Solo Travel – Why This Trip Felt Different and How I learned to Honor my Feminine

Hello loves ❤ I just got back from my solo trip to London (and one day in Paris) and wanted to take this time to reflect on how this solo trip felt very different from my solo trips in the past.

I’ll definitely do little travel guides for both cities of what I did, what I saw, and of course what I ate (b/c that’s always the best part of any new city) but I felt like this trip was really important for me to soak in what it means to slow down, listen to my intuition, and connect with my divine feminine.

Let me explain how this trip came about in the first place. Last year, since we had presidents day off, I was able to take a quick 3 day trip to Edinburgh without taking any days off. This year, I wanted to do the same and take advantage of the long weekend by traveling somewhere. I thought about London simply because I had never been and there were cheap flights on Norwegian flying out of Boston.

At the end of 2018, I was doing the Artist’s Way and working on writing my one woman show and I was really feeling the pull to take an artist/writer retreat where I can just be with myself and take the time to write/be creative/and essentially have an extended artists date with myself.

I also started reading the book, Wild Power, which is all about connecting to your cycle and honoring your menstrual magic and it really really changed the way I view my menstruation. Before reading it, I always thought of my menstrual cycle as a nuisance, something I had to deal with once a month and generally viewed it as a negative thing with the only joy of finally getting my period monthly was a thought of “oh yay, I’m not pregnant”.

Since reading the book, my perception has shifted and I now view it as this magical part of being a woman and have been charting my cycle every day and looking forward to the time of bleeding so I can connect further to my divine feminine.

While the thought of taking an artist/writer retreat in London was ruminating in my head, the authors of the book are based in England and mentioned someone named Uma Dinsmore-Tuli who specializes in womb yoga – a yogic practice that incorporates honoring the divine feminine.

As soon as I read this, I knew I had to go and booked my flight within the next couple of weeks.

While I was very excited for the trip, I felt really guilty for taking 3 days off work and missing Valentine’s Day with my bf. I am the kind of person who hates missing school/work, like literally no matter how sick I was I would never take a day off school and to top it off, the week before I left, my boyfriend got a really bad cold and I quarantined him for a few days so I wouldn’t get sick. But, as my luck had it, I did end up getting sick – really sick – and mostly spent last weekend crying in bed because I didn’t want to feel terrible while traveling.

The day I was supposed to leave, we had a rare snow storm and I was worried sick that they would cancel my train and I wouldn’t be able to make it to the airport and miss my trip.

I felt so anxious and while I knew it was up to the universe if this trip was going to happen or not, I felt silly because I had already paid for mostly everything for the trip including my flight, air bnb, and had booked shows for me to see.

I ended up taking another half day off work so I could make the train earlier in case the later ones got cancelled and while I was sick and trudging through the freezing snow, I ended up making it and everything was totally fine.

I had spent a lot of time on Air BnB looking for accommodations before I left. Because this was my artist/writer retreat I felt the space I was in was really important. Whenever I solo travel, I usually opt for the CHEAPEST form of lodging because I am not picky and I care about the places and not where I’m sleeping. This usually means ending up in a dingy hostel with about 20 co-ed beds in it and while it’s cheap, it is not usually cozy or relaxing and you have to deal with the energies of 20+ people.

Because of what the trip meant to me, I knew I wanted my own space where I didn’t have to worry about the energies from strangers. After looking for literal weeks, I finally found the perfect place – a white walled room with space for a laptop work space and in a woman’s house that was an artist and said she usually works/paints from home in her art studio.

I knew I was craving female artist energy and I booked it.

The space ended up being exactly what I needed and the focus of my trip was in the mornings where I could wake up leisurely, spend time writing, and working on my one-woman show.

On the third day I was there, I got my period which I knew was totally purposeful and I felt for the first time that I had the space to honor it as it should be honored instead of rushing off to work.

I felt contradictory feelings of the masculine/feminine pulling me in different directions. While I was honestly craving just staying in my air bnb and writing, deep into my feminine flow, I also felt the masculine pull of “doing” and going sightseeing, exploring, etc, even though that usually left me exhausted but I kept thinking “well I’m in London, I can’t just stay inside for most of the day”.

I ended up giving in to the masculine energy of doing and would be out from about 11 am to 10 pm, but having my own space to come back to felt really, really important, and even having a couple hours in the morning to be in that feminine space made a big difference.

I also took the much needed alone time to connect to my intuition and followed the belief that everything that happened was supposed to happen and it was all leading me on the right path.

I felt this when I would be walking, randomly exploring in random parts of London and then coming across the National Theater and spontaneously booking a ticket to see Follies or the next night coming across a theater playing “All About Eve” a show I had been wanting to see and booking the last 25 pound ticket.

It all felt like tiny little events that were leading to something bigger.

I also started to see the word “creative” EVERYWHERE. I came across so many books about being a creative including talking about relationships with creative artists and quotes about the creative process and would just see the word everywhere from subway station ads to coffee shops.

I felt this was a big sign for me that I’m on the right path as I feel myself walking down this new territory of creativity coaching and really committing my life to being a creative person.

In the past, solo travel left me with a lot of questions and very high highs and very low lows. It’s something I always crave, but when I’m actually doing it (especially during my trip to Portugal in August) I always end up feeling so lonely and thinking “whats the point of all this”.

This time, whenever I felt difficult feelings of loneliness, sadness, etc, I observed the feeling and let it pass and used it as an opportunity to connect deeper inside myself and feel guided by my spirit guides instead of feeling so alone.

I also learned important lessons about myself about how I often seek the external for things I need. I like to “collect” experiences rather than sit down, enjoy, and infuse. I noticed myself wanting to reach for my phone to document and prove to others I was doing something “cool”. I was seeking outside rather than seeking within, when all I need ever is only within.

I had booked a women’s yoga circle with Uma Dinsmore-Tuli – part of the reason I even came to London and on the day of the class, I arrived to the studio only to find out that I had missed an entire hour of the class because I wrote down the time wrong.

There was still an hour left and although I felt disappointed, I knew this was how it was supposed to happen so I entered the room full of women anyways and still got a lot from it including breathing exercises, chanting, and a sense of community in a room full of women all over from London to Zimbabwe.

As always, I feel I am on a path and am being divinely led and while I have no idea where it’s leading and who I’ll meet along the way, I feel this trip was significant to my larger purpose and I will integrate what I learned/experienced as a creative intuitive beautiful woman for weeks, months, and even years to come.

P.S. Before I left when I was really freaking out about the trip and wondering if it would even happen, I pulled out a card from my Moon Deck and the card was “My Inner Compass Knows the Way“. This is a beautiful and serendipitous reminder that your intuition is your guide. Trust it. Follow it. Tap in whenever you can. It is always there for you ❤