The liberating power of solo travel and microfreedoms

+ Where your glimmers at?

The Midst

Apr 27, 2025

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The liberating power of solo travel and “microfreedoms”

By Liz Jones-Dilworth

Ordering takeout from a place your spouse doesn’t like, while they’re asleep. Going to an ice cream shop during the workday by yourself. Arriving home 45 minutes before the nanny leaves and sitting in your bedroom staring out the window. These small acts, and others like them, would not have impressed me in my twenties, but feel gloriously luxurious now — so much so that my friend Harpreet and I coined the term “microfreedoms” to describe the concept.

This spring, as I anticipated a solo vacation, I kept returning to the idea of microfreedoms again and again. For the past few years, my husband Josh and I each have tried to take some time alone. He started the tradition, spending a few days in Marfa, Texas, which is a six- or seven-hour drive from our house in Austin. It was so restorative for him that he encouraged me to do the same. To us, these retreats feel like a necessary piece in the formula of making our marriage and owning a business together work.

For my first solo trip, in early 2019, I took a short drive to the Texas Hill Country, seeking quiet. My most vivid memory of the weekend? My grim determination to uncover some insights about how to feel happier and more fulfilled: doing exercises from a self-help workbook, taking personality tests, running, meditating. In 2020, during the early pandemic, I tried a staycation. While in many ways it was relaxing to have no plans while the rest of my family did their normal routines, the responsibilities of life intruded. I did spend plenty of time reading and napping, but I also cleaned out my closet and organized keepsakes, which were not rejuvenating activities for me.

By my third try, in April 2022, I had figured some things out.

As a mother, wife, daughter, friend, and owner of a business with 30 employees, the majority of my time is spent thinking about and serving others’ needs. I like that about my life; I like that there’s a big variety of people to love in different ways. What’s frustrating is how difficult I find understanding my own desires. (And communicating them, if I know what they are, is a whole other challenge.) Even when I was alone for a few days, a strong internal voice kept telling me what I should be doing to justify the extravagance of time on my own.

For me, embracing microfreedoms also meant finally understanding that I needed a break from obligations and feeling pulled between the competing shoulds in my head — between work and sleep, or my children and my parents. More than anything else, I wanted the should voice to take a break.

When I tried to imagine where I might go, I kept picturing somewhere green. Nowhere close to Austin felt green enough, and finally I decided to fly to the Pacific Northwest. Researching day trips from Seattle, I found Whidbey Island, which online travel sites described as having some of Washington’s best state parks, as well as promising-looking restaurants and the possibility of seeing an orca from its shores.

Leading up to the departure date, I mentally prepared for how I’d exercise microfreedoms on the trip. I bought a ticket to ride a whale-watching boat and booked a few dinner reservations. When worries popped up about whether I’d made the best choices, I reminded myself that my only real goal was to follow my inclinations. I made a pact with myself that I could bail on any of my booked plans and do whatever felt enticing in the moment.

Glimmers: Why you need these small moments of joy in your mental health toolbox

Daily activities and experiences that shift our moods don't always have to be big and splashy. Search for the smaller, shiny things to keep you in the flow

By Victoria Stokes

Have you ever stopped to notice a rainbow and felt instantly calmer? Or felt overcome with awe when acknowledging the twinkling lights on a Christmas tree? Perhaps you got a whiff of salty sea air and, for a few seconds, you felt like everything was right in the world.

If you can relate, then chances are you’ve experienced a glimmer. This sunny term describes those magical micro-moments of unadulterated happiness that spark joy and invoke a feeling of calm.

Kelly Weekers, psychologist and 3x best-selling author of Happy Life 365, The Power of Choice, and Choosing Me says that unlike their opposite — triggers — glimmers activate feelings of safety, love, and joy, and can put us into a wonderful frame of mind.

Glimmers aren’t anything new. They were first introduced in 2018 by licensed clinical social worker Deb Dana in her book The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy: Engaging the Rhythm of Regulation, and popularized in a viral TikTok video in 2022 by psychologist Dr. Justine Grosso.

@heydrjustine Glimmers✨ are the opposite of triggers. #AVrboForTogether #SoFiBreakUpChallenge #AlaskaAirCAREoke #anxietyrelief #nervoussystem #traumahealing

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Since then, the #glimmers hashtag has racked up more than 12 million views, with many social media users espousing the profound impact that small moments — like a beautiful sunset, a warm hug from a friend, or a smile from a stranger — have had on their mental health.

So, just how useful are glimmers for our mental health and how can you get better at seeking them out?

It would be easy to dismiss glimmers, to suggest that in the great picture of our lives, they are too brief and insignificant to really have an impact on something as complex as our mental health. But though they are but fleeting, they are mighty.

“Contrary to triggers that activate the sympathetic nervous system and our fight or flight stress response, glimmers activate the parasympathetic nervous system — associated with relaxation and calm,” Weekers explains.