After spending 730 days straight with my kids, I vacationed without them, and I learned that I forgot how to be alone

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After spending 730 days straight with my kids, I vacationed without them, and I learned that I forgot how to be alone
Catherine Falls/Getty Images
  • I finally got the time alone I'd been longing for, but at first I couldn't enjoy it.
  • In the silence of my hotel room, I didn't feel like myself.
  • I had to relearn how to be me again, outside the whirlwind of motherhood.
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The past year left me, like many others, wanting to find a moment alone, away from my children and partner. I'm one of the lucky ones who actually got to do it. I was gifted a quick getaway for my 40th birthday.

I imagined everything I would do without a child hanging off my body: Eat meals slowly without little fingers picking at my plate, sit by a pool without having to keep an eye on a wobbly toddler, take long, uninterrupted showers, and, of course, sleep in. It was enough to make me drool.

It wasn't everything I imagined at first

"I can't wait," I told my mom friends who swooned with envy. The need for that time alone was visceral in all of us, almost an ache in our bones. So, I was pretty disappointed in myself when, after arriving at my empty hotel room, I became overwhelmed with a sense of loneliness. I felt untethered, a rock orbiting in space never making it to the ground.

"Maybe you can bring the kids up tomorrow so they can swim in the pool?" I texted my husband, sitting at the foot of the hotel bed. I turned on the television, unused to the silence in the room.

As a mother, especially during the lockdown days of the pandemic, I had lost the ability to be alone and content. There had been many evenings that I waited for my husband to get home from work so that I could sit, and sometimes cry in my car, desperate for a space that was only mine. Now, with the world opening up, and the kids with a sitter or at camp for three hours each morning, I'm grateful for that alone time.

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But in those few hours I'm kept busy with work, grocery shopping, or the other million small tasks that come with having a family with several children. There is always the business of the day, and a sense of the kids' imminent return that keeps me unaware of my self, my existence as one sole human being.

I needed to learn how to be alone again

After sending the text to my husband, I chastised myself for giving in to the loneliness so easily. The ability to be off the clock was something important that had been lost in the tornado of motherhood.

I thought back to a trip I took to Paris when I was 29 and childless. I had wandered the city by myself for a week, eating cured meats and chunks of baguette in whatever park I found along in my daily adventures, content with my own company. Eleven years later, for the sake of my sanity, I pushed past the loneliness and told my husband to keep the kids home.

The next morning I set forth on my mission of self-rediscovery. I moved slowly, making sure to let this gift of time and solitude stretch like taffy. I didn't rush my shower. I took my time getting dressed before heading out to find iced coffee, perusing the shelves at a bookstore and bakery. At the hotel, I found an empty lounge chair by the pool and read a book, sipping the coffee for three hours. By the end of the day, I was truly content, no longer feeling like a balloon that had drifted away.

The success of my trip wasn't only getting to eat meals alone and sleep in, but also to remember who I am without the whirlwind of motherhood. Just me, alone, with nothing to do.

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