Minisode Ep.229 — Thoughts From My Thrive Solo Trip To Morocco

Because when I think about this trip now, a week and a half later, the thing I keep coming back to isn't necessarily Morocco itself.

It is the women I was there with.

There were five of us, one American woman, two Irish women and two English women, plus Ibrahim, our wonderful Moroccan guide, who had the unenviable task of spending 12 days travelling around Morocco with five single women who essentially never stopped bloody talking.

It was hilarious because on the bus, Ibrahim developed this thing where he would stand up in his seat at the front, make a giant T-shape with his hands and announce timeout, which basically meant, could you lot shut the fuck up for five minutes because I'm trying to tell you something about Morocco.

And then we would all dutifully stop talking while he told us about the history or culture or whatever we happened to be driving past.

And then approximately three seconds after he'd finished, off we go again.

And the five of us talked about everything.

Single life, work, AI, climate change, the Lindsay Clancy case, the state of the world, our favourite TV shows, things we'd been through, things we are going through.

And obviously there was plenty of absolute nonsense thrown in there as well, not to mention a lot of laughter.

And there was something about our conversations that I found incredibly nourishing.

And I've been thinking about why I felt more seen by those women in Morocco than I do by many of my friends who I've known for years.

I think part of it was simply that we were five single women.

There were no husbands on this trip, no partners, no kids.

And that meant nobody's attention was being pulled somewhere else all the time.

Nobody was disappearing off to check in with their other half.

Nobody's plans were being dictated by somebody else's mood or what somebody else wanted to do.

We were just there together.

Five women experiencing something together.

and because we were all single our conversations didn't automatically default to relationships either and more than that there were no conversations about dating which is so refreshing because let's face it often when you have a group of single women you end up talking about who you currently fancy or how dating's going etc etc but none of us had any interest in talking about any of those things which was just so so nice We talked about our lives.

We talked about things that really matter.

And I think that there is something really, really special about that.

Because when I think about this trip now, a week and a half later, the thing I keep coming back to isn't necessarily Morocco itself.

It is the women I was there with.

There were five of us, one American woman, two Irish women and two English women, plus Ibrahim, our wonderful Moroccan guide, who had the unenviable task of spending 12 days travelling around Morocco with five single women who essentially never stopped bloody talking.

It was hilarious because on the bus, Ibrahim developed this thing where he would stand up in his seat at the front, make a giant T-shape with his hands and announce timeout, which basically meant, could you lot shut the fuck up for five minutes because I'm trying to tell you something about Morocco.

And then we would all dutifully stop talking while he told us about the history or culture or whatever we happened to be driving past.

And then approximately three seconds after he'd finished, off we go again.

And the five of us talked about everything.

Single life, work, AI, climate change, the Lindsay Clancy case, the state of the world, our favourite TV shows, things we'd been through, things we are going through.

And obviously there was plenty of absolute nonsense thrown in there as well, not to mention a lot of laughter.

And there was something about our conversations that I found incredibly nourishing.

And I've been thinking about why I felt more seen by those women in Morocco than I do by many of my friends who I've known for years.

I think part of it was simply that we were five single women.

There were no husbands on this trip, no partners, no kids.

And that meant nobody's attention was being pulled somewhere else all the time.

Nobody was disappearing off to check in with their other half.

Nobody's plans were being dictated by somebody else's mood or what somebody else wanted to do.

We were just there together.

Five women experiencing something together.

and because we were all single our conversations didn't automatically default to relationships either and more than that there were no conversations about dating which is so refreshing because let's face it often when you have a group of single women you end up talking about who you currently fancy or how dating's going etc etc but none of us had any interest in talking about any of those things which was just so so nice We talked about our lives.

We talked about things that really matter.

And I think that there is something really, really special about that.