How A Weekend Beach Getaway Restored My Mental Health

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A few weeks ago, I celebrated my 32nd Birthday with a weekend beach getaway.

Thirty-one had been relatively tumultuous, to say the least. It was a chaotic year that wore me down both mentally and emotionally – and by the end of it, I was pretty much asking myself every single day, "What the fuck else could go wrong?" (And 9/10 times, something else did.)

I like to think of your mental health as a house. Normally, standard maintenance is all you need for upkeep. Your house is golden as long as you have some dependable friends, a good job, lots of laughter, and fun memories. Even when storms come your way, you'll be able to whether them with little to no problem since the house is already in tip-top shape.

But if the house isn't in tip-top shape – and enough storms rip through – that's when the house is in trouble. Paint will chip away. Wood will splinter. If a big enough storm hits, you might even lose a whole wall.

And when this happens, you'll need to do some home restoration.

How the weekend beach getaway restored my mental health

For me, thirty-one was that storm – and I was determined that thirty-two would not be a repeat.

So to mark the new year, Josh and I picked us an AirBnb for the weekend, packed up the car (and the dog, of course), and made our way on to Nags Head to enjoy seventy-two hours of "fun in the sun."

And that's exactly what we did. (Pictures from the trip are below.)

Three days later, we cruised along the Roanoke Sound with fresh suntans and sandy legs, singing along to Billie Eilish's Birds of a Feather. And as I watched the pelicans soaring alongside our car (their large, powerful wings flapped slowly, almost lazily), I couldn't help be feel a similar sense of calm.

No anxiousness, no stress, no frustration, no betrayal, no resentment. Nothing like that.

For the first time in a long time, I felt totally good. I finally felt like me.

So when I walked through our front door and threw my bags down in the foyer, I realized wasn't just physically home. I was mentally home, too. Except the mental home was no longer moments from caving in.

While we had been exploring the Outer Banks, an invisible construction crew had been working overtime, patching up and repairing it. The home had been restored.

With so many articles out there about the positive impact the beach has on your mental health, I assumed I'd come home from our weekend beach getaway feeling better than I did when we left. (And honestly, who can be in a bad mood while at the beach???) But I didn't expect to come home feeling as good and refreshed as I did.

Everyone feels mentally and emotionally exhausted at times. And as I learned from this experience, sometimes the best fix to reset (and re-energize) yourself is simple: treat yourself to a weekend beach getaway.

Get the fuck out of your town. Turn off your location. Unplug from social media. Eat the best portobello mushroom you've eaten in your entire life. Drink some espresso martinis. Spend uninterrupted time with your partner and dog. Walk barefoot through the sand. Splash around in the ocean.

Do these things, and I guarantee you'll come home feeling like negative and intrusive thoughts never knocked your world upside-down. I promise. 🫶🏼

Anyway, if you're interested in seeing pictures from our weekend beach getaway in the Outer Banks, I've included those below. And if you've never been to OBX before, head's up: the pictures from Jockey Ridge State Park are nuts! (We did our best to do the tallest sand dunes on the Atlantic Ocean justice.)

related reading: Mental Health Benefits of the Beach