Women Are Taking “Why-Cations” To Find Themselves, So I Tried One

Until recently, I’d never heard the term “why-cation.” But the second I did, I knew I needed one. I’d spent months feeling like I was holding too much at once with nowhere to put any of it down.

That’s the thing about “why-cations.” They’re motivated more by emotional need than destination — the desire to rest, the urge to reconnect, the longing for experiences that feel meaningful. People take them after divorces, during burnout, in the middle of grief or major transitions. And I could pretty much check all of those boxes.

I left my job a year ago, and my severance runs out July 1st. My divorce is nearing finalization after (a long) two years. My depression was also starting to rear its ugly head again, making everything feel heavier and more difficult to navigate. Every part of my life felt unstable, and no matter how many hours I spent agonizing over what would come next, I never felt any closer to an answer.

So, I booked a quick getaway to South Carolina. Not for a wedding or a girls’ trip or a family vacation. Just me, alone, in a different place, hoping distance might quiet something in me.

When I arrived at The Pinch, tucked quietly down a side street in Charleston, I immediately sensed a shift. For the first time in a while, nothing around me felt urgent. It felt like I’d been given permission to just exist.

Beside my bed, there was a welcome note from management, thanking me for choosing their space as my pied-à-terre. They told me to relax and enjoy, and I told myself I would. I remember standing there thinking, You can do whatever you want right now.

No one needed anything from me. No one was asking for a snack. No laundry had to be folded.

Still, the first thing I did was FaceTime my son and my mom, who was looking after him. I flipped the camera to show them the room — the terracotta velvet couch, the small cacti in the windows. The room itself felt less like a place to stay and more like a temporary suspension of responsibility.

I’ve since learned that more and more, that’s what people are traveling for.

Luxury travel advisor Sarah W. Lee tells me that burnout and stress are at record highs, especially for younger U.S. workers. As a result, she says she’s seen a significant rise in travelers seeking “emotional restoration rather than sightseeing.” Wellness retreats, solo travel, and emotionally driven trips have all surged in popularity in recent years.

“The feeling is the product,” she told me.

Modern life, especially for mothers, rarely allows women to exist outside of what everyone else needs from them. Solitude becomes something women fantasize about in little ways — a solo Target run, an extra-long shower.

But what I slowly realized in Charleston is that removing myself from my life wasn’t the same thing as escaping my mind.

After I said goodnight to my son, I headed out onto King Street and began walking. And that became the rhythm of the trip: walking and waiting.

I wandered around Charleston waiting for some cinematic moment where clarity would suddenly arrive. Like I’d turn a corner and instantly know what I’m supposed to do with my life. I started noticing how badly I wanted someone, or something, to tell me what happens next.

At one point, I even lingered for a moment in front of a psychic storefront before realizing I’ve already spent enough money trying to pay other people for answers.

I wandered in and out of boutiques. Bought myself a new ring, a couple shirts. Eventually, I landed at Bar 167 with an espresso martini and a meze platter, writing in a notebook because I wanted to feel like the kind of woman who writes alone at bars.

And for a little while, I did.

A family of three sat to my right. A woman talked on the phone to my left. I caught myself wondering what they thought of me sitting there alone. Whether they saw me as lonely or mysterious or sad or sophisticated. Whether they were constructing some narrative about the woman with the notebook and cocktail.

Or maybe, and this was harder to swallow, they weren’t thinking about me at all.

That realization followed me throughout the trip: how much of my mental energy is spent trying to be seen — by men, by hiring managers, by strangers, by everyone.

The next night, I decided to treat myself to a nice dinner at Hall’s Chop House. As I waited for my meal, a man invited me to join him and his friends over a bottle of Malbec. He ended up paying for my dinner. After they left, another man offered to get me an Old Fashioned.

If I’m being honest, I liked the attention. I liked feeling like I was noticeable. Desired. Chosen, even briefly. But that complicated the narrative I wanted to tell myself about the trip. I wanted to believe I’d come to Charleston to look inward — to find myself. But so much of me was still paying attention to who was paying attention to me.

