At a recent gathering of fellow grieving mothers, it was brought up how often the desire to “just run away” occurs. We agreed that being alone is essential and that new places offer a certain freedom of living the day without being encircled by our truth. Distractions are easier. I think that is why travel, especially when dealing with grief, can become an addictive outlet. Just ask my daughter.

Our family travelled to Iceland and Ireland last year at this time. My daughter expressed how happy she was. This year, she went to Scotland. We didn’t understand this decision. Why a place that was like where she had just been. Why now when she has so many upcoming decisions here to focus on. Her insistence was something she didn’t even comprehend. She jested about wanting to pet a coo (a.k.a. cow) and see the Loch Ness Monster’s lake. All things abstract. She just knew she had to go.

The pictures and texts we have received from her on this solo journey prove she made the right decision. Her happiness traveling abroad to discover castles and myths and sweet foods show in her smile and in her captions. “I have never been happier” she writes.

She isn’t the only family member with an itching to travel.  This fall, quite a few of our clan have sought a vacation. Each to a different place, for a different reason and as they book their flights and plan their itinerary, I wonder if they are aware that grief could be the motivation behind their excitement to go. It has been another tough year for all of us. The third quarter of this year, the hardest yet, and perhaps this wear and tear on our emotions is the undercurrent to needing to get away.

For me, travel always seems short-lived. When you return home from a trip, so does your grief, and usually accompanied by jet lag. It seems daunting. You have this incredible week or two that life seems grand and then you come home to the same old same old. Maybe travel needs to be part of the method of how to live with grief, not a hopeful remedy. Grief does not leave, although my family proves, it can take a vacation.

My question has morphed from why travel to how to bring travel home. How does one take the happy pieces of their trip and incorporate it into their regular life. How does the healing of travel become your everyday show rather than an advertisement to what you wish for. I wonder if one took the highlights of their trip and created that at home, if eventually, ‘real life’ would be filled with all the wonders of travel captured in the form of a photo or an object or a tradition borrowed and incorporated that reflect those blissful moments.

Trips remind us that we traveled with our grief and still discovered joy. That we explored new areas with our loved one’s spirit next to us. Perhaps that is the true addiction to travel; finding ourselves experiencing new things that our soul shares with those we miss in real time.

On my daughter’s trip, she took a pinch of Zane with her. A symbolic gesture that he is with her on her voyage. She is aware that grief does not stay home when you travel but that it can be calmed by the new adventures of each day. I believe our loved ones like us to travel and show up on our journeys as spiritual escorts. My daughter is fully aware that her brother sits next to her sharing her moments and cheering her on. That alone is worth a trip to pet the coos.