What if your doctor prescribed a holiday?

The Science of Why Women Need to Travel More

Let me ask you something. When was the last time you booked a trip – just for you?

Not a family holiday. Not a work conference. Not a trip you organised around everyone else’s school holidays, leave approvals and dietary requirements. A trip that was purely, unapologetically yours.

If you’re anything like the women I meet through the Travel Her Way community and group trips, your answer is probably – it’s been a while. Or maybe: I’ve never actually done that. Or – and this one breaks my heart a little – I wouldn’t even know where to start.

Here’s what I know for certain after years of working in this industry and talking to so many other travelling women – travel isn’t selfish. It’s essential and the best bit? Science is starting to back that up in ways that are almost impossible to ignore.

Sweden became the first country your doctor can prescribe travel

I know. Read that again. Visit Sweden, in partnership with senior professor Yvonne Forsell and a panel of international medical professionals, has launched The Swedish Prescription – a global initiative that makes Sweden the first country in the world that a doctor can literally write on a prescription pad and hand to a patient.

The initiative sees medical professionals ready to prescribe a stay in Sweden so patients can benefit from the country’s restorative experiences.

Why Sweden? Because Sweden’s unique way of life – rooted in balance and with easy access to both nature and culture – makes it an ideal place to reset your mind and body. Spending time in nature and engaging with culture are evidence-based ways to support both mental and physical health.

According to The Swedish Prescription, board-certified US paediatrician Dr. Stacy Beller Stryer put it plainly: “If a patient asked for ways to manage stress or improve wellbeing, I would support a prescription for Sweden. Its access to nature and related cultural practices align with what works for mental and physical health.”

Let that land for a moment. A doctor. A prescription pad. Your wellbeing. The medical community is now formally recognising what many of us have felt intuitively for years – that getting outside, immersing yourself in nature and breaking free from the relentless pace of everyday life is not a luxury. It is medicine. THIS, ladies, is literally music to my ears and I hope it is to yours, too!

So why do women still feel guilty about it?

I run adventure trips for women through Travel Her Way – group experiences designed for the women who are great at organising everyone else’s adventures but quietly shelving their own. The most common thing I hear when a woman is on the fence about booking? “It feels a bit selfish.”

She’ll tell me her kids need her. Her partner would have to manage things alone. She can’t justify the cost on herself. She should probably wait until things are less busy. She’ll go next year. Maybe the year after.

Then suddenly a decade has passed and the trip she always wanted to take is still just a thought she has at 11pm when the house is finally quiet.

I’m Erin Parker. I’m a Melbourne-based travel writer and adventure host and I’ve spent years creating spaces where women can say yes to themselves – sometimes for the very first time. The Travel Her Way community exists because I know how real that guilt is and I also know how transformative it is when a woman finally decides she’s worth the trip.

The science of saying yes to yourself

The Swedish Prescription gives us three evidence-based reasons that travel and time in nature are genuinely good for us. I’d argue they’re three reasons women, in particular, need to hear.

1. Nature eases stress (and you are probably carrying too much of it)

Sweden’s natural environment offers birdsong as the only sound that breaks the silence, wild swimming in lakes, feasting on nature’s generous pantry and falling asleep under a starry night sky, far from light pollution – all of which offer space to breathe, ease stress and boost energy.

Sound idyllic? It should. Because what’s being described here isn’t a spa treatment. It’s what happens when a human body – your body – is removed from constant stimulation and placed somewhere that asks nothing of it.

Research on the concept of positive awe – the profound sense of wonder we experience in the presence of something vast and beautiful – shows it measurably reduces cortisol levels and quiets the brain’s default mode network, the part responsible for rumination, self-criticism and anxious thought loops. The mountains don’t care about your inbox. The aurora doesn’t know you have a meeting at 9am. Nature simply is and in its presence, so are you.

The Science of Positive Awe and Why Travel Heals You

2. Balance is a radical act for women who are always “ON”

The Swedish concepts of fika and lagom – words rooted in a way of life that quietly champions balance – along with traditions like sauna bathing followed by cold dips, offer a model for everyday wellbeing. Lagom roughly translates to “just the right amount.” Not too much, not too little. Enough.

