Earlier this month, on a sun-filled Shabbos afternoon, a group of over 40 women gathered in my home in Edison. The event, promoted by Congregation Ohr Torah serving the Highland Park and Edison community, was a talk I gave about going to Croatia for Pesach, my phone forgotten at home.

We were in an Uber halfway into a long rush hour drive to JFK when I realized, OMG, my phone! Synapses fired wildly within me. My stomach — maybe the entire car — lurched. I couldn’t believe it! I could see myself reaching for my phone on the dock, then thinking just five more minutes of charge to get me through security.

I had not had a good packing day. I’d been battling a cough. My head wasn’t in the game. So poor was my haphazard packing that I conceded to pay for an extra case filled with shoes and books. Little did I know how vital those 18 books would become to me.

So it happened: the phone was at home and I was away. After the initial yelp, I decided, no mom meltdown. No obsessive angst. For the duration. I would spare myself and my family the stress. I chose to simply lean into it, to just travel light.

There were challenges, not in getting through the airport; thankfully, you can still scan your passport and use a paper boarding pass. However, I didn’t have any credit cards on me; they’re stored on my phone. At duty free, items would have been bought. It was interesting, not giving in to that instant gratification for myself and my kids.

Foremost, I ensured getting word to anyone who’d panic if they didn’t hear from me. My husband messaged my siblings via WhatsApp, and my son let his savta know, while from the hotel business office I emailed a couple of close friends.

I missed my Notes app. The poignant payoff was rediscovering the joy of longhand. As a writer I struggle: with the blank screen, the diversions on my devices, with getting into flow. Writing the way I started out, it was magical. Putting words down on paper enhanced my creativity in ways technology can’t.

Waiting outside for a U.K. visitor without means of communicating followed by being unable to treat her to an Uber back to the airport (I procured a cab accepting dollars), was challenging. Yet the day spent together was better for me not whipping out my phone repeatedly to show or check something.

I did get lost — and I don’t mean existentially. I became separated from the group on a trip to a national park. So reliant have I become on maps apps and the constant texting to keep track of people, the concept of using my own wits to find my way had become a thing of the past. But I did it. Then, when my sons and I went to the old town, we agreed to meet back at our starting point in an hour. It was nerve-racking. I was fastidiously memorizing landmarks, my head darting this way and that, in the grip of some post technology trauma. It’s a kind of terror. At one point, climbing endless stairs through ancient remains, I lost my bearings. Then I made it back. On time. I’ve never been so happy to see a Zara. And what a great feeling, what a feat.

My biggest loss was the inability to take photos. My role as memory collector and curator was gone. In my family, if I don’t insist and instigate, there are no family snapshots. Often I resent it, especially when I have to beg, when I have to rush, to promise, “just one, it’ll only take a second.” It’s not for posting anywhere. I don’t even require smiles anymore, just photos to mark occasions. Pictures they all love scrolling through as time passes, those fond memories, that nostalgia, laughter or incredulity. In the Uber to the airport my husband and son were doing just that, poring over past trips, reminiscing, enjoying the fruits of my beleaguered labor.

But on a more meditative note, I realized how, on trips and birthdays, having that phone camera always at the ready brought out a controlling behavior that wasn’t necessarily in my nature. The idea that a small device could assert itself over my personality, turn me into a control freak regardless of how cajoling kids (and a husband) to stop for a photo might be great in the long-run, that bothered me. How else are our devices insinuating themselves into our character?

The irritation I sometimes express when I’m scrolling and a family member interrupts me, moments of paranoia when a text is left unread. Is such anxiety inherent to my makeup? No, but it’s a part of my texting experience for sure. So while the light takeaway from the photography challenge was to get a real camera, the deeper takeaway was to let go a little, loosen control. And guess what, the family stepped up. It wasn’t ideal, but between the four of them I returned to dozens of photos in the family chat.

