The Healing Power of Travel – My Journey from Lost to Found

Have you ever felt lost, like you don’t know who you are anymore? Ever been at a crossroads in your life and not sure which path to take next? Or had that realisation that life is short and it’s time to start living it differently? This is exactly how I felt after losing my husband eight years ago. Here I share my experience of the healing power of travel and how it helped me to find a way back to myself again.

In December it was eight years since I lost my husband, Terry and I’ve been reflecting on my journey since. There’s a lot to process when you lose your partner, the person you expected to spend the rest of your life with. Of course, there is the crippling feeling of grief and loss. The constant questions to the universe “Why me? Why him?” There is anger. There is pain. There is desperate loneliness.

But for me, there was also a feeling that I’d lost myself. I was at a crossroads in life. I had been part of a couple for almost 20 years. I had no idea who I was now I was on my own again. But there was also this feeling that I had to make the most of being here. I no longer felt comfortable in the life I knew. The more familiar something was, the more alien it now felt as there was always part of me that was missing.

Terry was just 53 when he passed away. I lost my Mum when she was 57. At the time I was in my mid-40s and so all this had an impact. On top of all the grief, I had to make every day count. I was lucky to be here.

So, I turned to my passion for travel.

I stood as a lost woman at a crossroads in my life in search of the path ahead. I had no idea what the next chapter would look like. I wasn’t even sure I was interested in knowing.

This is the story of how I got to this point and how I used travel to breathe, grieve, heal, and find myself again.

So… deep breath. Here we go…

The world is calling

I had never really travelled beyond the French campsite that was the destination for our family’s annual two-week holiday. My parents weren’t travellers. We never had a lot of money and France was very exotic in comparison to our previous locations, the Isle of Wight, Devon and Wales.

But when I went to university ( Loughborough Alumni ), I felt like the world was calling to me. I worked two jobs to save enough money for my first big adventure. I had no idea where I wanted to go, but somehow ended up on a three-month overland trip around Central and Eastern Africa.

This was a source of some amazing adventures. I met the Maasai in Kenya, the friendliest people in Uganda and got attacked by lions in Tanzania (yes, that really happened!). I sat with the mountain gorillas in Rwanda, got manhandled by chimpanzees in Burundi, and learned to snorkel in Lake Malawi. And then I explored the Okavango Delta in Botswana, white water rafted on the Zambezi in Zambia, and saw the mighty Victoria Falls from every angle in Zimbabwe.

It was an epic adventure and I came back wanting to see so much more of the world.

Falling in love with solo travel

After getting a “proper job”, I worked hard to gather enough money to then leave again. This time it was for 18 months and I embarked on a solo trip around Europe before heading to Australia, New Zealand and Indonesia. I was in no way a loner and had never really spent any time on my own before. It wasn’t my plan to go alone, but none of my friends were available to join me. I was determined that it wouldn’t stop me. Little did I know this would be the start of my love affair with #solotravel.

By the time I returned, I had grown in so many ways.

There is something about solo travel that nurtures your self-belief. I had got myself into situations (and plenty of them) and I had got myself out of them again. If that doesn’t give you confidence in your own abilities, I don’t know what would.

I had found myself. Travel was in my life. I had plans to settle down only until I had enough money to go again.

And then I met the love of my life.

Meet Terry

Terry and I were together for 18 very happy years. He was my best friend, my rock, my partner in crime and my ever-faithful travelling companion. He was the person I always looked forward to spending time with. The one I laughed hardest with. The one I walked everywhere holding hands with. Life was a lot of fun.

And then it wasn’t anymore.

We heard the news that Terry would need open heart surgery. He had suffered an aortic aneurysm a few years before we met. Back then he had been given a small chance of survival and had to beg them not to amputate one of his legs. They thankfully lamented, leaving him with both legs, a stent in his aorta, a big dose of gratitude and a huge desire to make the most of every day.

And that’s why I fell in love with him. Things were never dull. He lived every day like it was his last and I loved being along for the ride.

But then his last day came knocking.

The words nobody wants to hear

As he was wheeled off to surgery, I told him I loved him. I knew it would be a long road to recovery, but I also knew he’d be back. He was a fighter. He’d proved that last time.

So, I went about keeping myself busy while I waited for the message to say it was all over and they had taken him to intensive care.

And I waited.

And I waited.

And then, finally, I got the call. But it wasn’t what I wanted to hear. It had been a tough operation with a few surprises along the way. They would need another couple of hours to put him back together again. His sister came to join me in vigil at the hospital as we waited again for more news.

I felt numb. I had a sense of foreboding but an innate feeling that everything would be ok. After all, it was Terry. He had survived all this before. He had a lust for life and a fighting spirit like nobody I had ever met.

Over the next few hours, the news kept coming and it kept getting worse. They were losing him, but it just wasn’t sinking in for us. Then came the words that nobody ever wants to hear.

“There is nothing more we can do.”

I had lost him. It was time for me to say goodbye.

What?

How?

How on earth do you gather yourself to say goodbye to the man you love?

Saying Goodbye

I told him how amazing he was and what an incredible life we’d had. I told him how grateful I was to him. I told him how much I loved him.

And then they told me he had gone.

It was around 2am on 17th December.

I got home and pulled all Terry’s clothes out of the laundry bin. I just wanted to be close to him again. I can’t remember how much or even if I cried. But I did sleep. And then I woke up and remembered what had happened. I took a sharp intake of breath, yelping like a pained animal. And then repeated the cycle.

