How Grief Changed the Way I Travel {And Why I'm Not Waiting Anymore}

Grief didn't just change my life. It changed the way I travel.
Before loss entered my world in a way I couldn't ignore, travel was something I carefully postponed. It was planned around responsibilities, schedules, and other people's availability. Trips lived in the vague future of someday, next year, when our schedules free up a bit.
Then my younger brother died.
He was only 42 years old when a very brief illness took him far too soon. He left behind two small children, a family that feels the emptiness of the loss, the heavy burden of uncertainty, and a lifetime of big dreams that never got the chance to be fully lived. Watching someone so young disappear from the future we all assumed he'd have shattered my belief that time is promised.
Grief stripped away the illusion of "later." And in all of that reckoning, it completely rewired how and why I travel. 

How Grief Changed the Way I Travel {And Why I'm Not Waiting Anymore}

The Myth of Later

Before grief, I believed in later.
Later felt responsible. Mature, maybe even sensible.
Later was when the money was right, when calendars aligned, when everyone would agree on dates and destinations and time off. Later was when life would somehow slow down enough to make room for the things I said mattered most.
But grief exposed later for what it really is. A gamble.
When my brother died, there was no later for him. No next year. No someday. No "we'll do that after this busy season." His time ended not because he ran out of plans, but because life doesn't care how many you have.
The realization quietly rewired something in me.
I stopped asking, When is the perfect time to plan this trip? and started asking, Why am I waiting?

Travel After Loss Feels Different

Travel after grief doesn't feel carefree in the same way. There's a tenderness to it now. A weight but also a sharp clarity.
I don't travel to escape my life. I travel to be able to fully inhabit it.
Every airport terminal, every sunrise in a new place, every unfamiliar street feels more vivid because I am deeply aware that none of this is guaranteed. Grief stripped away the assumption of longevity and replaced it wish urgency. Not a frantic urgency, but intentional urgency.
I no longer treat travel as a reward for surviving life's obligations.I treat it as a part of how I live and learn and experience the world.
That shift changed everything.

I'm Not Waiting to Take the Trip

One of the most profound ways grief changed how I travel is that I'm not waiting anymore.
Not waiting for the perfect season.Not waiting for whatever hypothetical future version of myself who has fewer responsibilities and more certainty.
And I'm not waiting for others either.
For years, I postposed trips because someone else couldn't go. My husband has limited vacation time and with grown kids, we often use it up to spend time traveling to visit them. Friends talk about wanting to take the trip, but it never leaves the group chat. It feels wrong to take family trips without the whole family, but with young adult kids who have their own schedules and adult responsibilities it's becoming more impossible. 
I told myself that it was more meaningful to experience places together. And sure, that's sometimes true. But grief taught me that postponing joy doesn't make it deeper. It just makes it deferred.
If that means I go solo, I go solo.
Because the cost of waiting is sometimes far greater than the discomfort of going alone.

Solo Travel Isn't a Compromise

There was a time when traveling alone felt scary. Why would I go alone when we could go together? 
Solo travel isn't a consolation prize.It's a declaration.
It says: My life is happening now.It says: I trust myself enough to experience the world on my own terms.It says: I'm allowed to want things and go after them, even if no one else is ready.
Grief gave me permission to stop shrinking my plans to fit into other people's timelines. It reminded me that companionship is a gift, not a prerequisite for living life to its fullest.
I still want those shared trips, don't get me wrong, those matter to me deeply. But others are mine alone, and they matter just as much. 

Grief Sharpens Awareness

Travel after loss comes with an acute awareness of fragility.
I notice more things. I see older couples holding hands and wonder how many years they had to fight for that time together. I watch parents chasing young kids and think of my brother's children growing up without him there to guide them. I sit quietly in places that feel ancient and grounding and let myself feel both small and connected all at the same time. 
Grief has made me more observant.More patient.More willing to sit with discomfort instead of rushing past it.
I don't need to see everything anymore. But I do need to let myself feel something, and allow myself to take ownership over those feelings.

I Travel With Less Regret in Mind

Loss clarified something else too. Regret isn't always about what you did, it's also about what you never allowed yourself to do.

It shines a light on what your loved one isn't able to do but also on the things they were able to do and experience and enjoy.

I don't want to look back and realize I postponed my life out of fear or practicality. I don't want my story to be filled with sentences that start with "I almost went" or "I always wanted to."

So I say yes more often.

Yes to trips that scare me a little.

Yes to destinations that aren't convenient.

Yes to places that I want to explore but maybe others don't.

That doesn't mean reckless travel or ignoring responsibilities. It means understanding that responsibility also includes honoring the fact that I'm alive right now.

Carrying My Brother With Me

Every trip I take now carries a quiet dedication.

My brother didn't have time for a lot of hobbies as a single dad with two small kids, but he made time in a little shop in his garage, after the kids went to bed, to create jewelry. He loved hunting for stones in the hills of Arizona {and often at the annual Gem Show}, learning new techniques from his lapidary club when he could make it, and creating pieces of jewelry. 

He gifted me a ring made with Blackjack Turquoise for my birthday a handful of years ago. I have now started traveling with that ring as a way to share the journey. Feeling the ring spin on my hand when I stand somewhere new, when I feel that familiar mix of awe and gratitude, makes me think of the dreams he didn't get to finish and the places he will never see. 

I don't travel instead of grieving him. I travel with him.

In a way, every journey feels like an act of remembrance. A way for saying that "Your life mattered. And so does mine."

Grief doesn't go away when you change locations. But it softens when you allow yourself to keep living alongside it.

What Grief Taught me About Travel

Grief taught me that travel is not frivolous.

It's not indulgent.

Travel is one of the ways we bear witness to our own existence.

It's how we mark time.

How we create memory.

How we remind ourselves that we are still here.

I travel now with a deeper sense of reverence, not just for the places that I visit, but for the fragile, fleeting gift of being alive long enough to visit them at all.

I don't know how much time I have. None of us do.

But I know this...I'm not going to wait around to find out!

If you want to read more about the solo trip I took to Vietnam that was incredibly restorative and healing for me, you can find it here.

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