We had four rooms in a large multi-story hotel, there were overlapping meals, and programming and many outdoor spaces. In the past on such trips, if I’m not with my family, when it isn’t prohibited I’m communicating with at least one of them. In its own way that’s exhausting. You’re sitting with a book and PING! a spouse or child asks where you are. If you can bring them sunscreen. If you’ll come to lunch because they’re alone. Or they text a not-so-positive statement, “I hate the food!” “This annoying baby just grabbed my towel.” Whatever it is, I’m galvanized into action; either to expressly type no, which is its own effort, or by entering fix-it mode. Merely the mental intrusion of the message erodes some peace of mind. Missives from that phone demand energy.

I admit, I communicate more effectively and mostly via text with my family. The flip side is a micro-texting emerges and before a mother knows it, every time her now-adult offspring sneezes, meets up with a friend, or goes to the store, she’s getting detailed texts, and it’s easy to fall into cycle of responding, at length, every single time.

Without my phone, days passed when I’d meet my kids at meals, not having spoken to them for a few hours beforehand. Instead of messaging me about situations, they handled them. Instead of leaning on me, they were independent. It was a joy to behold. Incidents that bothered them fizzled by the time we met up, and so there were less. If any ramifications and because things hadn’t already been dissected via phone, we chatted. We had conversations. It was remarkable, this notion that your kid, who you’ve been aiding and abetting forever, can still have their insecurities, awkward moments or difficulties, but they don’t HAVE to call or text you for rescue. They don’t need your input. Not as much as our phone lives may lead us to believe. I developed increased pride and respect from seeing them anew. The phenomena served as a lesson in codependency and boundaries.

There were times I felt untethered, bereft even — like a dog without a bone. No music, no podcasts, nothing to watch, yet after almost two weeks without the aids, connectivity insistence of my iPhone, the interminable call and response of our lives, I enjoyed a quietened mind, an interiority. I found a more measured, and yes, a more spiritual state. Of course, I was in a beautiful location with the people I loved most. But when I went to town with my husband’s card I didn’t buy a thing.

On two separate occasions, guests offered me a spare phone. Both times I declined. It was liberating. My being slowed down. I read luxuriantly, in fabulous shoes. For the first time in ages, I had the headspace to consider moments and situations rather than rush from one to the next without internalizing insights. I liked the effect on me, actively listening and appreciating when we were together, as well as chances to be alone. It transpired, like some kind of alchemy, the mere knowledge that I had no pull of a phone seeped into Shabbos and Yom Tov as well, and I was more at ease.

My creative urges reawakened. Rather than mindless rounds of matchup, I let ideas percolate. Imagination, good for the soul. My sweet spot is writing — from childhood, in my 20s as a journalist, in my first years in the U.S. with younger kids, then as a student of creative writing — to think in sentences, to conjure words and delight in unspooling stories, in my mind’s eye, on the page. Second to reading, it’s what soothes me most. Yet for years, with work and driving and the hurried, harried nature of a fast-paced, efficiency-driven culture, when I have a moment to myself, it’s typically myself and my phone.

While away and without my smartphone, I’d engaged with both challenges and benefits of my predicament; I could see I was using my time differently, getting in touch with dormant sides of myself, feeling uncomfortable, feeling liberated, feeling unmoored, feeling unencumbered. Tapping into old life skills and interpreting situations less stressfully.

The audience responded well as I shared various obstacles and anecdotes, such as setting the time on my watch and then using it to tell the time, weirdly gratifying, like a life hack, though I couldn’t enlarge the font. Leaving my prescription readers behind would have been worse than forgetting my phone; identifying food at the lavish buffets would have been problematic. Once reunited with my device, my technology muscles, so to speak, were reluctant to reactivate. There were lessons and truths I hope to carry forward.

Afterwards, conversations sparked. A teacher expressed that students could respond well to this style of sharing a personal experience of device detox rather than a statistics driven lecture. Because I hadn’t planned it, it felt additionally meaningful. This wasn’t a social experiment or deliberate withdrawal from technology. It just happened.

Sarah Keane is a writer and speaker who has presented in London, New York and New Jersey. She can be reached at write2sarahkeane@gmail.com.