How Four Women Used Travel To Rebuild Their Lives And Find Themselves

What if one bold trip could change your inner map? We revisit four powerful journeys that show how solo travel becomes a tool for healing, courage, and clarity—without the fluff. From a first solo international leap to New Zealand to a transocean move to Kuwait during a divorce, from mountain summits that silence doubt to Australian sailboats that rebuild self-trust, these stories reveal how movement reshapes a life.

Leigh shares the moment she stopped stalling, booked the flight, and learned the safety posture that projects confidence. Danielle walks us through a midnight decision that led to a job abroad, a season of spiritual and emotional repair, and an unexpected reconciliation. Linda’s battered backpack opens the door to eight-to-ten-mile hikes, where steady effort replaces anxious “monkey chatter” and each summit becomes proof of strength. Tess speaks to surviving sexual assault, finding God on the water, and choosing for herself when no one else could advise her—then channels that grit into building a vetted housing community for women travelers.

We tie these journeys together with practical solo travel strategies: commit with one irreversible step, plan smart without overthinking, walk with purpose, set physical goals that anchor mental health, and build supportive networks that make independence safer and richer. Whether you’re eyeing a first passport stamp or plotting a full reset, you’ll find clear takeaways on agency, resilience, and the quiet power of being alone on purpose.

If you’ve experienced a transformative solo trip—big or small—we want to hear it. Email hello@Cherylbeckesch.com or use the link in the show notes to book a short discovery call. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs courage, and leave a review to help more women find these stories.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Opening: Why Stories Inspire
• 1:16 Show Welcome And Purpose
• 1:39 Lee’s First Solo Trip To New Zealand
• 3:36 Safety Mindset: Walk With Purpose
• 4:20 Danielle’s Divorce And Kuwait Reset
• 8:15 Healing, Faith, And A Second Chance
• 8:49 Linda Finds Hiking And Self-Belief
• 12:45 Tess’s Australia Journey And Self-Trust
• 16:05 Building Community For Women Travelers
• 17:14 Invitation For Listener Stories

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Have you ever heard a story of someone overcoming the odds and being so inspired by them? For example, maybe someone overcame a disability and ran a marathon. Or someone else had this lifetime of just being overweight and they hit their goal. They really committed and they turned their life around. Or right now I'm really hooked on this person, these people that buy these um rundown houses or farm homes, or the one lady I'm inspired by, she bought an old church. And with her own two bare hands, she has remodeled the whole thing by herself, not with a contractor, all on her own. And these are stories that inspire me. And there are travel stories that do the same for me. Well, welcome to Solo Travel Adventures. I'm Cheryl Esche. And part of being inspired by other people's travel stories is when I bring guests on, I hope that's what's happening when you listen to these people. They have inspiring stories. And I had a few last year that really still resonate and I still think about them. And so first we're gonna revisit episode 126, where I had guest Lee Barbaric on my show and her inspiring story of her first solo trip internationally to New Zealand to listen on in.

SPEAKER_04: 1:38

Well, I I mean I always wanted to take a trip by myself. Um I don't really know why, other than there's not always somebody to go with you, you know, and so I just felt like I wish I was brave enough, you know, to do this. Because I would see other people doing it, and I guess I would go to, you know, all the bad things that could happen, and that would sort of scare me away. Um I will say that I put off the planning of the trip. You know, I booked the airfare. Um when I finally decided to take the leap, I booked the airfare, and then I just sort of put the planning on the back burner because you know, life gets in the way. I have two kids, I have a job, and um almost sort of, I won't say I was in denial about it coming up, but it wasn't in the front of my mind, you know. And so finally I realized, you know, I'm leaving in a month and a half and I still have no accommodations. If you're by yourself, you know, or you're nervous about being by yourself somewhere. I always walk with purpose. Do you know what I mean by that?

SPEAKER_00: 2:48

Yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_04: 2:50

Don't be aloof, don't be on your phone, don't look like you're lost. Correct. Look like you know where you're going and you know what you're doing, because those people are much less likely to be bothered by someone else or to be approached by someone else.

SPEAKER_00: 3:06

So you can listen to Lee's full story of her courageous leap to go to New Zealand for the first time for her solo trip. And that's episode 126. She even talks a bit about specific places that she went in New Zealand. So if you're considering New Zealand, please go back and listen to her episode. She'll give you some ideas as well. And then next we had uh I have another guest that really inspired me. Um, thinking about some of the rough times that um uh uh that I've endured in my life, and particularly uh divorce, just as my next guest will share in her story. I had Danielle Hebert, a dear friend of mine, that shared her story of how during her uh divorce, how God took her completely across the ocean to a whole nother country to heal from all the trauma and just everything that was happening in her life and how that trip was actually almost a reset for her. Listen in.

