Utilizing Travel Coaching to Heal from Past Trauma

Embarking on a solo road trip from Texas to Maine amidst the vibrant fall foliage, I discovered the profound healing power of travel during a tumultuous time in my life. As I reflect on this journey, it was pivotal in regaining my independence and self-confidence after a tough divorce. Through sharing my story, I hope to inspire you to find solace and strength in your own adventures, big or small, and to explore the transformative impact of travel on personal growth and healing.

I'm thrilled to introduce the Healing Travel Coaching Program, designed to offer three individuals the chance to utilize travel as a path to emotional renewal and self-discovery. Applications are open until November 10th, with participants being announced on the November 12th podcast episode. This is an incredible opportunity to harness the power of travel for overcoming past challenges and building resilience. I encourage you to consider how stepping out into the world might lead you to newfound confidence and empowerment. Whether you're a seasoned traveler or just setting out on your first solo adventure, this episode invites you to join a journey of healing and rediscovery, reminding us all that sometimes the most life-changing travels begin right at our doorstep.


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If you have questions about this Travel Coaching offer, please reach out via email or Speakpipe link
adventuresredheadrambler@gmail.com

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Chapters

• 0:07 Solo Travel Adventures for Women
• 14:30 Healing Travel Coaching Program Application

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

Welcome to Solo Travel Adventures for women 50 and older. I'm Cheryl Esch, your host, solo travel advocate, freedom traveler and coach. This is your passport to adventure. Hello, sister travelers.

Speaker 1: 0:23

Well, a couple weeks ago I forgot to announce that my podcast had hit 50,000 downloads in less than two years and I am so grateful and overwhelmed with all the positive feedback and just how much a lot of you are feeling like this podcast has provided you resources and education, information, edification, all that good stuff, and I am forever grateful for all of my listeners. And I'm so glad because when I started this podcast, this is what I wanted. I wanted to serve women 50 and older in their needs to understand how to solo travel or give them tips and have them feel safe and how to build confidence. All that has come out of this. I am so utterly grateful and here's to another two years or more, right, and I'm just going to keep podcasting to my audience here, to you out there, and so today I want to talk about, I want to share actually a personal story of mine, as I have become more intrigued and want to offer to my listeners something new Travel coaching to those that have been traumatized, have had a past experience where they need healing, they need to move forward, and I have, in my own life, used travel as a tool to help in the healing process of past hurts, grieving transitional periods in my life, and it has been amazing. It has been helpful in helping me move past or get past being stuck, feeling stuck in this situation that I was in, looking beyond myself, and so, as we know, travel in itself gets us out of our day to day right, so it puts us in, you know, situations or places that are unfamiliar, which then kind of creates this opportunity to not only be a different person, do different things, maybe have time to self reflect, so that you are not feeling sort of bombarded or stressed by sort of this day-to-day grind or just in survival mode. So I want to help any listeners out there that may feel like this is them, and I'll talk a little bit more about how I can serve you in that capacity. But I wanted to share one of my personal stories Now.

Speaker 1: 3:09

I have used travel way back even before I realized I was utilizing travel to heal from something. I was using it. It was kind of my escape mechanism for things that were happening in my life, of my escape mechanism for things that were happening in my life and as I look back on some of those events and how I responded, many times I did respond by taking a trip. Going and taking a road trip was mostly a lot of what I did in the beginning stages and even, for example, after my mother passed a long time ago, 28 years ago, I did go on a trip immediately following that and I'm not going to talk about that particular incident At the time. That trip was not intended to heal, but it turned into a space for me to start healing from my mother's death. But what I'm going to share is a little more recent and how I intentionally used travel in this particular situation to begin my healing journey.

Speaker 1: 4:19

So a little over three years ago almost three years to the day, honestly I was going through a divorce and one of the things I knew I needed to do was to A get out of the current city, house, situation, community that I was in in order to start processing this divorce and to start, uh, becoming my own self, becoming more independent, um, and kind of disconnect from um, kind of become unentangled in sort of what I had been, you know, tied to with the marriage. So, um, you know, 23 years of marriage but, uh, 12 of those years, uh, we lived in a certain area in Texas, developed some great uh community and neighbors and became very comfortable and familiar in that community. And as I was processing through the divorce and trying to unravel and get back to who I was and to sort of build up that confidence, build up that self-reliance, I knew I needed to leave that situation. I knew I needed to leave that situation so I decided and I had wanted to do this for a while is to go on a road trip to see the fall foliage, and so I had always wanted to get up into Maine and all those New England states that I had never been to and really experience the fall. I, for me, personally, getting out in nature is how I heal, it's how I can reconnect not just with our creation but also my creator, and it just gives me this time, this space to be alone but also feel sort of like this wrapping of the arms with this nature around me and just marveling at the beauty that surrounds us. So, yes, my trip was not a big international getaway or retreat.

Speaker 1: 6:40

I did a road trip and so I drove from Texas all the way to Maine, stopping many places along the way, hit a couple national parks and thoroughly enjoyed it. Because, for me personally, I find being in the car by myself I have so much time to think and reflect, um, listen to podcasts, listen to encouraging words, pray, whatever it is I do, and that and just being on the road, I don't know gives me that space to do that, and I love it. Every time I take a road trip, there's just a lot that happens mentally and even emotionally for me as I do that road trip, and I was able to take my time. I was able to stop as I wished and explore some small towns, especially in Vermont. It was beautiful. The fall weather was perfect. It was just this utter release of some freedom as well. I needed that freedom because I had felt in my marriage that I couldn't be myself and I felt really tied to that, and so this gave me that chance to become and be who I truly am.

