You don't have to be heartbroken to get it.

I absolutely love this story by contributor Kelly Westhoff! Maybe it’s because it reminds me of my own solo travels following a breakup. But it also illustrates how resilient we can be after the end of a love affair when we give ourselves a chance to disappear and heal.

My boyfriend of five years tossed me to the curb. This didn’t happen recently. It happened ten years ago. Nevertheless, the memory stings.

Five years is a lot to give a relationship when you are in your early twenties. I gave those years willingly, though, as I had thought that boyfriend and I would get married, adopt a dog, buy a house, have kids - all that picturesque, American dream sort of stuff.

When that didn’t happen, I fell into a slump. I suffered more than just the broken-hearted blues. I had crafted an entire idyllic future life around that relationship and its dissolution, for me at that time, meant the disappearance of a dream. If I wasn’t going to get married in the next year and become wifey-dearest, then who was I going to be?

The only thing that made sense, my only solution, was to completely reinvent my life. To do so, I ran away. I fled to Argentina, to its capital city of Buenos Aires, and got a job teaching English. I stayed for eight months and Buenos Aires soothed me. Actually, there’s nothing “soothing” about Buenos Aires. It’s a massive, crowded, noisy, bright and caffeinated city. Maybe it would be better if I said that Buenos Aires distracted me. It distracted me from my broken heart and shattered dreams long enough for them to heal.

Solo foreign travel is, perhaps, the best breakup remedy. There is, of course, the obvious fact that it takes you far away from your lost love; however, it holds other perks. A solo trip to a new land empowers you. Perhaps you will learn how to navigate an unknown subway system, or dine alone in a room full of people, or master a handful of foreign phrases.

Granted, any or all of these things might seem scary or daunting before you take off, but for many who are suffering the broken-hearted blues, the mere thought of living a life sans THE ex is equally terrifying. One way or another, you’re going to have to conquer some fears. You might as well get a passport stamp while doing so. Yet the best thing, I think, about traveling alone in another country is that you are forced to stay connected to the real world. You can’t zone out and drift off into your secret revenge plots and romantic reunion fantasies. You can not wallow. You have to pay attention. Suddenly, flushing the toilet is a serious adventure. Those foreign knobs just aren’t in the same place you’re used to finding a flusher. Wait. How much should a bottle of water really cost? Should you have left a tip for the waiter? What was the name of your hotel’s street again?

Solo foreign travel demands that you live in the moment. And it will prove to you that you can exist in a new land. And really, when you stop to think about it, that’s exactly what your life is after a breakup - new territory. So dig out that passport and go. You don’t have to go super long and you don’t have to go super far. But you should go. And I highly recommend going alone.

Kelly’s story also reminds me of Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Eat, Pray, Love” which I’m reading right now. It’s about one woman’s post-divorce re-awakening in three different countries over the course of a year.