Why women are so exhausted, and why a trip might be part of the answer
A note from a luxury travel advisor who runs women-only group tours, written after a talk on the invisible load.
I went to a talk recently about why women are so tired
Not the kind of tired that a good night of sleep fixes. The kind that lives in your nervous system. The kind you cannot quite name, but you feel it the moment you sit down at the end of the day and realize you have not actually exhaled since six in the morning.
Photo©: Anya Day Photography
Lisa Pisano, LAC, a psychotherapist at A Work of Heart Counseling in Oradell, NJ, walked us through what we already knew but rarely say out loud. We are absorbing more information in a single morning than our grandmothers absorbed in a year. We are the default parent, the default planner, the default everything, even when our partners are loving and present. We are running the operation of our families on top of running our actual jobs. And whether we grew up in a household where you did not air your business, or a household where work was the only acceptable answer to anything that hurt, we learned early that the thing to do with exhaustion was push it down and keep going.
I sat there nodding along with women I have known for years. And I kept thinking about the women who come on my trips.
What is actually happening to us
What Lisa explained, with words I am borrowing because she said it better than I could: our nervous systems were not built for this.
Photo©: Anya Day Photography
The constant news cycle. The phones in our hands from the moment we wake up. The group texts and the work emails and the emotional reach of a hundred people we used to know who are now characters on a screen we cannot stop scrolling. Add to that the invisible labor of holding a household together, even when we have help. Add to that the cultural message that rest is something you have to earn, that you can keep going if you just try harder, that other women are doing it so why can’t you. Add to that whatever each of us is also carrying privately, the things we do not say out loud at the cafe.
It is too much. And the tired we feel is not personal. It is a mismatch between the lives we are leading and the systems we evolved to live them with.
What I have watched happen
I run small group tours for women in places like Puglia, Barcelona and the Costa Brava, the Scottish Highlands, Venice, the Dolomites and Lake Garda. The women who come are sometimes solo travelers. Sometimes they are friends booking together. Sometimes they are mothers who have not been alone in a hotel room in years. Sometimes they are women in a hard season, and sometimes they are women in a good season who simply want to feel like themselves again.
Photo©: Olegana Travel Boutique
What happens on these trips is hard to describe in a marketing voice, so I won’t try. But I will tell you what I have seen.
Women arrive and apologize for being tired. By the third day, they are sleeping through the night for the first time in months. By the fifth day, they are laughing in a way they cannot remember laughing in their regular lives. By the end of the week, more than once, someone has cried at lunch, not because anything is wrong, but because their nervous system has finally come down low enough that the feelings stored there can move.
I think this happens because the ingredients of these trips are, almost accidentally, the same ingredients a thoughtful therapist would tell you to look for. Slow mornings. Real food eaten with people who are not asking anything of you. Walks. Time outside. Conversations that go somewhere. Someone else handling the logistics. A break from the phone. A break from being the person who decides what is for dinner.
There is also something specific that happens when women travel with other women. The nervous system gets a signal that has been hard to come by lately, which is: I am safe here, and nobody needs anything from me right now.
What restoration actually looks like
The phrase restorative travel gets used a lot and means almost nothing. So I want to give you a feel for what a day actually looks like. Here is the architecture of a typical day on one of these trips.
Photo©: Olegana Travel Boutique
You wake up. Breakfast is downstairs, and it is real food, the kind that takes two hours if you let it. There is no agenda before nine.
Around mid-morning, we walk through a town with someone who lives there and has stories. You can hang back and stay quiet if your nervous system needs that. Nobody will ask you to perform being more cheerful than you feel.
Lunch is long. There is wine if you want it, water if you do not.
In the afternoon, there is something gentle on the schedule. Never the kind of activity that drains you. It might be a boat along a stretch of coast, watching the light move on the water. It might be a pasta making lesson with a woman who has been doing it by hand since she was twelve. It might be a clay class, where you spend two quiet hours with your hands in something soft. It might be a folk dance performance in a small piazza. The kind of thing that asks something gentle of your hands and gives your mind permission to put everything else down. You participate. You do not perform.
