Solo Travel for Healing After Loss | Remembering Who You Are Again // 188

You can do everything “right” and still wake up wondering who you are. When your identity has been stitched to relationships, responsibilities, and everyone else’s expectations, a major life change can leave you feeling emotionally numb, stuck, and exhausted. We get real about that moment and why it’s more common than most of us admit.

We talk about how solo travel can become a practical path to self-discovery, not as a glamorous escape, but as intentional time away that pulls you out of survival mode. Cheryl shares her own turning point after divorce, why a simple solo road trip created the solitude she needed, and how the goal is not to forget your life for a week but to remember who you are at the core.

You’ll also hear concrete tools you can use right away: a phone-free reset, time in nature to quiet your brain, and journaling that works even when your thoughts feel messy. We explore how joy and laughter can return in small moments, and how faith can feel clearer when you finally stop living under constant noise.

If you’ve been telling yourself you “just need a vacation,” this is your sign to choose something deeper. Listen, share this with a friend who feels lost, and subscribe and leave a review so more women can find the freedom to rediscover who they really are.

Coaching Invitation
If you’re feeling drawn toward solo travel but unsure where to begin, this is something I support women with through 1:1 coaching. Together we can explore what kind of travel experience fits your season of life and create a thoughtful plan that reflects the woman you are becoming.

https://cherylbeckesch.com/workwithme/

Transcript

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When Identity Starts To Slip

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Have you ever looked at your life and thought, I don't even know who I am anymore? A lot of your identity is attached to other people, to what you are to them, what your responsibilities are in your life. And you can get lost in all that because other people have expectations of you. And maybe those expectations don't exactly match who you think you are at the core.

Cheryl’s Story And Solo Travel

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Welcome to Solo Travel Adventures. I'm Cheryl Esche, travel coach and solo travel advocate. I have found solo travel to really help me with this struggle. When I have been have lost myself and other people, and maybe it's because I wanted to be a people pleaser. Maybe it's because I had certain societal responsibilities that were expected of me. And when I lost all that, I lost my identity as a wife. I lost the identity of as a family. I was still a mother, but it was a little different. It was a different kind of relationship with my kids. Luckily, they were adults when this happened. So they were already grown up, so to speak. But when that happened, I became really numb emotionally and felt lost. I wasn't really sure who I was outside of all that. And that's when I discovered I knew I needed to get away from the situation. And that's when I discovered that solo travel pulled me out of survival mode. And that's where I was. I was just struggling to stay afloat, keep my head above water and work and act like everything's okay, which was it was not true. And when I really sat down and thought about who am I outside of these identities, outside of being a mother, outside of being now a divorcee, which I didn't like to identify with, but I know we can get stuck with that. And being single is challenging. There's a lot. You have to survive on your own. No one's coming to get you. And so that's where I was. But when I took a step outside of work and even left the place where I had raised my kids and spent a lot of my life just adulting after marriage, finding ourselves in Texas, and just having to leave that even for a little while. But that first step for me was taking a solo trip. And for me, it was a road trip driving because this is where I could really find some solitude and some alone time and really be pulled outside and away from the suburban life that I was living, the fast-paced work and the friends and family that were surrounding in that area. Unfortunately, that was also lost.

Vacation Will Not Fix It

SPEAKER_00 3:21

And we think we just need an escape and we just need to get away, and we just need this will solve everything if I just go on vacation and I'll just have to, I'll forget it. I can forget it for a week. But you know, when you come back, it is still there. And it's not that you need a vacation. What you need is time away to remember who you are. And part of my process in finding this and in doing this, making that step, is that I spent some time, of course, alone. And that was important because I didn't need to hear other people's voices, their opinions, even though some were encouraging, some might have been, oh, you need to do this, giving me advice. That's not what I needed. And that may not be what you need either. If you are in a place where you're trying to discover who you are, and yes, travel will take you outside of that mentality, that bubble, maybe that you're in right now. And I encourage you, if this is you, and you're really needing to tap into, gosh, I used to be so much fun, or I used to laugh. Well, that is one thing that did get lost is laughing and having joy. It was totally lost during this season of my life. And when I travel solo, I know it's just me, but I like to laugh at myself and laugh at things in nature. Like I might see a squirrel do something really funny and I laugh. And it's good, it's good. We know laughter is very health-wise beneficial,

Finding Joy Again Through Nature

SPEAKER_00 5:05

both for our mental and physical health. And so when I travel solo, these are things I kind of look for, but I also rediscover I look for God in the outside of my routine life because I have time. When you solo travel, you have time, and you're not inundated with other voices.

Journaling To Hear Your Own Voice

SPEAKER_00 5:28

Other thing I do is I journal a lot when I'm doing solo travel. And this is also a great tool to use to help you dig into really who you are, how you're feeling, and just do a little brain dump, I call it, onto paper. Don't even think about it. Doesn't matter if it's pretty or if you are not making sense with what you're writing, it's just important to get it out. And once you get it out, and sometimes even going back and looking at what you've written, it can make sense, or it's just cathartic. It just gets it out in the open, it gets it out of your brain, and you can start to unpack things that are deeper inside of you that really make you who you are and who God created you to be.

Remembering Who You Were Made

SPEAKER_00 6:21

So, underneath all those years of responsibility, grief, and survival mode, I found solo travel has helped pull me out of the muck and mire and make me see and realize who I am and how I was actually created. I think about my kids when they were little and just their personalities when they were young. And those personalities, those different things, those different quirks about them are still there and they are in their 20s, they're adults. That is also likely true about you. But when we became adults, we lost the ability to dream, we lost the ability to remember those fun things about us or those unique things that made us, right? Made you who you are. And I want you to find that. And yes, could you do it at home? Likely, but you're gonna have distractions, you're gonna have other people wanting your attention. And so I encourage you to take some time. Again, if it's just a day, a weekend, it doesn't have to be anything extravagant. But it's not that you need a vacation, you need to spend some time and remember who you are.

A 24 Hour Reset Without Phones

SPEAKER_00 7:42

I'm actually going when this is live, I've already, I'll probably have already gone, but I'm going on a little solo adventure just for 24 hours. I am detaching. I'm not even gonna have my phone on. I'm just gonna spend some time in nature and quiet my brain because I think with social media and everything that we are exposed to, it's hard for our brains to quiet down and even to start thinking about ourselves, right? Because we start to think about the things that we need to do. We have our to-do list running in the back of our heads. We go, oh, so-and-so needs this, or oh, I forgot to email this person. And when we detach and just get away, and even if it's just for me, I got 24 hours, I'm gonna do nothing but journal, think, walk in nature, and detach from my phone so that my brain can almost do a reset. And so I encourage you to do that. And I want you to look at your life next time, and I want you to actually remember and go, Yes, I know that woman, I know that person now, and you feel confident about who she is or who she's becoming, and that's important that we're always becoming and we're changing as we grow in Christ, as we grow in who we are, and even just loving ourselves, I think is a huge step to that process.

Coaching Offer And Final Encouragement

SPEAKER_00 9:24

But, sisters, if you are still needing some direction, I do offer one-on-one travel coaching, and I would love to help guide you through this process. You feel stuck, you feel like you just need a vacation, but really what is at the core, I want to help you find that. So check out my website Cherylbeckesh.com backslash work with me to hear more about my program. I want you to have that freedom and that joy and to rediscover who you really are. And sometimes getting away is what we need.