Sometimes the Best Gift Is Time Alone

New York Times

13-02-2025

I had been looking forward to this all day.
As the masseuse began my head massage, I took a deep breath and chuckled inwardly about the awkward positions I'd gotten myself into earlier during a one-on-one aerial yoga class. That had come after a six-mile walking tour across the city, visiting churches, hidden garden courtyards and paying homage to Pasquino, one of the Eternal City's ancient talking statues where Romans to this day leave notes with comments on societal and political issues.
This massage was the last treatment of my four-day spa trip to the Italian capital, and I was rejuvenated to head home and resume the glorious chaos of my London life.
It was my 87-year-old mother, on an extended visit, who had observed that I needed to slow down. She watched as I tried to balance the busy social life of my energetic 7-year-old twins, volunteered at their school, accepted various work commissions, prepared edits for a new book I had coming out, and helped run a small but very active grass-roots advocacy organization in my home state of Michigan. She could tell that her divorced daughter was tapped out.
So, I decided to give myself the gift of 'me' time.
It was an opportunity for a reboot, doing things that I loved — shopping, spa treatments, sightseeing — with no agenda and the freedom to choose whether I wanted to interact with anyone.
Turns out, I am not the only one who, like Greta Garbo in 'Grand Hotel,' wanted 'to be alone.' This desire to find solitude, whether by attending an ayurvedic retreat in Bali or going solo to a museum in Brussels, often comes about because we have too many demands of our time, said Thuy-vy Nguyen, an associate professor in psychology at the University of Durham in England who is the principal investigator at the Solitude Lab, which researches the effects of being alone.
'We do need balance and equilibrium,' Dr. Nguyen said. 'When we have too much going on, we usually describe that as stress, feeling overwhelmed. And solitude is usually just a convenient space for that, because that's the time where you don't have social feedback, and some people really need to just get away and be on their own.'
Just as Henry David Thoreau found solitude near Walden Pond in the 19th century, my friend Ewa Switek, a mother of two teenagers in Warsaw, has learned the joys of 'me' time. She has traveled across Europe many times by herself and last year, on a solo trip, she discovered that she loves mountain trekking. Her goal now is to climb all 28 peaks of the Crown of Polish Mountains (Korona Gor Polski), mostly on her own. So far, she has conquered 18.
'From time to time, you have had enough of everything,' she said. 'You can spend your time without any plan or strictly with a plan, but it's your plan, not anyone else's.'
And there are a lot of options for doing something on your own, whether by traveling across an ocean or going out alone to a film or a local restaurant. It's just about having some time to escape from your madding crowd.
If you, like Ewa, find that communing with nature helps, the Gutsy Girls, a British adventure travel company founded by a woman, has four hiking trips at different skill levels scheduled to take place in Norway this summer, with yoga, sauna and outdoor swimming as part of the package (£1,125 or $1,430, which includes accommodation and food). They are group trips, but welcome people who come on their own.
Or a trip to the Namib Desert in Namibia might do the trick. While staying at Kulala Desert Lodge (starting at about $348 per night), you could take advantage of the lodge's offerings, by going on a guided hike through the 1,000-foot-high dunes, cycling along the plains on an electric fat-tire bike or taking a balloon trip over the landscape that seems to stretch to eternity, truly getting away from it all.
For creative types, there are numerous retreats to get the artistic juices flowing. New this year is a 10-day writing retreat to Mongolia through Himalayan Writing Retreat in June ($4,400; travel not included; participants selected on application).
After two days of sightseeing in Ulaanbaatar, wordsmiths head to Kharkhorin, the town that was the Mongol Empire's capital in the 13th century, where the retreat truly begins.
'People want to escape their everyday sameness and seek inspiration and creative stimulation,' Chetan Mahajan, the co-founder of Himalayan Writing Retreat, wrote in an email. 'Most participants come alone. Given the goal of focusing on the important work one is pursuing, and improving the craft, participants usually don't want the distraction of a fellow traveler.' Mr. Mahajan and the writer Erika Krouse will lead the retreat.
If self-reflection comes better through a piece of clay, La Meridiana in Tuscany offers classes all year long, including a weeklong hand building course (€1,700 [$1,770] tuition) in March and a course on creating contemporary porcelain jewelry (€1,900 tuition) with Luca Tripaldi, a sculptor, in July.
Finding inner peace and meditation in a countryside setting is what the Sharpham Trust, in the English county of Devon, offers throughout the year with its three-day retreats. Through guided meditation, periods of silence and walks through the trust's Capability Brown-designed parkland, the sessions would be an opportunity to start learning how to ground yourself or a chance to brush up your skills (prices start at £395 for single occupancy, which includes room and board).
Or if doing diet and detox as part of your yoga experience sounds ideal, the Dharana retreat in India's Maharashtra state offers a five, seven or 14-day Art of Detox program that includes cupping, an infrared detoxifying sauna and a consultation with a nutrition expert, as well as all meals (starting at $850 a night).
Of course there also are lots of less expensive options that don't require long-distance travel, such as a massage or a night at the movies, a concert or the theater.
Kevin O'Neill of Ann Arbor, Mich., the father of 3-year-old identical triplet girls, recently did that, driving 40 minutes into Detroit for an evening of sushi and a musical. 'It was empowering,' he said.
Since his solo night out, he and his husband have talked about trying to carve out more time for each of them, and as a couple.
'It makes you a better parent,' he said, 'it lets me come back to them and be fully charged again.'