Dinner is together, with the women on the trip and a local host, and it goes late, and it is the easiest dinner you have had in a year because someone else cooked it and someone else will clean it.
That is it. That is the whole thing. The restoration is not in any one moment, it is in the shape of the day.
Who comes on these trips
Photo©: Olegana Travel Boutique
The women who come are different from each other in almost every way. Some are in their forties. Some are in their seventies. Some are happily married. Some are recently divorced. Some are caring for parents. Some are recovering from a year that was harder than any year they had had before. Some have traveled the world. Some have not been on a plane since the pandemic.
What they share is this: they were ready to put themselves on the calendar for once. The waiting until things slow down at work, until the kids are older, until the project is finished, until you feel like you have earned it. The waiting is part of the problem.
If you have read this far, you probably already know if this is for you.
Where we go in 2026 and 2027
The trips on the calendar right now are in places chosen because they work for restoration, not because they photograph well. Each one has its own pace and its own character. I am happy to walk you through which one might be the right fit.
Puglia, Italy foodie trips: October 2026, April 2027, October 2027
Photo©: Olegana Travel Boutique
Hidden Scotland, summer 2027
Photo©: Olegana Travel Boutique
Castles and Gardens of the UK, spring 2027
Photo©: Olegana Travel Boutique
Why work with a travel advisor for a trip like this
This is the part where I would normally make the case for working with an advisor. For this kind of trip, the answer is simpler than usual.
Photo©: Anya Day Photography
The whole point is that you are not the one carrying the plan.
You hand the plan to someone who has already done the worrying. You show up with your suitcase and the rest is handled. Logistics, suppliers, restaurants, the moments that matter, the small contingencies you do not even know about, the local hosts who know you are coming. Off your plate.
If the invisible load is the problem, then handing one entire week of it to someone else is, quite literally, the answer.
Anna Fishman, the visionary and soulful force behind Olegana Travel Boutique, orchestrates transformative journeys where meticulously curated adventures meet authentic connection and exquisite, bespoke exploration.
Based in Ridgewood, NJ, serving clients worldwide.
If you are exhausted in a way that rest alone has not fixed, maybe what you need is space.
Space to breathe deeply, sleep fully, eat slowly, and remember who you are outside of the endless demands of daily life. Our women-only journeys through Italy, Spain, Scotland, and beyond are designed to feel restorative, beautiful, and easy in the way modern life rarely is.
Grab a time on my calendar for a free consultation here!
Questions women actually ask me
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Most of the women who come on these trips have not done a group tour before. The groups are small. The pace is gentle. The activities on the schedule are chosen to restore you, not drain you, and there is breathing room woven through every day. You will never feel marched from one thing to the next.
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It is the most common way women come on these trips. You will not be the only solo traveler, and you will not feel like the odd one out.
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That is exactly the case for letting me plan it. A short call will give you a clear sense of which trip might fit, and you can decide from there with no pressure.
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Each trip is priced individually based on the destination, the season, and what is included. Specific numbers are shared on a first call, once we have talked through which trip is the right one for you.
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No. They are a vacation, designed thoughtfully. They are not a substitute for working with a therapist or anyone else qualified to help with mental health. If you are going through something heavy, please make sure you have proper support in place. The trip can be one piece of a larger picture.
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The 2026 trips are filling now. The 2027 trips are open and tend to sell out six to nine months in advance. If a trip is already sold out by the time you reach the page, there is usually a waitlist for the following year.
With thanks
This post was written after the Bergen County Professional Women’s Network’s May First Friday Luncheon, where Lisa D. Pisano, MS, MEd, LAC, NCC, staff psychotherapist at A Work of Heart Counseling in Oradell, New Jersey, gave a talk titled “Making Mental Health a Priority for Busy (and Exhausted) Women.” The framing of nervous system exhaustion, the invisible load, and the cultural pressures that make rest feel earned rather than essential, all come from her work. Any clumsy phrasing in this post is mine. The wisdom is hers.
If you are looking for support, Lisa and her colleagues can be reached through A Work of Heart Counseling in Oradell and Allendale, NJ.