Featured in Forbes: How Travel Can Help You Reclaim Joy During Life Transitions
By: Judy Koutsky
Published: January 15, 2026
I’m excited to share that I was recently quoted as a mental health expert in Forbes in an article exploring how travel can help us reconnect with joy during major life transitions.
In the article, journalist Judy Koutsky spoke with mental health professionals about the ways stepping outside of our usual environments can create space for reflection, restoration, and reconnecting with ourselves.
One concept I discussed was what I call the “vacation self.”
When we step away from our everyday routines, responsibilities, and familiar roles, we may notice that a different version of ourselves becomes easier to access—a version that feels more joyful, present, spontaneous, rested, and connected.
That shift isn’t necessarily because we have become a different person while we’re away.
Sometimes, we’re simply getting a little more distance from the expectations and responsibilities that can make it difficult to hear what we actually need.
Most of us move through everyday life carrying multiple roles at once: partner, parent, employee, business owner, sibling, caregiver, friend. When we’re constantly focused on what everyone else needs from us, it can become surprisingly difficult to identify our own wants, feelings, and desires.
Travel can create an opportunity to temporarily put some of those roles down.
That doesn’t mean a vacation magically resolves grief, trauma, anxiety, or a difficult life transition. But creating space to experience something different—to rest, explore, play, or simply pay attention to what feels good—can help us reconnect with parts of ourselves that may have been pushed aside.
For people navigating trauma recovery, this kind of reconnection can be especially meaningful. Healing isn’t only about understanding what happened to us or working through difficult experiences. It can also involve rediscovering safety, pleasure, connection, curiosity, and the parts of ourselves that may have become harder to access while we were surviving.
Transitions can bring those questions to the surface in unexpected ways. We may find ourselves wondering who we are outside of a familiar relationship, role, routine, or identity—or realizing that the person we are becoming doesn’t look quite like the person we thought we would be.
Travel doesn’t erase those challenges, but it can sometimes give us enough space to notice what has been missing and begin reconnecting with ourselves in a different way.
I’m grateful to have been included in this conversation about the relationship between travel, joy, identity, trauma recovery, and emotional healing.
Read the full Forbes article:
How Travel Can Help You Reclaim Joy During Life Transitions
Michelle Smith, LMHC, is a licensed mental health counselor and certified clinical hypnotherapist specializing in trauma recovery, anxiety, relationships, and life transitions.
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