The Beach Blanket Breakdown: When the Baggage You Unpack Isn’t in Your Suitcase

Author’s Note: While on vacation in Roatan (in the Bay Islands of Honduras), I was snorkeling and inspired to write a blog series called “Saltwater Musings” – a tropical take on love, loss, healing, and the courage to dive deeper…written in the style of the character Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City and in collaboration with AI. It was a fun project that got me thinking creatively while still supporting women who are going through divorce, loss, and rebirth. This blog, The Beach Blanket Breakdown: When the Baggage You Unpack Isn’t in Your Suitcase, is the third in the series. I hope this series inspires other women to plunge into the unknown to find something beautiful. 

Vacations are supposed to be an escape.

A getaway. A break from the buzzing of life’s demands. A time to sip something with a tiny umbrella and pretend, for just a few days, that your inbox doesn’t exist and your past didn’t pack itself in your carry-on.

But somewhere between ordering a beachside mojito and reapplying sunscreen, I realized something:

I didn’t just bring bathing suits and sandals to Roatan.
I brought baggage—and not the designer kind.

Room for One? And My Emotional Luggage?

The thing no one tells you when you go somewhere remote and beautiful and quiet is this: when you finally step away from your everyday distractions, you meet yourself. Not the curated version with the carefully crafted replies and calendar full of commitments. The real, raw, unfiltered version of you—the one you’ve been politely ignoring in between Target runs and text messages.

And sometimes, she’s not okay.

On day three of our trip, I found myself lying on a beach blanket, staring up at the cloudless sky, completely unbothered by the iguana that had just wandered a little too close to my toes. What did bother me, though, was the realization that I felt… hollow.

Not relaxed. Not blissful. Just… cracked open.

It was like all the feelings I had shoved down for the past six months had hitched a ride in my checked luggage and burst open on the sand like a bottle of sunscreen that forgot to close.

The Stillness is the Trigger

I’m not used to stillness.

Back home, I stay busy—hyper-functioning, task-mastering, calendar-color-coding busy. If productivity were an Olympic sport, I’d have a shelf of gold medals and a branded planner line. I fill every pocket of time with movement. Doing things. Planning things. Fixing things. Avoiding things.

So lying still under a palm tree with nowhere to be? No one to email? Nothing to manage?

Cue the existential spiral.

Crying in Public (With Sunglasses On)

I didn’t mean to cry on the beach. I was actually aiming for a cute sunbathing moment. But there I was—head on a rolled-up towel, surrounded by strangers, oversized sunglasses doing the Lord’s work—as I felt tears start to slide down my temples and into my ears.

Not a full-body sob this time. More of a quiet leak. Like my emotional pipes had sprung a slow, salty drip.

I wanted to scream at myself, You’re on a tropical island! Pull it together!

But I didn’t. I let it happen. Because maybe part of healing is letting yourself fall apart in beautiful places.

Maybe breakdowns don’t just belong in bathroom stalls and late-night car rides. Maybe they belong on beach blankets too.

The Myth of the Vacation Fix

We have this fantasy that a vacation will fix us.

That a week in the sun will melt away the heaviness we carry. That if we just unplug long enough, we’ll come back recharged, refreshed, reborn.

But healing doesn’t follow our travel itinerary. Emotional clarity doesn’t punch in and out like a poolside server.

In fact, vacations can do the opposite—they strip away all the things we use to distract ourselves. The busyness. The stress. The drama. What’s left is you, in a swimsuit, with your thoughts.

And sometimes, your thoughts are like that one guy who keeps asking if you want to rent a jet ski—relentless, annoying, and completely unavoidable.

Things I Didn’t Expect to Think About on Vacation

• That conversation I had with my ex that I pretended didn’t hurt.

• The way I’ve been downplaying my dreams so I don’t seem “too much.”

• Why I feel guilty for wanting more out of life than just being “fine.”

• The fact that I can’t remember the last time I felt excited about something… or someone.

They all showed up. One after another. Lounging beside me on that beach blanket like emotional ghosts wearing SPF 30.

I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t plan for this.

But maybe that’s the point.

Emotional Baggage Claim

I’ve come to believe we all carry emotional baggage, whether we admit it or not.

Some of us pack light—a few hurts, a regret or two, neatly folded and zipped away. Others are schlepping steamer trunks full of unprocessed trauma, stuffed to the seams with unresolved relationships, identity crises, and things we should have said but didn’t.

Me? I thought I was traveling light. But that beach blanket told a different story.

Permission to Break Down

There’s a power in letting yourself unravel in a safe place.

Roatan, with its slow rhythms and gentle breezes, didn’t judge me for crying in public. The ocean didn’t mind. The sand didn’t scold. Even the iguana looked unbothered.

It felt, in a weird way, sacred.

Like the universe was saying: It’s okay to not be okay here. And that’s something I want to bring back with me—not just in my suitcase, but in my soul. That gentle permission. That grace.

What the Breakdown Taught Me

My beach blanket breakdown didn’t change my life.

I didn’t have a sudden epiphany or hear a divine voice whisper the meaning of it all into my ear. But I did learn a few things:

• Stillness is uncomfortable, but necessary.

• Tears don’t ruin a vacation; they make it more honest.

• Avoidance is expensive—and I don’t mean the airfare.

• Feeling everything doesn’t mean you’re falling apart. It means you’re waking up.

So… What Happens When We Sit Still?

We start to feel again.

We remember what hurts.
We notice what we miss.
We rediscover what we want.
We realize how hard we’ve been working to keep all those things buried.

And if we’re lucky—if we let ourselves stay with it just a little longer—we start to release. We start to exhale the shoulds, the shame, the stories that don’t belong to us anymore.

We begin to forgive ourselves.

The Truth About Emotional Baggage

Here’s the twist: we don’t heal by avoiding the baggage. We heal by unpacking it.

By pulling it all out—wrinkled and messy and overdue—and deciding what still fits, what needs to go, and what never belonged to us in the first place.

My beach blanket breakdown wasn’t a setback. It was a soft reset.

An invitation to stop pretending.
To stop performing.
To just… be.

And in the end, isn’t that the real point of a vacation? To come back not with souvenirs, but with space?

Final Thoughts From the Sand

As I rolled up my beach towel and brushed the sand off my legs, I felt lighter—not because my problems disappeared, but because I finally let myself see them.

Sometimes the most healing thing you can do is stop running and let the breakdown happen—in the sun, on the sand, with nothing but your breath and a pair of oversized sunglasses to catch the fall.

So, the next time you find yourself crying in paradise, don’t apologize. Just whisper to yourself, “It’s okay. I packed for this.”

Like this blog? Continue reading the fourth blog in the series, Sunscreen and Second Chances.