For women in their 30s, 40s and 50s who have spent years giving more than their share – in relationships, at work, at home – the concept of enough can feel almost revolutionary. You don’t have to earn rest. You don’t have to justify stillness. You are allowed to simply be, without producing, performing, or caretaking.

This is exactly what a well-designed adventure trip creates. Not a relentless itinerary. A rhythm. Time to move, time to rest, time to talk to other women around a fire, time to look up at the sky and remember who you are outside of your roles.

3. New experiences lift your mood – full stop

Culture on prescription – including museum visits and music experiences – has been a reality in Sweden for years, with cultural engagement proven to raise serotonin levels.

Whether it’s the raw energy of a new landscape, the disorientation of hearing a language you don’t speak, the simple act of eating something unfamiliar – novelty has a measurable effect on mood. It pulls us out of autopilot. It makes us feel alive in a way that our daily routines, however comfortable, simply cannot replicate.

For many of the women I have travelled with (or talk to who WANT to travel), that aliveness is something they haven’t felt in years.

Finnish Lapland and the permission to wonder

I want to tell you about Finnish Lapland because it is, without question, one of the most calming, nature-filled, peaceful places I have ever been.

I’m a Finnish Lapland Specialist – not just a title, but the result of years of deep love for this extraordinary corner of the world. I can’t fully put into words what being there makes me feel and how upon arrival I experience this immediate weight being lifted from my shoulders. It’s magical, extraordinary and I love it!

The Finnish have a concept called sisu – a kind of quiet, fierce resilience and something about Lapland seems to activate it in the people who visit. They arrive in Helsinki carrying the weight of lives that never seem to pause and somewhere between arrival and exploring deep in nature, they remember something about themselves that had been buried under years of being everything to everyone.

That is not a luxury. That is medicine.

The Swedish Prescription tells us nature heals. That stillness restores. That wonder lifts our spirits in measurable, biological ways. Finnish Lapland is simply nature at its most extreme and its most generous – a landscape that doesn’t just offer those things, it insists on them.

Learn more about Finnish Lapland!

The real cost of not going

We talk a lot about the cost of travel. The flights, the accommodation, the time off work. We rarely talk about the cost of not going.

The cost of another year passing without doing the thing you said you’d do. The cost of watching your world slowly contract to the same streets, the same screens, the same conversations. The cost of teaching the people around you – especially your children – that a woman’s needs always come last.

Nobody tells you that your friend group starts to shrink in your 40s. That the women you used to adventure with get busy, get partnered, get cautious. That if you don’t actively create space for joy and connection and challenge, life will quietly fill it with obligation instead.

I know this because I’ve lived it and I know it because I see it every single time a woman arrives in a new location with wide eyes and says, “I can’t believe I nearly didn’t come.”

Travel is self-care you can’t find in a bottle

The wellness industry will sell you supplements, skincare, meditation apps and morning routines and some of that is genuinely useful. But there is no product on the market that replicates what happens when you stand under the northern lights for the first time, or wanders through the towering redwoods on an autumn morning in the Yarra Valley, or reaches the top of a mountain pass in the Peruvian Andes and looks out across the world she just climbed.

Sweden’s doctors are now saying it formally – Go outside. Travel. Experience the world. It is good for you.

I’ve been saying it for years in a slightly different way – say yes to yourself.

Not because you’ve earned it. Not because the timing is finally perfect. Not because everyone else is sorted. But because you matter. Because your life is happening right now and because the version of you who goes on the trip – who chooses herself – comes home different. Better. More whole.

Ready to write your own prescription?

If you’ve been waiting for a sign, consider this it! The Travel Her Way community was built for exactly this moment – the moment before you decide. I run group adventure trips for Australian women designed around connection, wildness and genuine transformation.

Explore trips I have available now!

Travel isn’t selfish. It’s the most generous thing you can do – for yourself, and for everyone who loves you.