Black woman solo: A decade of traveling alone

Before traveling solo became trendy, before there were endless guides on how the modern woman could go on the road all on her own, before Black women started creating micro-communities for ourselves to talk about what it meant to travel solo as a woman while Black, I chose that path for myself.

But that righteous choice wasn’t only seated in a ravenous, unrelenting hunger for seeing the world around me. Nor was it solely borne from being frustrated from trying to travel with friends and family and perpetually being ditched when it came time to book flights and accommodation.

I started traveling alone—booking a flight, planning the things I would do, painstakingly choosing a cute Airbnb so I could cook a few meals with provisions from a local market—to heal. I desperately, more than any of the other reasons I could think of, wanted to take to the sky, to heal and not feel as broken as I held the shards of an abusive relationship that shattered me. And to no longer feel sunk within the solitude that felt more oppressive than satiating.

I wanted to find a way to delight in my company and feel at ease alone. So, I traveled.

Though I’d gotten my passport in 2009 when I was 23 years old—I traveled with my parish at the time to do volunteer work in Jamaica—it took three more years before I built up the courage to travel alone.

I started small with developing comfort with solitude: going to dinner alone and sitting at the bar chatting with bartenders, not waiting on anyone to see that movie I wanted to see while chomping on a hot dog and nachos with extra jalapenos as the light from the movie screen bounced off my glasses, attending any of the endless spring and summer festivals in my hometown of Atlanta.

I started to feel a weird type of freedom, navigating this world of which I was the center. A reprieve, almost, from the constant heaviness and cognitive churning, a disconnect from the societal conditioning that told me I was less because I was alone. Because I was single and child-free.

The more I spent intentional time alone, I started to notice something curious and righteously unexpected. My thoughts were no longer filled with rumination about what others thought about me being out and about alone without any company. Being with me felt good. The insecurity had lightened and quieted. I was, in fact, so secure in the work I had done to begin my healing process that I booked a flight to Madrid, Spain in the fall of 2012. I’d never been to Europe before, but I’d imagined that journey to Spain for what seemed like my entire life. Starting in middle school, I studied Spanish. I progressed through classes in high school and even minored in Spanish in college. I could write and read in Spanish easily. I was ready.

But those around me weren’t. Once I shared these plans with friends and family, the loud objections started. I was told it wasn’t safe for me to go that far by myself, citing the recently released movie Taken. Others suggested that I wait and bring friends or family along. Wouldn’t I get bored having all that free time with no company? I wasn’t wise enough to see their questions and prodding as the projection I see it as now—just like I wasn’t wise enough then to see that no one would encourage a Black woman at any age, especially not at my age when I should’ve been worried about marriage and children, to embody a life fully centered in herself.

One word for that first trip to Madrid in the fall of 2012: magical. The first night I ate paella at an overpriced restaurant as I looked at the banner of El Rey Leon playing at the theater across the street. I was called morena over and over again as I strolled the streets, tripping over the cobblestones. There were plenty of frustrating moments and tears shed on that trip, too. Like when I got lost far from the city center and had to resort to Google Translate to have a taxi called. But at the end of those few weeks, I felt something new: an opening. I had gotten through a lot of scenarios I’d never experienced before with ease. They had been anxiety-inducing, but I had gotten through them. That was something huge. A part of myself had announced itself to the world as a result. I am here; I am capable; I am brave. And I, a woman fully belonging to herself, answered the call.

Travel has become my compass. My space of inner-expansion. And as the years have crawled on, it centers the work and writing I do. Months after going to Madrid, I went to Cancun, alone again, to celebrate getting a Masters degree in a creative writing program. From there, I started to build the muscles to be comfortable traveling farther and farther for longer periods of time, starting with moving to Madrid to teach English a year after that first trip in 2012.

Solo travel is not merely something I do; it is a ripening space for so much joy and contentment. As someone who has encountered a lot of loss in my life, travel has been a space where I can hold my grief without judgment and shame. And in looking for ways to tend to myself when I feel raw and vulnerable, my self-trust has deepened. I know that no matter what challenges life may bring, that I am strong and resourceful enough to survive them. Travel—being hundreds or thousands of miles away from home and being thrown into unpredictable situations—primed me for this knowing and confidence I have within myself.

And with each trip, it is also an open subversion of the expectations the world demands of me as a Black woman close to 40. The expectations that I give up this gallivanting all over the world and settle down already. Get married, buy a house, have a baby or two. The subtle suggestions from society, family or friends that, no, it isn’t wise to decide to spend a month in London on a whim because I feel moved to or to escape the summer heat in the South with a quick trip to Stockholm or Oslo.

Each trip is me continuing to sculpt my life in the way that feels sweet, true and meant for me. This is choosing myself, in a world that would rather a Black woman never do that or succumb to being the cheerleader and support for everyone else, shrinking her dreams, needs and essence.

I may never “settle down.” Without any doubts I know I am not interested in motherhood. I may always be the type of woman who wakes up and decides to book a one-way somewhere for a few months not because I’m unhappy but because that’s what I need to feed my ever-growing sense of curiosity, to connect with my emotions and to tap into my creative force that drives my soul.

A decade ago, I thought I was simply going to Spain, a place I’d wanted to go forever. Now I see it was the first step of many on a path only I could take. And seeing the world alone, triumphant, proud and bold within my Black body, was the lustrous light upon my path.