The Trip We Almost Didn’t Tell Anyone About
HOW A WOMEN’S TRIP TO SONOMA OPENED UP WHAT CHILDFREE AND CHILDLESS WOMEN RARELY SAY OUT LOUD
WHAT’S LEFT UNSPOKEN & THE STORY IT TELLS
There was a moment on our first night in Sonoma that hasn’t left me since. Not because of what was said, but because of what wasn’t.
We had just arrived in town, everyone dropping their bags before gathering on a rooftop patio settling into the rhythm of the weekend over snacks and our first real conversation together. There was a mix of tenderness and curiosity that comes with bringing a group of women together in person for the first time.
At some point in the conversation someone asked:
“What did you tell people you were doing this weekend” and the answers that followed revealed something telling:
“I said I was just spending the weekend in Sonoma”
“I said I was going on a women’s retreat”
“I didn’t tell people anything”
They were vague. They were strategic, and in some cases, incomplete.
Sitting with this for a moment, I named something I suspect every woman at that table has carried in different ways for years:
The very thing that had brought us together —being women without children — was the thing no one spoke out loud.
THE THINGS WE EDIT
There is a specific kind of silence that isn't absence, it's protection. Most childless and childfree women have learned, over years of navigating a world that greets our lives with either pity, judgement or confusion, to curate what we share. We become fluent in the partial answers, and skilled at the art of redirection.
But the things we share, or what we omit, tells a much deeper story.
As the conversation unfolded, the group became curious together:
Why did it feel hard to tell our collegues, loved ones or friends, we’d come to Sonoma specifically because we are women without children, choosing to travel together and celebrate this facet of our lives?
Why did the very thing bringing us together seem like something to hide?
THE MOTHER DOUBLE STANDARD
At some point that evening, I asked another question to the group. Would we do this same withholding if we were mothers?
If we had traveled to Sonoma with a small group of women on a moms’ trip—a much-needed escape from the pressures of parenting—would we be vague about it? Would we leave out details, or offer only partial explanations about the goal of the weekend?
There was a collective and resounding answer: No
Motherhood is a kind of cultural currency. It buys immediate legibility that’s praised and easily understood. It’s something we see celebrated on t-shirts, named in casual conversations and shared proudly on social media posts.
And yet, for women without children, that same template doesn’t exist.
Instead, what many of us know is the feeling of telling someone we don't have children and being met with awkward silence — the slight turn of the head that signals pity, judgment, or an embarrassment that signals the other person doesn't quite know what to do with us:
So we stay safe.
We tell partial truths.
We protect ourselves preemptively.
For childfree and childless women, the evasion is an adaptive response to a world that hasn't yet made room for the full truth of who we are.
WHAT THE WORLD REFLECTS BACK
As our four days in Sonoma unfolded — touring a working ranch with a history stretching back generations, a cheese-making class that dissolved into laughter, and a biodynamic winery visit with a guide whose joy was genuinely contagious — we moved through the world as a group of women enjoying life AND living fully.
We lingered over chef-prepared meals. We had long and thoughtful conversations spanning the topics of our lives. We over learning to make cheese, as we sampled and stole on another’s special recipes.
And periodically, someone would ask: What are you all here for? What's the occasion?
Each time, a collective pause moved through the group. A moment of translation.
Do we say it?
Do we explain it?
Do we name out loud this notion we’ve been wrestling with all weekend?
So on one occasion, after being asked that same question by our instructor. I answered for the group: “We're on a women's trip celebrating that we're women who don't have children."
He paused for a long moment, looked quizzically and then responded: “Well, I’m sure you all make great aunties.”
His response said everything.
It gave voice to a world that doesn't quite know what to do with women who aren't mothers — so it reaches for the closest thing it can find. We are not mothers, so we must be adjacent to mothers.
The fun auntie
The devoted cat or dog mom
The care-taker to parents, siblings, partners
It reinforces that motherhood is the singular expression of womanhood, so without a child, the world struggles to define us.
THE STORIES WE INHERIT
One of the most unexpected moments of the weekend came during a spontaneous morning hike. Despite having spent countless weekends in Sonoma when I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, I’d never explored the foothills just outside of town.
As I wandered alone onto a trail lined with California oaks overlooking the Sonoma Valley, I stumbled across a historic cemetery; a burial ground dating back to the 1840s, when the area's first settlers arrived.
The first gravesite I came to stopped me dead (pun intended) in my tracks. The headstone, simple and stark, was marked with a single word in all capital letters:
M O T H E R
Image of gravesite
Dating back to the mid-1800s
I stood there for a long moment transfixed by what I’d just discovered.
This woman had lived an entire life. She had a name. She had a story, a set of things she’d loved. And yet, what her headstone communicated above all else (even her name) was that she’d borne children.
For centuries a woman’s place in the world has been defined by this role. And even today, we carry the vestige of this inherited story.
Not telling people why we had come together.
Hesitating each time someone asked why we were traveling together.
Editing our answers….It didn’t begin with us, nor does it belong fully to us.
We’ve absorbed an invisible story from a world that has rarely made space for women outside of motherhood. A story that shapes how others see us and, over time, it’s messages so deep and internalized, they’ve come to shape how we see ourselves.
Why Intentional Spaces for Childfree & Childless Women Matter
Women without children are one of the fastest-growing demographics in the United States, with more than 5.7 million women in childbearing age living without children, a number that’s nearly doubled since 2016. And yet, spaces intentionally designed to reflect our lives back to us remain rare.
This isn’t just about travel.
It’s about sitting at a table where no one asks the questions you’ve learned to brace for.
It’s about what becomes possible when you hear someone speak and recognize a feeling you’ve never quite had language for, but have carried with you for years.
It’s about not having to decide how much of your story to share, or how to frame it so it makes sense.
Every trip, every gathering, is designed to hold that. They are spaces to experience joy and savor simple pleasures as a physical way to celebrate our lives, while being in community together as we dismantle the things we’ve inherited:
The passed down through generations and over centuries 🏹 that a woman’s worth is tied to whether she becomes a mother.
We are certainly not the first generation to live full lives without children, but we may be the first (I hope) with enough language, enough visibility and enough community to begin burying that story.
What I witnessed over those four days in Sonoma was so many things I am still finding words for—beauty, nourishment, connection, depth—but underneath it all, something more fundamental was unfolding in our small group.
Women were experiencing what it feels like to belong without making themselves smaller.
Because something shifts when we stop editing who we are, and finally feel seen. That is why we’ll keep sharing these journeys together, and if you saw yourself in any piece of this story, there’s room for you too!
Interested in Traveling Together ✨
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