5 Tips for Planning a Mystery Mom’s Weekend Away
Boost Friendship and Mental Health With A Mystery Mom’s Weekend Away
Ready to feed your sisterhood soul? Planning a mystery mom’s weekend away might just be the answer. If you are a free spirit, hippie soul, the inner you is probably doing cartwheels. If you are what the world would consider a “type A”, this may spark a bit of unease in your soul, with all the unknowns, but stick with me because this kind of vacation could be just what you need. I do this with two of my girlfriend groups: my local ride or die mom squad and my bestie childhood friends. So no matter where you live and where your girlfriends live, you can make this work and I’m going to show you how.
We need to spend time with our girlfriends! In today’s spinny, busy world, we are finding less and less time to connect. Our brains are wired to connect so that longing to get together with girlfriends, well that’s just biological brain wiring.
Need more to convince you to take a mom’s weekend away?
According to the Mayo Clinic, good friends are good for your health. Friends can help you celebrate good times and provide support during bad times. Friends prevent loneliness and give you a chance to offer needed companionship, too. Friends can also:
Increase your sense of belonging and purpose
Boost your happiness and reduce your stress
Improve your self-confidence and self-worth
Help you cope with traumas, such as divorce, serious illness, job loss or the death of a loved one
Encourage you to change or avoid unhealthy lifestyle habits, such as excessive drinking or lack of exercise
Friends also play a significant role in promoting overall health. Adults with strong social support have a reduced risk of many significant health problems, including depression, high blood pressure and an unhealthy body mass index (BMI). Studies have even found that older adults with a rich social life are likely to live longer than their peers with fewer connections.
But why a Mystery Mom’s Weekend Away? Well first, because they are fun. It’s like a birthday. Someone else is planning your trip for you (or you are the planner). Either way, it’s a fun surprise. Even if surprises aren’t your thing, give it a go. In each of my Mystery Girlfriend Groups, we have people who don’t typically like surprises, but every single one of them agrees that this surprise is beneficial in building a bit of trust and taking them just that smidge out of their comfort zone, which is good for growth. A key to doing these trips is going with a core group of trusted women. The number doesn’t matter but the quality does. You don’t want to plan a trip with women whom you casually know unless you are the free-spirit type who can totally go with whatever flow comes.
I’ve been doing these trips with my friends for more than 10 years and I suggest YOU get started making your own memories! Here are my tips to get you going.
1. Start Small and Smart
I am the first one to admit that I always have the theory of “the more, the merrier” however, the first time you plan a mystery mom’s weekend away, I would start with just a few girlfriends who are like-minded in your idea of #vacaygoals. Also, start small in distance. Don’t feel like you have to journey too far beyond your front door. We didn’t venture too far out of our comfort or emergency radius of return. We have slowly and naturally extended out in our adventure destination comfort level.
2. Set Expectations
People walk into vacations with different expectations. When we go on our mom’s weekend away, I really don’t care where we are going, I am just so happy that we are all together. I would do just about anything anywhere with these ladies. But we do all operate under some basic expectations including:
We do not sleep in tents. Some of our posse like camping. Others do not. So, although you may be taking us to an incredibly remote location to see unicorns...just have some hotel/house/Airbnb reservations in the evening. Cause we won't be sleeping on the forest floor, even with unicorns.
We step out of our comfort zones. You will be asked to step out of your comfort zone at some point, so be cool with that fact.
We accommodate each other. This could be eating habits, allergies, intolerances. We will make sure you feel included in our food choices. In exchange, you won’t come with a bad attitude if everything isn’t presented in a fine-dining style.
We take care of ourselves. The magical fairy who may follow you around at home is not invited on the trip, so you are to keep things semi-clean yourself. No one is waiting on you hand and foot. We are all moms, so we really don’t have that issue, but everyone is expected to haul luggage, carry groceries and be the navigational helper if needed at some point
We go with the flow. Not every little thing will be planned out, but there will be a sketch game plan of what to do and where to eat every day by the planner. The planner usually gives a rundown of the daily choices of events based upon the times the events are available. Generally, we all just go with the flow and don’t get too overly concerned if we don’t get to everything on the list. It is better for the planner to over plan and take things off the list than to under plan.
We give space. If you choose not to do something, but the rest of us want to do it, nobody cares. It’s each of our vacays so if two of us want to go workout, but one wants to sit and read until we get back, that is fine.