Sleep. Wake. Realise the horror that had just happened. Wail in pain. Cry. Repeat.

Bearer of bad news

The next morning, I found myself more alone than ever before, but I had a job to do. Terry had written a list of all the people I needed to phone to tell them that the operation had been a success, and all was OK. So, I had to call them. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the message.

I was in a daze. As I moved down through the list, telling everyone I was on my own, but I was OK, a few friends just put down the phone after saying the perfect words “I’m on my way”.

I will never be more grateful for anything.

The first few days

My friends made a rota and were on constant vigil, never leaving my side. They were there to tell me when to eat, when to shower, when to sleep. Then after a week, my sister and family arrived from Australia and took over the reins of my care.

The world had stopped spinning. Overnight my life was unrecognisable. Everything that I expected in my future had suddenly disappeared.

How do you even start to process what had just happened? My body took over and there are a lot of those first few weeks that I have no memory of. I was taking each day at a time. What the future held for me was irrelevant. I didn’t know and had no desire to find out, or if I was even interested in having one.

Back to work?

Workwise I was lucky. I had been a very loyal employee for nearly 20 years and had gained a lot of respect throughout the organisation. Everything that seemed so important before just felt so irrelevant to me now. I decided that I never wanted it to be important again. I applied to take a year’s sabbatical and they accepted. This gave me some breathing space to come to terms with what had just happened.

Want to come skiing?

It was then that one of my friends floated an idea. She had a skiing trip booked in Whistler, Canada which she had been planning on taking alone. She had a hotel booked and I was welcome to join her. I hadn’t skied for 20 years. But it happened to coincide with the day my family were reluctantly heading home to Australia (they couldn’t stay forever). It meant I could delay the inevitable moment when I had to be at home on my own.

I said yes.

So, I went skiing in Canada. It was one of the best things I could do. The physical concentration required to stay on my skis was an escape. A release from all the other parts of my life I was trying to process at the time.

Where to next?

And that was the start of many invitations as friends and family harnessed my love of travel to help me through that first year. On my next trip in search of orangutans in Borneo, I got a call to say that the job role I had been doing was no longer required. I was being offered redundancy. I bit their hands off to accept.

It was on a boat heading down the Kinabatangan River that I reached the first realisation. I was at a crossroads in life and I had a choice which way to go. I believed that the right path was not to go back to what I knew. I just had no idea where the next road would lead me. This started me off with a new mantra:

“When everything changes, change everything.”

Home (not so) sweet home

Home was no longer my sanctuary. It was a place where I had to be between invites to go elsewhere. Memories lurked in every corner. All of them were happy but that just made the loneliness even more deafening.

So, I continued to say yes to every opportunity to leave home. This was nights out as well as trips away. I think I surprised friends with how upbeat I was when we went out. However, this was my chance to pretend to myself that life was normal. It was when I returned home that the stark reality hit.

Feeling lost

I felt huge loss, but I also started to feel lost. I was in my mid 40’s and for the last 20 years had been part of a couple. It felt like I had lost myself. I had no idea who I even was anymore.

As that first year came to an end, I reached another realisation. Eventually the invites would dry up. Eventually everyone would go back to their lives and I would no longer be a priority for them. I heard that people start to lose sympathy after a year. I guess that comes with the belief that time heals and you eventually get over it.

But you never get over it. You learn to live with it. You grow around it. You become a new person because of it. But you NEVER get over it.

Finding myself

I realised I needed to take control of my life again. I knew travel was my passion and up to this point had been my saviour. I started by writing out my Life List. It was basically a #bucketlist but “things to do before you kick the bucket” was too close to home for me. I wanted a list to bring me back to life again. It became my roadmap for the next few years.

And it took me on a journey of self-discovery. Through travel I was able to reconnect with myself again. To find out who I was 20 years on from when it had given me myself the first time. Travelling gave me time to breathe, to grieve, to heal and finally to find my smile again.

I started my blog (suewherewhywhat.com) initially to inspire others who found themselves alone later in life to travel with the hope that they will take a journey back to themselves too.

I have now visited almost 80 countries, across 6 continents and have first-hand experience of the restorative power of travel. It has helped me to find myself…twice. I believe it can do the same for you.

What about you?

Whether you have also experienced the loss of a loved one or are coming out of a long-term relationship. If you are facing an “empty nest” for the first time in years, have experienced the pain of illness or the rebirth that comes with recovery. Maybe you have just woken up feeling that somewhere along the way you have lost yourself too.

There are endless routes you can take to the point where you are at a crossroads in your life. Where you are unsure where you want life to go next. Maybe you are standing on the edge of that next chapter but not sure which direction you want it to take you.

It’s not about how much time or money you have. It’s not about how young or old you are. It’s not about how strong or weak you perceive yourself to be, either physically, emotionally, or mentally.

If you need time to refocus on yourself before making decisions on what to do next. If you want a similar transformational travel experience but don’t know where to start. If you need space to rediscover who you are and what you want now.

Whatever has brought you to this point. I believe I can help you.

That's why I have become a Travel Coach.

If any of this has resonated with you for any reason, please share, connect, and comment. And join me on a journey of inspiration, empowerment and #selfdiscovery as we harness the healing power of travel.

#widow