Grief and travel

After my dad died, travel did something nothing else could. Being somewhere new, unclaimed by memory, with room to feel what home kept interrupting. Not fixed. Not bypassed. Held. It changed enough in me that I eventually built Grief Trips around it.

But grief and travel tangle in more ways than retreats. There's the first holiday without them, where the poolside chair count is wrong all week. The return to a place you went together, where every corner files a report. The airport arrivals hall, grief's favourite ambush point. The view so beautiful it hurts, because the person you most want to send the photo to is the reason you're standing there.

These pieces are about all of it: travelling while grieving, travelling because of grief, and the small rituals that let you take them with you. If it's the retreats themselves you're weighing up, the practical guides live at grieftrips.com, where the trips do.

• Airports: travel's ambush pointsThe arrivals hall where they always stood, the departures gate of the last goodbye, the reunion hugs happening all around you: why airports hit grievers so hard, and how to pass through.
• Coming home: re-entry with griefThe trip helped, and then you land, and the house is exactly as sad as you left it. On the re-entry slump after grief travel, why it hits, and how to carry the trip's gains home.
• The family holiday with one person missingThe villa that sleeps one too many, the restaurant table set wrong, five people doing the trip six used to do: on family travel after a loss, and holidaying around the gap together.
• The first holiday without themThe booking made for the wrong number of people, the poolside chair count, the photos with a gap: on the first trip after a loss, and how the empty seat travels.
• Returning to a place you went togetherThe Douro Valley was the last place I travelled with my dad. On going back to the shared places: the café, the beach, the city that holds your history together, and when you're ready.
• Small rituals for travelling with griefThe postcard written to them, the toast at the viewpoint, the stone left at the summit, the ashes scattered somewhere they'd have loved: the small rituals that let you travel with your grief.
• Travelling alone while grievingThe solo trip after loss: chosen solitude or default loneliness, the dinner tables for one, the freedom to cry at any viewpoint: on travelling alone with grief, and doing it well.
• Taking the trip you always talked aboutThe safari you kept postponing, the country they always wanted to see: on taking the someday trip after they've died: as tribute, as promise kept, and as the someday lesson enacted.
• Travelling after loss: why somewhere new can hold what home can'tAfter my dad died, travel did something nothing else could. On why grief moves differently in new places: the unclaimed rooms, the permission of elsewhere, and travel as grief's companion.
• Enjoying a view they'll never see: travel guiltThe sunset that ambushes you, the reflex to send the photo, the joy that arrives with an invoice: on the specific guilt of travelling and enjoying it after a loss.
• Travelling with a piece of themThe photo in the passport sleeve, the ring worn for the flight, the watch at the summit: on the tokens grievers travel with, and how carrying a piece of them changes the trip.
• What is grief travel?Grief travel is one of the fastest-growing reasons people take a trip: journeys taken to process loss. What it is, the forms it takes, why it's rising, and how it differs from a wellness holiday.