She’s sent postcards to herself for over 40 years. Here’s what she’s learned

20.07.2023 - 12:15 / edition.cnn.com

Debra Dolan was 21 and on her first solo trip when she first sent a postcard to herself.

It was 1979, and Dolan, who grew up in central Canada, was visiting Vancouver for the first time. She was immediately blown away by the city’s vibrancy, and the beauty of the surrounding region.

“It was the first time I’d ever really seen mountains and the ocean such as this,” she tells CNN Travel today.

Dolan wanted to capture the joy she felt when she looked out at the towering Vancouver skyline and the nearby soaring mountains. But although she was usually a keen diarist, Dolan was swept up in the excitement of the trip, and found she barely had a spare moment.

“I thought, ‘I don’t have time to write in my journal.’ And I didn’t travel with a camera,” Dolan recalls. “So when we went to Whistler, or Vancouver Island, or saw places in Vancouver, I decided, ‘I’ll just send a postcard to myself.’”

On the back of each card, Dolan scribbled a paragraph or two about her impressions, thoughts and feelings, and then mailed it to her home address, signing off each dispatch with a single heart.

Some 10 days later, Dolan returned home to a stack of postcards from herself. Receiving them, recalls Dolan, was “an absolute joy.”

Dolan had grown up writing letters to various pen pals, but there was something different about writing to herself – knowing the contents were for her eyes only. She already sensed the postcards would serve as time capsules of a place and a moment.

And the trip to Vancouver was significant in more ways than one – it also awakened Dolan’s love of travel. As a kid, she’d only ever gone on camping trips in Canada with her parents – the family hadn’t traveled much outside of their province, let alone overseas.

“But after I’d come to Vancouver, I realized, ‘Well, it’s easy to travel. And it’s easy to travel solo. I don’t have to be nervous about this,’” says Dolan.

She pushed back the pressure she felt to get on the corporate ladder and kickstart her career and decided exploring the world was her first priority.

“I felt brave and courageous. And I wanted to be unusual,” says Dolan. “Next thing I knew, I just decided to hitchhike across Canada.”

From there, Dolan traveled on to Australia. Then she stayed on the road for months on end, traveling the globe.

“I went traveling for almost three years,” Dolan recalls.

On these adventures in the early 1980s, twentysomething Dolan kept travel journals, but she also continued her new habit of sending postcards to herself.

She mailed these dispatches to her parents’ house in Canada, sometimes sealed in envelopes so she could keep some of her thoughts and adventures private, away from any prying parental eyes.

Over 40 years later, Dolan