There’s this meme I keep seeing online: “Casually suggesting a trip with me is dangerous. You’ve got about two minutes to clarify if you’re joking because I’m already looking at flights.”
I’m sure I keep seeing it because it’s me.
Some women talk about taking a girls’ trip someday. I treat them like recurring calendar appointments.
And the best part? Once you’ve pulled off one girls’ trip, planning the next one gets a whole lot easier.
Ask my friend Amanda. This year will be year four of “Amanda x2 Trip.”
The first time Amanda and I traveled together, it was under the guise of a “writing retreat.” AKA we both brought our laptops and writing projects to an all-inclusive resort in Punta Cana for a long weekend.
To be fair, Amanda is a published author and used the weekend to finish a novel.
I was finalizing a draft of my own (currently unpublished) novel and, because I’m crazy—or old school—I printed the entire thing and schlepped it around in a giant binder so I could make edits by hand with my trusty red pen.
And no, the binder never slipped into the pool. I promise.
Amanda and I still write and/or edit on our annual girls’ trips.
The last one was a trip to Barcelona and Mallorca. While it poured outside our hotel room in Mallorca, I wrote at least one Substack essay. Amanda, meanwhile, taught herself the “Fate of Ophelia” dance.
In her defense, Life of a Showgirl had just dropped the week before.
Honestly, that may be the only time I’ve ever been the “serious writer friend” in this relationship. Amanda is usually the responsible one. I’m usually the bad influence.
And by bad influence, I mean our girls’ trips are full of great stories and maybe some questionable decisions.
We stay up too late. We eat too much. We spend money. (I’m good at finding a travel deal, but we still spend money.) I have been known to drink a bit. Amanda doesn’t drink, but she can absolutely hang. We've been known to end up in conversations, dance floors, and situations that were never part of the original itinerary.
But I don’t treat these trips as a break from reality. They are part of my reality. Something that’s important to me, so I make room for it.
For a few days, I’m not someone’s wife, someone’s mom, or someone’s ride to dance practice.
I’m just me.
And honestly, I think that’s part of why the trips matter so much.
Amanda and I live in different states. Between kids, schedules, responsibilities, and everything else that comes with adulthood, there is always something competing for our time.
The easy thing would be to stay in touch through text messages and Instagram likes.
That’s not enough for me.
The stories and memories are what sustain the friendship between trips. Especially for a friendship like the one Amanda and I have, where we don’t live near each other anymore. We might only see each other once or twice a year.
A few days together in a foreign country gives us another year of shared references, inside jokes, and stories to revisit. It’s relationship maintenance disguised as a vacation.
And these trips aren’t necessarily easy to pull off. Coordinating schedules alone feels like a military operation. Then there’s picking a destination, booking flights, finding a hotel, and convincing everyone involved that yes, this is actually happening.
Luckily, Amanda mostly lets me plan, which is another reason we’ve made it to year four.
The logistics are annoying. The trip is worth it.
To be clear, not every girls’ trip needs a passport. Some of my friends do annual weekends at a lake house a few hours away. Some rent an Airbnb and never leave it. The destination matters a lot less than making the time.
When this essay drops, I’ll be about to start a girls’ trip with another friend, Caroline—our very first one together.
We’re doing a quick weekend cruise out of Florida to Key West and the Bahamas. It was relatively affordable, and the short duration made it easier to fit into our schedules.
I’m very confident we’re going to come home with some amazing stories. And almost definitely a few questionable decisions.
At this stage of life, nobody is handing us free time. Nobody is creating these moments for us. If I want the friendship, the memories, the stories, the version of myself who still says yes to adventures, I have to create them myself.
That’s why girls’ trips are a non-negotiable.
Not because I need a break from my life.
Because they are part of my life.
And they are absolutely worth building around.
As someone who has absolutely been known to turn a casual “we should go somewhere sometime” into actual travel plans, I felt this in my soul! I love the reminder that friendship doesn’t sustain itself on good intentions alone—it grows through shared experiences, inside jokes, and the deliberate choice to keep showing up for each other.
I get together with three friends every spring, and we've hired the same self-catering house for five years running! It removes all decision fatigue, and we just rotate the bedrooms each year so we all get a turn in the nicest ones. We alternate who brings dinners, breakfasts and lunches, and because we all did a Masters in Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes, we each run a writing activity for the four of us during the weekend. It is a wonderful tonic, and we all look forward to it and protect it fiercely, despite busy lives. Time spent together in person is so important, isn't it.