Take the girls’ trip. Because vacationing with other moms? It’s basically magic.
Here’s how it usually goes.
We meet up in a city, check into a hotel, and immediately claim the beds as our own. Then we lay down. A lot.
Eventually, we get up to eat—but only after loosening every restrictive piece of clothing, taking off our bras, and sighing deeply. Then, almost inevitably, we lie down again.
By 8:30 p.m., we’re out cold. And by 7 a.m., we’re awake—not because we want to be, but because our kids have trained our internal clocks that way.
We don’t bat an eye if someone has to FaceTime their kids in the same room. In fact, we laugh when those kids inevitably argue over something trivial on screen, and we get the joy of hanging up the phone while letting our husbands handle the chaos.
We text each other memes, restaurant menus, and funny observations while lying side by side, sharing the simple pleasure of just being together.
We savor the little things: naps in the middle of the day, uninterrupted hot meals, and the absence of a chorus of tiny voices yelling, “Wipe my buuuuuttttt!!” from the next room.
We spend hours planning our next meal out, imagining ourselves looking glamorous for a couple of hours, only to return to the hotel and wash our faces, collapse in bed, and laugh at how quickly the effort disappears.
Sometimes we venture out—maybe a movie, maybe a play—immersing ourselves in the energy of the big city with all its amazing distractions. But most of the time, we just want to be with each other, laugh until our cheeks hurt, and crash because life at home never gives us a moment to truly rest.
We might ask, “Why am I so tired?” knowing full well the answer. It’s because our kids exhaust us in ways no one else can understand, and our brains rarely get a pause at home. So when we take this time away, kid-free, we crash. Hard. And the beauty of a girls’ trip is that mom friends get it.
So yes—go on that girls’ trip you’ve been talking about for years. Yes, planning it takes effort, and yes, coordinating everything is exhausting. But women need other women who understand them in ways only other moms do.
And the best part? You get to lay down. A lot.
