Solo with Style
I posted this on a social media group that celebrates women solo travellers over fifty. I got an overwhelming response and encouragement from the group, such amazing and kind words like;
‘You are an inspiration!’ ‘I think you are my new favourite person … I would give anything to have your courage ….. i wish you many more amazing adventures’ ‘you are a fantastic, brave, inspiring woman’ ‘I’m going to save your post to give me courage when I doubt my abilities.’ ‘“Enough”?? You come across as Independent, Strong and Articulate. “Enough” doesn’t seem enough to describe yourself.’ ‘Love your writing and your determination to regain your value!’ ‘I am 100% inspired by this! Almost crying at the beauty of it, even though I know there were hard days.’ ‘stories like yours make doing so exciting, attainable and joyful!’ ‘Shares like this are so empowering and really make all of us dig deep for that strength we have inside us. It is so hard to move forward when life changes dramatically but it can be done!’ ‘I will now take a leaf out of your book. I am enough’
It’s strange how strangers can radiate so much support, I’m quite blown away. I have decided to record it here, to re-read whenever I need reminding of how far I have come, or if I need to kick my own bum into braver action.
My post:
“Hello fellow solo travellers and especially to any of you just thinking about it.
This is my first post.
I have been so inspired by your trips, photos and stories.
Today I am celebrating my three year anniversary of ‘being enough.’ I use that term, as I wish there was a better or more positive sounding way to say being alone, or single, especially if you did not choose to be.
Three years on, I am here, still standing and no longer just surviving each day — occasionally I even achieve thriving!
I hope to inspire at least one person reading this, to do the thing you often think of doing, no matter how small. It might just be taking yourself to the cinema or out for dinner. It might be back-packing round the world. I said to myself, even if I hate it, I’ll be proud I tried it. This is the same way I feel about swimming in the North Sea, hate the idea of it before I get in, but I never regret the swim afterwards!
I look back on the last three years of my own solo trips and wonder how on earth I found the will to get up and go on them! I think I just made myself, from some kind of stubborn will to not just lie down and quit! (Even though there were times I really wanted to do just that)
Five weeks on the Shetland Isles in darkest November and December. House and animal sitting for a month, in January, on a remote Greek Island. Lockdown was also an interesting solo challenge! I sold up in Cornwall and moved back home to Scotland (I’d lived in the South West of England for eight years and before that, eighteen years in France)
Those previous trips had revealed to me that I always felt better by the sea, so here now in sunny Fife, I am a short walk away from the waves, it is a real dream come true.
I sold my car and bought an old van, so I could go solo camping and feel safer inside.
Last summer on the Isle of Harris, I was fumbling around in the dark at 3.30am (due to a delayed ferry) with my phone torch, trying to open a cottage door, in the middle of nowhere, as a bemused sheep looked on.
I’ve just been on a writing retreat in the Scottish Highlands, with other actual humans! Woohoo! I’ve joined things locally; pottery, pilates, weekend workshops, a walking group — each first day you have to gather your courage to walk in, then it’s ok.
After getting back to work and ‘normal’ after the last two years, this group has inspired me to be brave again, I’ll be back Greek house sitting this winter and I have — thanks to this group — decided to stop over on the way there, in Amsterdam, then on the way back in Paris. Being solo in cities still scares me, but I want to eat in one of my favourite restaurants and not even flinch, when they say, ‘is it a table just for one?’
I shall answer, ‘Yes, it is for one.’
I am enough.
