Dear Coach Paradise —
My youngest child is a high-school senior. She plans on going to college next year. I hardly see her what with her busy school schedule, work and social life, and I miss her already. When my son left for college I still had my daughter at home, but now that she is on her way out I am really worried about this empty-nest stuff. People tell me I will have so much more freedom, but I see my life as having lost its major purpose — being a mom to my kids — and am also afraid of being really lonely and rattling around my house. I am single, and for the first time in 20-something years I will be living alone. I feel like I will not only have an empty nest, but an empty life.
Signed,
Empty nester to be
Dear To be,
I want to acknowledge you for asking these questions now rather than after your daughter has stormed off into the world and youre left looking around, surprised and unprepared. I believe you have some heartfelt life intentions, i.e. wanting to be a wise and loving parent and wanting to lead a life of purpose and meaning. Did you realize that?
When we demonstrate our intentions through our actions, life is good and we are — in coaching terms — in alignment. If you believe having a child in the house is the only way to demonstrate being a loving parent and motherhood is the only way to show the world that your life has purpose and meaning, I can see why you might panic. If you are really attached to the conclusion that the empty nest is a ghost town and you will rattle around in lonely purposelessness, I am sure that you will find much evidence to support that conclusion. I would invite you to consider that there may be other, more interesting conclusions (for example, if there was life before kids, there is life after kids) and find evidence to support this conclusion.
Major life transitions are exciting and scary. They are also rich opportunities for reevaluating our lives and consciously deciding how we would like things to be — how we would like to show up in this next chapter of our epic. Moving on always involves loss and a certain amount of grieving and letting go. It can also be a time full of gratitude for what has brought us to this point. Kind of a glass half full or half empty moment which, like those pictures in psychology books that can be a vase or profiles, all depends on a shift in perspective.
Discovering a new (or buried) life purpose is on the agenda for you, as is realizing that you will never stop being a loving parent. I would invite you to dream and sift through your experiences and dreams of then and now so the treasures come to light — the activities and endeavors that make you feel excited and alive. I would also invite you to imagine life as you would like it to be. Instead of focusing on what you dont want (as in ghost town and lonely) aim your inner magnet toward friendship, a social life, engaging activities — expansion rather than shrinkage. Just for fun. Invite other parents to join you. I know you are not the only one in this position, and support is just what the word says — it holds you up and backs you up.
To everything that has been I say, "Thank you."
To everything that will be, I say, "Yes."
— Dag Hammarskj