3. Set on Budget and Timeframe
Mom’s weekend away is best considered at least six months before the trip because the planner will need time to get things together and let’s face it, we all have a lot on our plates. Finding a date that works for is like finding a four-leaf clover in a unicorn’s rear end. I believe this is where a lot of girlfriends get hung up. They give up when the first couple of go-rounds don’t work out, but if you keep working on it, eventually you will all find your lucky unicorn date too.
We usually start picking dates a year out because that is the only way we can get something that works for all of us. We have nine kids plus husbands between us. Also, one of us has a business that revolves around a NASCAR schedule, so we have that to consider, too. (Something I honestly never thought I would say.) It’s tricky but not impossible. Once the date has been chosen, unless you are in the hospital giving birth, you are expected to be committed. The end.
We started with a budget of $300 each and have increased to about $600 in one group and have maintained $350 for the second group. The budget includes accommodations, food and events. We usually choose accommodations that include a kitchen so that we can bring groceries and have at least one meal (usually breakfast) in the room/house we are staying at.
We also have increased our time a bit in the $600/trip group. We used to do a strict Friday morning and come back Sunday afternoon, however, this last trip we left Thursday morning and came back Sunday evening. This enabled us to have all day Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
The journey is just a big a part of the trip as the destination. As a mom, some alone time in the car, train or plane and not having to entertain anybody is golden. This is a great time to reacquaint and get to the meat of our lives right away. Usually, your daily life prohibits you from really digging into your life story, so it takes a hot minute to rehash all that has been going on with kids, husbands, businesses, parents, in-laws, outlaws, feelings and feelings about feelings. After that we go into the serious stuff like who makes the best mascara, what vitamins we are all taking, best workouts, hair products, the newest massage type, acupuncture, what Reese Witherspoon is up to, how cool it would be to walk into Draper James and she just happens to be in there and she wants to join our girls trip because we are such a cool bunch of chicks...you know all the important stuff.
If you need more guidance on how to set a budget, what to account for, and how to estimate costs, check out: How to Budget for Travel | A Short Guide. It has some great tips, links and worksheets on how to plan a vacation budget.
4. Decide Who Plans the Weekend
There are several ways to do this. First, start how often are you going to go on your mom’s weekend away. With my best friend group of three, we go once every two years. With my local group of eight, we go once a year. For my three-girlfriend group, we just have one planner and we just rotate around.
For my eight-girlfriend group, we put names in a hat and pull out a pair of planners for each trip, which is probably wise when you are dealing with groups more than four so you are not putting too big a burden on one person.
You can also do it “queen for a day” style where everyone in your group picks the destination together, but then each person in the group is responsible for planning a day of the vacation. Personally, not knowing where you are going for me is key to the whole experience but I have talked to other women who like “queen for a day” so whatever floats your group’s boat.
5. Why You Should Look at This as Important, Not Frivolous
The most essential part of the mom’s weekend away trip is the reconnection and bonding time. That’s why it’s so vital for us to go away with our friends. Life is busy and we would have never gotten had the reconnection time because let’s face it; even when we visit each other, there are still things to do, and kid’s to interrupt conversations. I have never held an entire discussion about anything of substance when nine kids are running around.
Our brains need to be able to focus on just each other. Our neurons do cartwheels over the interesting, silly conversations that we don’t encounter in our everyday interactions at our homes with people we know sometimes better than we know ourselves. The fact that we have done these before and we know each other’s travel style only makes the ease that much more fluid. It seems to me that if the universe hands you people with whom your soul feels at ease, you should make it a priority to spend as much quality time with them as possible.
One of the benefits of the mystery aspect is that it forces you to rely on others and trust. It builds the social bonds our brains need. It connects you deeper because you don’t always have control of this mystery but it is a great reminder that we don’t always know what life is going to toss our way either (it’s a giant mystery) but that leaning on our friends will get us through those mysterious times of life every time. We need to remind ourselves of that often.
So we take turns and each plan a new trip and each time we go is more epic than the last - not because of where we go but because we are in the groove of reconnecting. We step out of our comfort zones and relax into who we are: silly, fun, smart, caring, kind, brave women. We reinforce each other and our friendship in knowing that we are important to each other and we will show up. We will show up in recognition of all we have been for each other in the past and all we will continue to be in the future, and we will do this by being present with each other in our mystery.
When I return home from my mystery mom’s weekend away, when the reality of the life wants to pull me back into the mix, I smile and feel encouraged that my soul feels fed, heard and connected to other amazing women. That is a fuel that will allow me to be the best mom, partner and overall human I can be.
When you get back and don’t want to fall back into old stress patterns, try this: