaneously, or spends an entire afternoon sitting by the ocean without feeling guilty.
Perhaps that is the true magic of travel.
Not escape.
But remembrance.
A reminder that beneath the titles, responsibilities, and commitments is a person who still deserves joy, wonder, and exploration.
Coming Home to Yourself
The greatest surprise of this journey wasn’t discovering a new country.
It was rediscovering myself.
I learned that solitude is not the absence of connection.
It is a connection to self.
I learned that freedom does not always require a dramatic life change.
Sometimes freedom is found in a quiet morning with coffee before everyone else wakes up.
Sometimes it is taking a different route home.
Sometimes it is turning off your phone.
And sometimes it is boarding a plane alone and giving yourself permission to exist without explanation.
I will always be a lover girl.
My heart will always lean toward connection.
But now I know something I didn’t fully understand before.
My capacity to love others grows when I occasionally unplug the heartstrings and spend time listening to my own.
And that may be one of the most freeing discoveries of all.
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