SPEAKER_02: 4:21

I was going through a really uh crazy divorce after 32 years and um COVID, you know, everybody had that as well, and so um I just one night was not sleeping very well, and I had that earlier that day. I had told my uh soon-to-be ex-husband, I was like, you can go anywhere in this world. I said, Your job allows you to work from home, and mine uh did not, and so I did not sleep well that night, and I just felt moved that why couldn't I? Why couldn't I go anywhere else? And so I got up in the middle of the night and I did like most of us do and just started scrolling through and um was looking for jobs. Um, I'm an educator by trade, so I was thinking, okay, let's go to Europe, let's go somewhere. And Kuwait popped up and I was like, okay, let's see what this is. And it was a uh curriculum coordinator for Kuwait, an international school. And I was like, okay, and I was just looking at it and I thought, oh, I can do this. This sounds fun. And I honestly it was amazing because I must have just clicked with the LinkedIn, which is pretty cool when you can do that, but I didn't um hadn't really updated my LinkedIn because I really wasn't thinking about that. So um, but all worked out, I got a call, and within two weeks, I had a job buffer. And then it took about two months to get all the paperwork ready to go, probably emotionally, socially, physically, um, spiritually, uh, just drained. And I really just wanted a complete change. Um, and and I just felt like I needed that for healing. I needed to be able to um to just get away from the situation. And I think that's really, I know Cheryl and I've talked about this before. It's very different from just, hey, I want to run away from the situation. And sometimes you might feel that, but in the process, I think you need to really be introspective and go, what am I going to do to actually take care of me? Right. It was the first time in 30 some years that I was able to just kind of focus on me and not in this not to try to be selfish, but I think that our generation as a whole, those of us that are in our 50s and 60s, are just we we were we were trained to be um be all, right? Um work, take care of kids, take care of the husband, and that is what women were to do. And um, and in at the expense of ourselves sometimes. That is how you know that God has a wonderful sense of humor because He sent He sent me to a Muslim country to spiritually heal.

SPEAKER_00: 7:19

And if you want to hear the rest of Danielle's story, check out episode 133. I loved her story, and I've loved uh traveling actually with her. We did the cruise together, by the way. And I have some good news on the front is that she got remarried to her ex-husband, that they went through all that turmoil. But look at the fruits of what happened with her getting healed, he got healed, and it's a beautiful story, by the way. And but go back and listen to episode 133 if you want to hear her story of her trip to Kuwait and how she utilized that time to find healing and restoration for herself, mentally, spiritually, and physically. I also had another guest, Linda Magoon from episode 144, who also had a similar situation in just um, you know, kind of rebranding herself and getting out of a sticky situation in her marriage as well. But in the process, she tackled this huge goal that she uh set out for herself, and that really just changed who she was, um, physically and mentally, especially. And her story is in episode 144, as I said, and it's really about setting those goals and accomplishing and overcoming them, overcoming any obstacles and any negative things that had come her way throughout the process and accomplishing that and being an inspiration to many other women in maybe the similar situation. So listen into a clip of her story.

SPEAKER_03: 9:14

That's that's when my world opened up uh to me. And that's when I discovered hiking. And I I had forgotten that I had liked it because it had been so long since I really did any serious hiking. You know, I had this old beat-up backpack that I had found in the attic when I was moving, moving out. And I thought, you know what, let's let's try this. And and Cheryl, the experience was so exhilarating. I think just just trying something new and being able to do what I wanted to do without walking on eggshells. And how is he going to react and ask for permission? Uh, it's I mean, it must sound weird to your listeners, but for for somebody who was uh you know trapped for so long, it was it was the best experience, uh, you know, going on a solo eight-mile hike by myself. You know, can I do this? You know, I'd never been on a walk that long before. And you know, when you get back down from the mountain, uh it was it was just the most incredible experience. Trying to do something new. The the um the accomplishment of of hiking a summit or or you know, that was in itself healing. You know, when you start on a on a little adventure, you know, some of these, the average, I would say most of these hikes are between eight and ten miles. Some are some are longer, some are shorter. But that, you know, when you're first starting out, you have all of this monkey chatter in your head, like, you know, you know, how am I gonna, how am I gonna navigate my divorce and how you know, how am I gonna live and what am I gonna do for retirement, all this little stuff. And by the time you get to the top, you know, all of that just sort of falls away, right? And able to enjoy the trees and the sounds of the birds singing, and just especially if once you reach the summit and you and you look over, you know, you can look into Vermont or Canada or into Maine and and you realize uh you're you're very tiny, but you're on top of this huge landscape that very few people get to see. And if if I had still been married, travel, there was no way I'd be able to um see these sites that uh you know I was I was now seeing. So for me, solo traveling it was it was both logistical, but it was also a way of finding uh and rediscovering myself too, and healing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 11:42

