About Me

Finding Myself through Solo Travel

I started One Woman Traveler because I am like you, an older woman searching for new adventures and experiences.  I had a long and successful professional career, including working as a crisis social worker, a lawyer, a grantmaker/grantwriter, and a nonprofit consultant.  I raised a daughter as a semi-single parent.  I have also been a long-time solo traveler.

Ten years ago, I was fired from a job that I loved.  We had a new CEO, who was 20 years younger, who felt threatened by my experience and expertise.  I wasn’t trying to be intimidating, but I’m pretty sure I rolled my eyes a few times in staff meetings.  What can I say?

In that same year, I had knee replacement surgery and my relationship ended.  I wanted to run away, to fall on those newly created knees and weep.  For several months, I sat on my front porch and watched the sprinkler just go back and forth, unable to engage with life. Then, I remembered that I had a kid, a mortgage, and I did not have enough money to retire.  I wasn’t done with with life, just that particular life.

An Obituary Worthy of the New York Times

For many years, one of my goals in life was to have an obituary worthy of a column in the New York Times.  Every Sunday, I would read those obituaries, those life stories of people, both famous and obscure.  Like the chapters of a book, it reminded me that we are not made of just the last few years of our lives, but of multiple chapters of a long (and sometimes meandering) story.

I began building the outline of a new chapter by learning more about myself through:

• Making notes about what interested me, and tracking what kept coming up.
• Asking friends to describe me — when I was 20, 30, 40 and 50+, and reading old letters of recommendation.
• Completing personality tests.
• Taking creative writing and painting classes.
• Reading lots of books, including those by Brene Brown.
• Creating my lifeline (by using a long piece of butcher paper and drawing out a line and then putting in all the significant events up to the present).
• Researching my family tree and taking a DNA test.
• Traveling out of town and out of the country, finding new places to explore and to challenge my thinking.

My passion for travel became the driving force for everything, particularly solo travel, particularly as a woman, and particularly as an older woman in a tumultuous age.

I started dreaming about traveling for a living and figuring out ways I could make that happen.  I became a certified tour director to lead small and large groups on organized tours.  I started doing food tours in Portland, Oregon.  I began exploring teaching English overseas and house-sitting for long periods of time.  And, I decided to start a blog about what it’s like to solo travel when you’re a woman in the second half of life.

The Solo Woman Traveler of a Certain Age

There are many kinds of solo women travelers out here.  We are:

• Single, recently divorced, or widowed
• Introverted or extroverted
• Mothers and grandmothers or child-free
• Travel experts or novices
• Use our cell phone to take and edit great photos, or are tech Luddites.
• Have a career or multiple jobs.

Our common link is what the Germans call “fernweh,” the strong desire for travel to places unknown and “torschlusspanik,” the fear that time is running out to achieve our goals.

Achieving my goals means embracing that fernweh, however it may unfold.  It has become a combination of solo traveling, helping others learn about and experience solo traveling, and leading groups of “solo” travelers.  I will define what it means, because in the end, it’s my life story.