Speaker 1: 7:57

I spent some time. I found a beach along the way in Massachusetts, which was a serendipitous kind of encounter. It was a beautiful day as well. The experience almost felt like it lightened this burden for me, and everybody will have a different way, that you know different trip that's going to edify them in their healing process. So you may ask well, how did I determine where to go, what to do?

Speaker 1: 8:32

For me it was a situational. I knew that I was starting a new job in Nashville and so I kind of put that, I said I can start this day because I wanted two weeks on the road to experience this trip and have that time to start the healing process. And I say start because, um, and not that my divorce was messy, it was actually rather amicable and but you think about being married for 23 years and how much of your life it was tied to that person. And so there was quite a bit of, um, some traumatic healing that needed to happen. And this and this, just for me, opened the door to start that process. I mean, I'm still three years in and, yes, I'm much better, but I don't think I'd be where I'm at today if I hadn't taken that road trip. And so it really showed me because I needed to learn how to be self-sufficient, self-reliant as I moved to a new city and started a new job and but got to experience, um, the calm and the ability to just have find some peace. Honestly, um, during this transitional period for me, and so it brought me physically out of you know, that community. I talked about the home where I was living with my ex and put me in a new environment so that I could start to rebuild my life and start over, basically. And I decided a road trip because I mentioned just earlier that that's where I find a lot of thinking time happens for me. And then I needed nature. That's just who I am.

Speaker 1: 10:33

Some people might find that they need a beach, or maybe you are needing mountains, or maybe you are needing an exotic retreat where you actually get away, you get pampered, maybe you need some spa weekend going on for yourself to begin your healing process, and travel can do that for you. And there's many ways that travel can help, and I am here to help offer that to my listeners, to you and a coach. A travel coach is a little different than a travel advisor. Now, a travel advisor or a travel agent is someone who does all the planning for your trip, booking your flights, telling you where to go, what's the best you know, maybe resort to attend or places to go, but a travel coach which is what I do, guides you through your travel experiences and offering you support through this personal growth.

Speaker 1: 11:38

And I am focusing on women that have experienced past traumatic events, and these can range from anything like I experienced, whether it's maybe a death of a loved one, and so there's this grieving process you might be going through, and travel can help with that. Or divorce, as I gave in my example. But there's other traumatic events. I actually had one that I'm not quite ready to share that happened about a little over a year ago. Had one that I'm not quite ready to share. That happened about a little over a year ago and I'm starting to heal from that, and there's ways that I've used travel to work through that traumatic event. That happened, and so it can be.

Speaker 1: 12:19

It could be something as serious as even domestic abuse, whether it's physical or emotional abuse. It could be anything, just from an incident where maybe you felt violated. Those are the type of traumatic events I'm speaking of. It could be even just any kind of loss. It could just be a loss of. For me there was a grieving period, too, of losing in my marriage, losing the house, losing that stability, so it could also be this traumatic. Maybe you've lost your job, and so you've had to sort of reinvent yourself or change course, and so travel is one way to help. I'm not saying it is the end, all be all.

Speaker 1: 13:11

I would certainly hope, in some of those more serious cases, that you are seeking professional counseling as well to help get you over and get you through this process. But travel is a tool, it's sort of something in your tool belt that will help in this journey, and maybe it's something you want to use right away, maybe it's something down the road that you feel like you could definitely benefit from. And there's different things, different questions that I would ask as a coach to help guide you through that process of determining where is the best place for you to go, and that is dependent on what your situation is when do you feel safe? What are your triggers. So we kind of consider all that as we discuss how we can utilize travel to help you get heal in these traumatic events and these maybe grieving or losses that you've experienced in your life, and so I'm here to offer that service to you folks, and what I want to do today is I want to put it out there. I want to find three lucky listeners that I will take you through this process for free.

Speaker 1: 14:30

However, there is going to be an application process for this. I want to make sure I am getting the person that could really benefit from this the most, someone who maybe is in a place in their healing journey where I feel this is the right time to offer some travel coaching, and so I have an application that will be linked in the show notes today. It's a Google form that you will need to fill out, and this is due by November. 10th will be the deadline, because at that point, I will pick my three lucky applicants to work with me through a coaching session to help you utilize travel as a tool, an application to help you move past any hurts, past hurts, traumas, to get you to a better place, to get you to the other side, to get you unstuck and moving forward in this healing process. If you have any additional questions, really, about this whole travel coaching process, you could also utilize the speak pipe or you could email me, and those are all. Those connections are all in the show notes as well.

Speaker 1: 15:56

I really, really want to help women, as it helped me. Travel helped me get past many, many hurts, past traumas, and building up that confidence, that self-reliance, which happens when you solo travel, but we want to do it because of your past, in some meaningful and even safe ways for you. So if you feel like this speaks to you and this is you and you want that opportunity to see if you can utilize travel to help you move forward in your life and become a more whole, go ahead and fill out that application and I will be happy and I will be announcing those folks that have been chosen. I will, of course, reach out personally, but on my November 12th podcast we will get those names out there and announcing those lucky winners to this free coaching offer that I'm offering at this moment. Okay, all right. Well, sisters, I am so glad you're here. Keep listening, share with your friends and get out there and have an adventure, even if it's in your backyard.