By the time I landed in Lagos, everyone else had already been there for a full day.
My visa came through late, I missed the original flight, and when I arrived I stepped into a family trip that had already started without me. They’d gone grocery shopping and everyone had selected their rooms. It was my first family trip with my dad, my stepmother and two of my sisters, and the whole point was to discover some of our ancestry and celebrate my stepmother’s birthday in a way that was enormous.
In the middle of all that family, colour, weather, traffic and celebration, two ordinary things stayed with me: an Uber grocery run with my sister, and one bottle of water I accidentally ordered on Chowdeck when I meant to order twelve.
Those two ordinary things showed me that my solo travel self came with me into a family trip. I already knew I could be independent on my own, and what surprised me was how that version of me showed up on the family trip.
In this episode:
- Landing after everyone else
- Family rhythm and old patterns
- The Uber grocery run
- One bottle instead of twelve
- Convenience and dependence
- Mine and ours together
“Choosing for myself did not pull me out of the trip. It made the trip feel like mine, as much as it was ever theirs.” (Damianne)
What happens when family has a long memory?
You step back into family and old rhythms appear quickly: who decides what, who gets asked first, who waits, who leads, who stays close.
That isn’t automatically bad, but it’s information. A family trip is built around the group, and this one especially was built around history and celebration. But underneath, I kept noticing the same question, which was whether something could be ours and still be mine.
I think it can, and for me mine sits inside ours.
Solo travel taught me that, because every trip alone has given me practice choosing for myself in dozens of small ways. I’ve had to decide where to go and how to get there, whether to ask for help, and whether to stay, leave or try again.
When you learn something, you carry those choices with you, even as you move on from the city where you built them.
What does independence look like when help is right there?
In Lagos, we had family nearby who knew how things worked, and it made sense to lean on that. We’d also been warned to be careful, to take Ubers and to not go wandering off on our own, so for most of the trip I stayed inside that safety net with everyone else.
There was one exception. My sister and I needed groceries, and instead of waiting for someone to arrange it, I decided we’d order an Uber.
It was hot, the kind of heat that sits on you as soon as you step outside. The car was old and worn in a way that reminded me of some of my earliest trips in Sudan. An old version of me showed up in the back of that car, the one who knew how to figure out an unfamiliar place from scratch.
When does convenience become dependence?
The other moment happened alone in my room. I didn’t want to repeat the grocery run, and I knew some people on that trip would have sent a driver or asked someone else to handle it, which would have been easier.
I wanted to know how it worked, so I opened Chowdeck and started tapping through menus, figuring out delivery zones and payment. At one point, I meant to order a case of twelve bottles of water and ordered one bottle instead.
Nobody was harmed by this, and it was just one bottle. I already knew I could survive alone, and what I saw was that even surrounded by family, with people nearby who would have solved this in thirty seconds, I still reached for the version where I solved it myself.
Convenience and dependence can look almost identical from the inside. I tell the difference by paying attention to the moment when I have a real choice. If someone else could easily absorb the friction and I don’t actually need them to, what do I do?
What comes home from solo travel?
Psychologists call part of this self-efficacy, the belief that you can act effectively and produce the outcome you’re after. The strongest way to build it is direct proof: you do the thing, and your body gets the receipt.
I think that proof transfers, and a small decision in Lagos uses the same muscle as a small decision at home. The setting changes from the delivery app to the kitchen table, and from the family trip to the solo trip, but the reaching is the same.
That’s why the trip felt both ours and mine. Choosing for myself made me more present inside the family experience.
If this is the part that interests you, the episode with Kristine Madera on making micro-tribes while traveling is a good companion. So is The Decisions That Build a Solo Traveler Aren’t the Big Ones, because that’s the practice underneath all of this.
Your invitation for this week
Think about the last time you let the easier version take over instead of yours. I mean an ordinary moment where you handed something off that you could have kept for yourself, not a big failure.
This week, when you’re with people who are used to a certain version of you, do one thing that’s yours. You could order for yourself instead of going along with the table, take the walk alone instead of waiting for company, or figure something out instead of handing it to the person who usually handles it.
It doesn’t need to be big, and nobody else needs to notice.
Join community
If you want support becoming the woman who keeps choosing herself in real life, and on more than one brave weekend, come into the community. That’s where we practise the small choices that make the bigger ones possible.
The community on Skool is a supportive space where you can build momentum, get clarity and start choosing yourself again.