I Travel Alone Now. Here's What I Tell My Kids About Women's Day.

My daughter was nine when I told her I was going somewhere without her.

She looked at me the way she looks at math problems she can't solve. Processing. A little suspicious. "But where are we going?" she asked—emphasis on the we, like the concept of a trip without her presence was a grammatical error.

"Not we," I said. "Me."

(The silence that followed was the kind usually reserved for announcement of a pet's death or a cancelled birthday party.)

I had been a project manager for a decade. I had color-coded spreadsheets for things most people handle with a sticky note. When I had children, I applied that same energy to motherhood—which is how I ended up sitting on the floor of a Denver airport bathroom in 2019, crying over a laminated itinerary while my 2-year-old ate a dropped Cheerio off the tile and my 9-year-old asked me if the flight delay was "in the spreadsheet." I've written about this moment before—it became the turning point for everything that came after.

It was not in the spreadsheet.

I came home from that trip convinced that spreadsheets were the enemy of joy. What I didn't understand then—and took another three years to figure out—was that the spreadsheet wasn't the actual problem. The problem was that I had completely disappeared inside the role of Family Travel Director. There was no Sloane on the trip. There was only the logistics function with a name badge.

The solo trip wasn't a vacation. It was a rescue mission.

The Guilt Narrative (Let's Name It Before We Dismantle It)

Here's what moms are taught, implicitly and explicitly, from basically the moment we have children: your needs are additive. They happen after everyone else's needs are met. Your sleep, your time, your solo cup of coffee that's still hot, your ability to take a shower without narrating it for a small audience—these are bonuses, not rights.

And travel? Travel is a family activity. It's for the kids' enrichment. For the couple's connection. For the extended family reunion at a condo in Destin where you spend four days managing everyone's dietary restrictions and still doing 80% of the logistics because you always do 80% of the logistics.

(The invisible labor of family trip planning is something I've explored in depth. For now, the point is this:)

The idea that a mother might want to get on a plane by herself and go somewhere purely because she wants to go is coded, in our cultural script, as vaguely suspicious. Fine for dads—that's a golf trip, a fishing weekend, a guys' trip, everyone nods and sends him off with a "you deserve it." For moms, the questions start immediately: Who has the kids? Is your partner okay with this? Don't you feel bad?

The guilt narrative runs on an assumption that's worth saying out loud: that you are only entitled to your own experience when it doesn't cost your family anything.

That assumption is wrong.

When I Knew I Needed It

After Denver, I made changes. Looser itineraries. More buffer time. I stopped laminating things. The family trips got better.

But something else didn't get better: me.

It was 2022. I was standing in line at a hotel breakfast buffet in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, holding a plate for my youngest while simultaneously mediating an argument about who got the window seat at the table we hadn't even chosen yet, and I had this very clear, very quiet thought:

I cannot remember the last time I did something because I wanted to.

Not in the context of: "I want my kids to have a good experience." Not "I want this vacation to go smoothly." Not even "I want to eat breakfast before it gets cold." Something for me. An experience that existed because I chose it, unfiltered by what was useful or logistically necessary or age-appropriate for a 5-year-old.

I want to be clear: I love my family. I love traveling with my kids. I have had genuine, transcendent moments of joy in hotel pools and national parks and airport terminals at 6 a.m. when everyone's too tired to fight. (Managing these moments across kids of different ages is its own art—one I've learned to navigate over time.)

But I had also stopped existing as a person with preferences. And that's not sustainable. It's not even safe.

When I got home from Gatlinburg, I booked a four-night trip to Savannah, Georgia. By myself. On a Thursday.

I didn't ask for permission. I didn't take a vote. I checked the family calendar, confirmed no major conflicts, and bought the ticket.

What I Told My Kids

My older one was 12 by then. Old enough for the real conversation.

"Mom needs time that's just hers," I said. "Not because anything is wrong. Because everyone needs that—including me. I've been so focused on making sure everyone else has what they need that I forgot to take care of myself. This trip is how I do that."

She thought about it. "Like how you always say to put on your own oxygen mask first?"

Yes. Exactly like that.

My younger one was 5, which meant the explanation needed to be shorter and more concrete. "Mom is going on a trip by herself. Dad is going to be here with you. I'll be back in four days, and I'll FaceTime you every night." That was enough. (Kids that age mostly need to know where their snacks are and that bedtime is still happening. The existential weight of maternal solo travel is not their concern.)

