Solo female travel expert and founder of Be My Travel Muse, Kristin Addis, contributes regularly to this space. Because solo travel for women carries its own unique set of challenges, joys, and questions, we invited Kristin to share what she knows best. This week, she breaks down the excuses holding women back from seeing the world — and why none of them are as solid as they seem.
Time is a strange thing. It stretches endlessly when you’re bored, and vanishes entirely when you’re doing something that makes you feel alive. Whatever metaphor resonates with you — life as a fleeting spark, a handful of hours you didn’t earn but get to choose how to spend — one truth stays constant: waiting around for the “perfect moment” to travel is one of the most reliable ways to never go anywhere at all.
For women especially, the obstacles feel layered. You don’t just have logistics to sort out — you have an entire chorus of voices telling you it’s not safe, not smart, not the right season of your life. Those voices are loud. But here’s the thing: they don’t get quieter with age. They just find new material.
If solo female travel is something you genuinely want, the reasons to delay will follow you through every decade unless you decide to outrun them. Let’s talk about the most common ones — and why they don’t have to win.
“Shouldn’t you be settling down by now?”
This question tends to arrive wrapped in good intentions, usually from people who love you. The assumption buried inside it is that a passport full of stamps and a meaningful personal life are somehow competing ambitions.
They’re not.
Plenty of women travel the world — some of them indefinitely — and build rich, full lives in the process. Families explore together. Partners meet on the road. Some relationships don’t survive a wandering lifestyle, and yes, that stings. I’ve left behind people who mattered because something in me kept saying go. Do I know if those were the right calls? Not entirely. What I do know is that sitting somewhere beautiful, writing, feeling completely myself — that’s not nothing. That’s everything.
The right person, if they’re out there, won’t ask you to stop. They’ll want in.
“Isn’t solo travel for women… risky?”
Before my very first solo trip, someone forwarded me a news story about two young women who died abroad under frightening circumstances. The implication was clear: stay home.
What that message conveniently left out was that a mass shooting had just occurred in Colorado. Danger doesn’t have a passport. It’s not neatly contained overseas while home stays perfectly safe.
Eight-plus years of solo travel later, I’ve moved through dozens of countries without serious incident. That’s not luck — it’s awareness. Safe solo travel for women is absolutely achievable. It requires the same basic instincts you already use at home: trust your gut, research your destinations, choose accommodations with solid reputations, and stay alert. Start somewhere beginner-friendly for solo female travelers and build from there. You’ll find your rhythm quickly.
“But women aren’t really supposed to do things like this, are they?”
Society has a remarkably consistent set of expectations for women: be capable but not too ambitious, independent but not too independent, strong but still in need of protection. It’s an exhausting performance with constantly moving goalposts.
Here’s what I find fascinating, though: the women we actually celebrate in history — the ones taught in classrooms, written about in books, whose names we actually remember — almost universally ignored those rules. Harriet Tubman. Amelia Earhart. Rosa Parks. Susan B. Anthony. We admire them precisely because they looked at the expectations placed on them and chose something larger.
Traveling the world won’t put your name in a history book. But it might change the story you tell yourself about what you’re capable of. That matters.
“Can you actually afford to travel solo?”
For a long time, I assumed travel required either a large savings account or a retirement date. My week of vacation each year cost me north of $2,000 — Hawaii, Mexico, nice hotels, expensive food — and left me vaguely unsatisfied and immediately broke.
What I didn’t understand was geography. The same money that buys you a week in a tourist-heavy resort can fund a month of genuine exploration in Southeast Asia, Central America, or parts of Eastern Europe. Budget solo travel isn’t deprivation — it’s a different set of choices. Hostels instead of hotels, street food instead of restaurants, slower movement instead of rushing between highlights.
If you have a computer in front of you, a passport that opens doors, and any amount of disposable income — even a modest one — affordable solo travel is within your reach. The mental shift required is actually larger than the financial one.
“What if your family completely loses it?”
The toughest part of leaving isn’t booking the flight. It’s the conversation with the people who raised you. Parents worry because they love you, and love has always been a bit overprotective by nature.
But here’s a useful reframe: your parents didn’t raise you hoping you’d spend your adult years making decisions based on their fears. They raised you to be a person — a full, independent, self-directed one. That’s what you’re being when you choose to travel.
Do your research, share your itinerary, check in regularly. These gestures cost you nothing and ease a great deal of anxiety. And in the meantime, consider the alternative: a life of smaller choices made to avoid disappointing people who, more than anything, want you to be genuinely happy.
“Why not just wait until someone can come with you?”
Because that someone might never materialize. Not because no one cares, but because most people have jobs they won’t leave, commitments they can’t reschedule, finances that aren’t aligned, or timing that never lines up with yours.
The dream might be uniquely yours. And if you need someone else to make it real, you may wait forever.
I was deeply afraid of loneliness before my first solo trip. Within a few weeks, I was laughing at myself for ever worrying. Hostels are social by design. Travelers talk to each other constantly. Even shy people find that the road does most of the work — someone almost always starts the conversation. The loneliness fear evaporates remarkably fast once you’re actually out there.
Every obstacle looks largest when you’re standing directly in front of it. The fear of being alone, the cost, the family worry, the safety concerns — these are real, and they deserve real answers, not dismissal. But they all have solutions. Break them down into smaller pieces: start with a short trip somewhere well-traveled, set a savings goal, do your research until the fear becomes information.
Your life belongs to you. The coins are yours to spend however you choose. Don’t wait for a sign that the moment is finally right — that sign isn’t coming. The moment is now, imperfect as it is.
Go anyway.
Kristin Addis is a solo female travel writer and the voice behind Be My Travel Muse. After leaving a career in investment banking in 2012, she sold her belongings and set out to explore the world on her own terms. She has since visited every continent except Antarctica — which, she’ll tell you, is firmly on the list. Follow her adventures on Instagram and Facebook.