The more time I spent alone in Charleston, the more I realized how badly I wanted the trip to change the way I felt about myself. I wanted to come home calmer. More certain. More interesting somehow. Like there was a version of me waiting on the other side.

Mental health coach Benjy Sherer told me that many people approach emotionally driven travel in search of a version of themselves — either a lost one or an imagined one. “The childhood version, the passionate version… the one that didn't let the world beat us down,” he said.

I understood exactly what he meant.

Somewhere beneath all my overthinking and panic about the future was this secret hope that Charleston might return me to myself somehow. Or maybe introduce me to a version of myself that felt calmer. More present. Less afraid all the time.

Instead, I found myself mentally cycling through the same stressors waiting for me back home. What happens when my severance ends? Will I find stable work? Am I ruining my life? Am I doing enough? Am I enough?

Dr. Chloe Carmichael, a clinical psychologist and author of Nervous Energy: Harness the Power of Your Anxiety, told me that when people are trying to process major life changes while also managing everyday responsibilities, “that’s a lot of cognitive load.”

Hearing her say that, I felt slightly relieved. Like someone was finally acknowledging the weight of it.

The closest I came to escaping my own mind happened during a deep tissue massage at Salt Spa. I remember sitting in the lounge area beforehand, physically leaning forward on the couch without realizing it, my body carrying tension even while supposedly relaxing.

Eventually, I forced myself to lean back.

Then, during the massage, something finally fell into place. Not dramatically. Not spiritually. I just… evaporated for a little while.

Face down on a heated massage bed beneath a heavy blanket, with warm oil worked slowly into my shoulders and back, I stopped thinking briefly about my divorce. About July 1st. About worst-case scenarios and back-up plans and whether I’m secretly failing at everything.

The message repeating in my head wasn’t profound.

Stop.

Stop.

Stop.

Just be.

It struck me then how foreign “just being” is for me.

In my normal life, my brain rarely stops moving. I’m constantly thinking about what’s next, what I did wrong, what I need to fix, what I should be doing differently. In Charleston, the silence only made the racing thoughts sound louder.

Dr. Charlotte Russell, founder of The Travel Psychologist, says travel can help people regulate a nervous system that has been operating in “doing mode” or even “threat mode” for too long. But almost from the moment I arrived, I’d been silently evaluating whether Charleston was “working.”

On the last night of the trip, I climbed into my big bed, opened Netflix, and started scrolling. And suddenly I realized, I may be in a completely different place, but I’m still doing the exact same things.

For a moment, I felt disappointed in myself for that. Like I had somehow failed the trip. But maybe that expectation was the problem to begin with.

Maybe we’ve started treating healing like a milestone. Something we should be able to accomplish if we book the right flight, choose the right hotel, schedule the right massage, curate the right experience.

Maybe some trips aren’t about transformation at all, though. Maybe they’re just interruptions. A pause in the noise. A chance to notice what’s hurting you before re-entering your life again.

When I later told Dr. Carmichael I felt disappointed that I hadn’t returned transformed, she gently pushed back on the idea that the trip had failed.

“It doesn't mean that it wasn't a very important preparation step,” she said. The fact that the trip “didn't quite have the full click” I wanted it to have, she explained, could still be informative. She compared it to an experiment that doesn’t go the way scientists hoped. “They don't tend to pack it up and leave. They tend to say, OK, well, what did we learn from this? What further research is needed?”

Maybe the trip wasn’t a solution so much as information.

I didn’t come home from Charleston with clarity. And I still don’t know what will come next. I did come home more aware of how badly I want certainty. And how often I look for external things — attention, beauty, movement, validation — to calm internal turmoil.

No change of scenery made those thoughts disappear. But for a few days, away from my normal routines and distractions, I could finally see them more clearly.

And maybe awareness is its own kind of beginning.