The thing I refused to say—the phrase I had to actively stop myself from reaching for—was "I'm sorry."

I wasn't sorry. I was overdue.

For teenagers especially, I want to offer this: they are watching how you frame your own existence. If you model "Mom's needs come last, always," that's the story they absorb about women. If you model "I have an identity beyond this family, and that identity needs tending," they absorb that instead.

My daughter now knows her mother as someone who does things because she wants to. Not just because the family needs her to.

That is not nothing.

The Permission Framework (Or: Stop Asking and Start Booking)

In my experience—and in talking with other moms who've finally made it happen—one of the most common barriers to solo travel isn't logistics. It's the consultation loop.

You mention it tentatively to your partner. They raise concerns (logistics, money, timing). You take the concerns seriously, promise to revisit it, and it quietly disappears. Or you mention it to a friend who says "Oh, you're so lucky, I could never," and somehow that makes you feel worse instead of better. Or you spend three months thinking about it so hard that the imaginary obstacles become real ones.

Here's the framework that worked for me:

Step 1: Set dates, don't propose them.
Check the calendar, identify a window that works (school's in session, no major family events), and decide. This is not a committee decision. You are not requesting leave from an employer. The power is in the timing—and you get to choose it.

Step 2: Communicate clearly—once.
"I'm taking a trip from [date] to [date]. Here's what I need covered while I'm gone." Practically: school pickups, dinner plan, bedtime logistics. Not a debate. A handoff.

Step 3: Handle the operational stuff.
Not because you're the default responsible adult—you're the one leaving, so it's your job to brief your co-pilot. Write down the pediatrician's number. Note which nights are soccer practice. Put the doctor's forms where your partner can find them. Do this once, efficiently, and stop there. You are not required to pre-cook seventeen meals or leave a 47-point document.

Step 4: Go. Don't check in constantly.
This one's hard. A FaceTime each night if you have small kids—great. An ongoing group chat with updates, questions, check-ins on whether everyone brushed their teeth—that's not a solo trip. That's remote management. Your family is capable. Trust them.

Step 5: Come back as yourself.
This is underrated. The point of the trip is that you return more whole than you left. Let that be true. Don't immediately re-absorb all the logistics the moment you walk through the door.

Why This Is What Women's Day Actually Looks Like

International Women's Day—observed every year on March 8—gets packaged a lot of ways. Inspirational quotes. Posts about firsts and barriers and achievements. All of that matters.

But here's what doesn't get said enough: autonomy over your own time, your own body, your own experience—that's not a downstream benefit of equality. That's the thing itself.

A mother booking a solo trip is not abandoning her family. She's asserting that she is a person, not just a function. That her internal life has value. That she does not require consensus to exist.

That's radical in a way that a quote graphic will never capture.

I came home from Savannah with nothing to show for it in the traditional sense. No souvenir. No resolution. No dramatic transformation. I wandered around a cemetery for two hours because I wanted to. I ate dinner alone at 8 p.m. and read a book. I walked to a coffee shop at 7 a.m. and sat there until I felt like leaving.

I came home knowing what my own preferences felt like again.

And the first family trip we took after that—I was there for it. Not performing there. Actually present. More patient. Genuinely entertained by my kids in a way I hadn't been in a while.

My daughter asked me after we got home: "Was that better? Because you went by yourself first?"

Yes. It was better.

Your Permission Slip (No Signature Required)

If you've read this far, you're probably already considering it.

Here's what to do:

• Book the trip. Not "look into" the trip. Book it. A destination you've wanted to go. Three to five nights tends to be enough time to actually exhale—fewer if that's what you can carve out, more if you can swing it. Pick the dates.
• Tell your kids honestly. Age-appropriate, not apologetic. "Mom is taking time for herself." That sentence is complete. It doesn't need an apology attached.
• Don't ask if it's okay. Inform, don't consult. This is the hardest part. Do it anyway.
• Don't over-prepare the household. Brief your co-parent. Write down one page of logistics. Stop there.
• Go somewhere you want to go. Not a destination you've been putting on the family list. Yours. Only yours.

Women's Day is March 8. Spring Break is coming. You are already thinking about travel.

Book the one that's just for you.

(You don't have to tell anyone it counts as a political act. But it does.)