Real Women Travel Alone

From the movie “Steel Magnolias” —

Ouiser Boudreaux: Well, these thighs haven’t been out of the house without lycra on them since I was 14.

Clairee Belcher: You were brought up right.

If you’re a baby boomer woman reading this, you may have had a mother, like mine, who tried her dead level best to instill in you some really strange inhibitions that were supposed to help you maintain your respectability… you know, like wearing a girdle so your stuff wouldn’t shake when you walk and make you look like a "loose woman." Or, how about that thing about not wearing black patent leather shoes because they shined like mirrors and the boys could see up your dress? Oh, and never, ever go any place alone. Girls who went anywhere without a chaperone or group of friends were "just asking for it." 

I never did get a clear idea of what "it" was, but I knew by the stink-eye look from my mother, it must be something really, really bad. 

However, as a single woman, if I had waited for someone to travel with me, I never would have had an excuse to buy matching luggage... tell me I'm not respectable. So, if you’re single and you’re still hearing your mother’s voice in your head telling you, "Nice girls don’t travel alone," now is the time to respectfully tell her to shut up.

Making the decision to defy the teaching of my childhood wasn’t too hard. While I wasn’t actually a card-carrying bra-burner, I figured out by about the age of 16 that my mother was pretty out of touch with the new reality of womanhood. But, the decision did require stepping outside of my comfort zone. After all, I still didn’t have a clear picture of what the stink-eye "it" was. 

I can’t even remember what led me to completely throw caution out of the window and make a journey alone to a place where I had never been and knew absolutely no one. I just knew I hadn’t experienced even half of what life had to offer, and that wasn’t good enough for me. And, the years were getting shorter.

And, bless my mama's bloomers, I found traveling alone to have a rather intriguing set of advantages, especially for someone who loves observing. A solo traveler doesn't have the distraction of carrying on the conversations that are inevitable — and, let's face it, sometimes even annoying — when traveling with another person. You’re able to be much more attentive to your surroundings and the people occupying the space around you, some of which just might be infinitely more interesting than anything or anyone you now know.   

The planning of the trip was half the excitement because there are no necessary compromises to be made, no one else’s wishes to consider. In planning my trip, everything I selected, from the hotel to the activities to the restaurants, was aligned with only my interests, making the experience one of sweet anticipation. How can you have a bad vacation if it’s all about doing only what you want?  

There is the added bonus of being able to react to every experience with totally natural, uninhibited exuberance. Sometimes we hold ourselves back out of fear of "making a spectacle of ourselves," another one of those respectability mom-isms. If you’re able to celebrate without restraint, on a completely personal level, the moment automatically becomes a treasured memory.

Finally, there will most assuredly occur a time when a person is almost forced to strike up a conversation with a complete stranger and, if lucky, make a new friend. On each trip I’ve taken, I’ve encountered at least one person with whom I traded contact information and have maintained a correspondence.

Renowned British explorer and travel writer Dame Freya Stark wrote, “To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.” Yes, ma'am, it certainly is! There is a quickening of the senses, a feeling of intrepid, youthful adventure, no matter what your age. Dame Freya lived to be 100. I believe I know why.