You can hear all about Linda's story in full detail in episode 144, and she so inspired me. Um, I really feel like a wimp when it comes to hiking compared to um the the summits that she has done. It's just incredible and how that has changed her life. I had another guest last year, Tess Emil Holland from episode 143, and she also shares a pretty inspirational story of her journey of healing through solo travel in Australia after um surviving sexual assault. So this story is quite unconventional of how she uh how she traveled around Australia. So listen in to her story.

SPEAKER_01: 12:32

And I really needed to just get away from everything and really kind of like reclaim myself, reclaim my body, and figure out who I was. And I really felt like um solo traveling had a huge part in that process of like me meeting God on the other side of the world, um, on sailboats, you know, and um, I won't give too much of a way um what's in the book, but it was just a really beautiful experience of solo traveling. And that's why I'm really um so passionate and so excited to help more women have solo travel experiences too. Like what you're doing is like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. And so, cause I really like thought about just like staying and because I was finally like getting money again and and having some stability. Um, but I think like what I really learned from that is like when opportunities present themselves, you have to go for it. Because otherwise, like these opportunities may pass you by and you'll you'll never get them again. So, yeah, that's probably my biggest takeaway as a solo traveler. You really get to know yourself on a deeper level than than you ever have before in your life. And so you really get to know what you truly want in your heart, and you know how to decipher it, and you get really good at making decisions. Because before I went to solo travel, I always felt like I needed to ask everyone's opinion in order to make a decision, right? I would ask my mom, my dad, my boyfriend, you know, my brother, you know, I would ask people what they thought. And I I went through things that I talk about this in my book, how there are things that I was going through that no one else could understand. Like when I was like getting on different yachts and and I like was trying to explain the situation. But the thing is, is like no one, no one could give me insight on what to do. No one had done what I'd done, no one had felt what I felt, no one has seen what I seen. Like I had to be able to make this decision. And I think having that ability has served me so much beyond that specific trip. Like being able to make your own decisions, know in your heart what you want, and then be able to go for it has served me tremendously throughout my uh professional life, even.

SPEAKER_00: 14:59

Well, if you'd like to hear her full interview, you can go back to episode 143 and hear all of Tess's story of her fun times in Australia. But if you really want to hear her full story, she did write a book called Sherbet Skies, and it is testimony that no matter how far you travel, you're never truly alone. Which also inspired, and I have news here since I've recorded that. She has launched or relaunched her house. And so you can go to her house.co. Um, it is a way to uh connect with other women and stay with other people uh that are background checked, and so creating a community of women supporting one another in their solo travels. So I'm so happy that uh for Tess and her launching that new project. Well, these have all been very inspirational stories, but uh it is a new year and I know there are other people out there that have just as inspirational and different stories, because we all have stories, as I mentioned last week's episode. But I'm looking for your story to share here on my podcast. So if you think you have a story that could inspire other women with solo travel, but specifically travel that in these women's cases has presented an opportunity for transformation, whether it's healing halfway across the country, the the world to uh Middle East for Danielle or going on yachts for Tess or climbing those mountain peaks like Linda did. Um, you are uh you have a story to tell. And it doesn't even have to be that extravagant. But that travel can be transformative as these women have attested to in their stories or their interviews from last year. But let's uh get the word out there that there are other stories that I would love to share. So if you feel you have a story that you could share on my podcast related to solo travel and a transformation that has happened for you during that time, then please uh contact me. You can contact me by email, hello at Cherylbeck Esh.com, or I will leave a link in my show notes for a where you can actually just schedule a little discovery call so that we can chat and see if you'd be a good fit to get on my show. I would love to hear your story and love other women to hear your story. So don't be shy. Let's hear it and reach out to me now.