I’m on a solo trip right now, typing this as my subway train tears across Manhatten towards the Bronx.  I’m on my way to the NY Botanical Garden.  A rare corpse flower is on the brink of blooming. Normally the museum is closed on Monday, but the Garden is opening for shortened hours today in anticipation of the bloom.  The last time the botanical garden had a corpse flower bloom was in 1939.  It’s known for a horrific scent once the brief and rare bloom happens.

This trip is my 2nd solo vacation.  I took my 1st one at the brink of 2016 when I drove myself and my dog 12 hours on the heels of a historical snow storm to Santa Fe, NM.  That was my test trial.  To go to a new city by myself where I didn’t know anyone.  This trip I’m on in NYC right now is going to take me into Canada:  1st solo travel using my passport. Next month: Peru, where I’m heading on a bus up into the mountains for a retreat at the Way Inn.

I’m not against traveling with friends or loved ones, I actually can’t imagine building better memories than to do just that.  It’s sometimes considered a stigma to travel alone:  like you don’t want to travel with others or you want to be alone.  I don’t feel this way at all.  For me, it’s about not being held back.  I don’t want to NOT travel  because I have to have a travel companion, same as I don’t want to NOT go see a concert or film in a theater because I have to have a mate.  That’s way too restrictive.  It should go both ways.

I subscribe to National Geographic’s Traveler magazine.  It’s amazing.  On my long subway ride to the Botanical Gardens I was reading an article on travel & trust by the Dalai Lama.  He says “trust leads to happy days and happy lives”.  In other words travel teaches us to trust.  The author who interviewed him is a world traveler herself, and she points out that traveling can make the world a happier place because it forces us to trust one another.  I can’t think of a better more shining example of my beginnings as someone who plans on making many solo trips in the future:  the journey of fully trusting myself.  Doing things solo locally is one thing, but adventuring out into new experiences away from home is another level.  It forces you to truly confront yourself.  In turn you have a more solid foundation where you can expand your heart towards the world.  Only 50 short years ago women in one of the most developed countries in the world (the United States) couldn’t wear pants.  The amount of change that has happened for women from their rights, to safety, to the liberation from the domestication of the home has allowed a woman like myself to move more freely on the planet.  Things aren’t perfect, there’s a lot of work still ahead, but every time I think of this I have gratitude for the army of women who have paved the way for me to have the freedoms I do to explore the way I am.  

This trust taking place is going to be a healing force on the world.