THE EMPTY NEST STRADDLE
Welcome to the Small Jar Podcast, where we moms of teens find the power to step off the emotional rollercoaster between motherhood and the empty nest. I'm your host, Jennifer Collins. Episode number 85.
Hello, my friends, and welcome back. I want to start by making an admission to you. One of the reasons I'm so passionate about helping women in their lives with teens and in transition to the empty nest is because I am one of these women.
I would love to tell you that I've risen above all of the anxiety and stress and that I never make mistakes or have regrets, but if I did, I'd be lying. As I thought about how I wanted to approach this week's episode, I was sitting in a hospital waiting room, trying to keep my mind off of my son who was in surgery for the second time in three weeks for a broken hand. There's a lot to unpack here.
He broke his hand in a wrestling tournament. I forget if I've shared this story already. The tournament he was in was big, and he had won a second match, but then was sent by the trainer for an x-ray because something looked off about his hand.
He came off the mat and looked me in the eye and said, Mom, I'm fine. So I took his word for it. We rushed him across the street to the urgent care, and I barged in somewhat aggressively, urging the nurses to move my son up in the queue because we had to get back to the tournament for his next match.
My husband and son talked me down, and so fortunately we didn't get kicked out because I was playing mama bear. Fast forward a few hours later, and I'm sheepishly driving home with the knowledge that my son's hand was, in fact, broken and that there would be no more wrestling for a while. The craziest thing about this is that I know nothing about wrestling.
I couldn't care less about wrestling, except now that it's important to my son, it's important to me. Right before Christmas, he had surgery and my son fought hard against having it cast. He promised to be careful.
Of course, what that looked like was playing two major shows as a drummer in his band, continuing to work out and even wrestle. I guess I shouldn't have been all that surprised when we went in for the checkup and the doctor informed us that the pins in his hand had moved. Cue guilt and regret.
Wishing I'd pushed my son to accept the cast. Wishing he hadn't played in those gigs. Although the one he played for Jillian Ludwig was really meaningful.
How could he have backed out of that? In life, choices have consequences. And for my son, that meant going back under the knife, setting back his recovery by three weeks and almost certainly foregoing his junior year wrestling season. I have a pit in my stomach thinking about all of it, but trumping that in that waiting room was the basic prayer that he was safe and would be okay.
The empty nest straddle. For a few years, I've been trying to find a way to describe this feeling of being pulled in two directions. On the one hand, feeling responsible for everything in our kids' lives.
And on the other, knowing that we ultimately have no control. We feel pulled in two directions, but also both things at once, both responsible and powerless. Is there a worse feeling? It's funny because as I've been building my coaching business, I've thought of the women I want to serve as being in one of two stages in life.
Either the mom who has teens at home and is struggling with anxiety or frustration relating to parenting or connecting with her teen. Or I focused on women who are looking for tools to help them transition to the empty nest. But as I've had the privilege of coaching so many women in both of these categories, I've realized how much both of these stages have in common.
It all comes down to the way we view our purpose. This is often the word that women use when they come to me as they're approaching the empty nest. They'll say, I want to find my purpose now that my kids are leaving home.
For many of us moms who have poured our hearts and souls into raising our kids, we feel the transition to the empty nest on two levels. We're sad first because we miss our kids. Of course we do.
In fact, many women whose kids are still a few months or even years away from leaving for college will tell me that they're already dreading the time when their kids leave. We start to feel this sadness and maybe even grief well ahead of the time when we say goodbye because we project how we know we'll feel in the future. We're doing this in large part because our brains see pain in the future and want to protect us from it.
But it's actually a crazy misfire of the brain that the result that we feel is sadness now, even before our kids have left the nest. This is also a big reason why I've focused so many of my episodes on the mindset traps we face in these stages of life. Now, this sadness that we feel makes perfect sense.
We love these beautiful people and know it will be hard to say goodbye. But for many of us, the grief we feel or that we anticipate feeling is made even more complicated by a second aspect of this transition. And that's our perception of our loss of purpose.
And here's something I want to invite you to consider. I believe we as moms start to grapple with the loss of purpose of being a mom well before our children leave the nest, even as early as middle school. Let me explain with some personal examples.
Now, I'm not technically an empty nester yet, but I have one foot in the door. You may already know, but my oldest is a freshman in college and my baby, the one who had surgery twice, is a junior in high school. On paper, I'm not the kind of woman who you might think would struggle with the transition to the empty nest.
I've either worked or held meaningful volunteer positions the entire time I've raised my boys. I think of myself generally as an accomplished and confident 51-year-old woman. But if you're someone who's listening and is thinking, I wish I'd had a job while I was raising my kids, because you think that would save you from having to go through the pain of the empty nest transition.
I'm here to tell you all the jobs and all the responsibilities I've had have not saved me from struggling. And I've coached so many women with full-time jobs and responsibilities who would say the same thing. For me, raising my boys has brought me to my knees at times.
I've also shared before that for me, this all started when my kids were around nine or ten. They were involved in so many activities, I found myself alone a lot more of the time. Even then, I started to notice that I was spending the weekends doing laundry and cleaning rather than engaging in any hobbies.
As much as I loved that I could support the dreams of my kids, to be perfectly honest, I felt jealous that they were out having fun and I was stuck at home doing the grunt work. I worked all week, came home to take care of the family, kept doing that during the weekends. And as much as I love and adore my boys, and I'm infinitely grateful to be a mom, during those days I struggled with happiness.
I wanted something more, but I didn't have a clue what that more I needed was. Then fast forward to middle school for my boys. The friendship drama started.
I remember being on campus and noticing my son banging his head against a tree in the playground. His friends were standing 20 feet away completely ignoring him. I honestly almost rushed onto the playground and took him home.
I wanted to call those kids moms. I wondered if I should send him to a different school. Did he need a therapist? I worried about it endlessly, but I was totally helpless to fix my son's unhappiness.
Then we got to high school and it felt like we were on a fast train to college. I'll admit, I started ninth grade with my older son as a tiger mom. I was on top of his grades, his SAT prep.
I urged him to sign up for clubs and competitions to apply for competitive summer programs. My oldest has always been interested in academics, so I took that as an invitation to turn on the gas for him, to help him maximize his potential. And for both of my boys, I've gone out of my way to support their extracurricular activities, their music, my son's wrestling.
And of course I did this because they love these things. But if I'm totally honest, in the past I also supported these things because of how I thought it would look on their college applications. When my oldest got his license, those first days of driving were stressful for me.
I was on him constantly about getting home in time for curfew. I tracked him until he got home safely. I'd lie awake at night until he got home, or I'd be fuming on those nights when he ignored curfew and my countless texts and calls to get him to come home immediately.
When it came to dating, I reminded my boys to be gentlemen. I warned them of red flags. When their hearts broke, I felt like mine was breaking too.
When my son fell for a woman who literally tried to break his relationship off with our family, I almost lost my mind with anger and grief. Although the details of what we might worry about with each of our kids might be different, this part of the story might be very familiar to you. I spent countless nights lying awake in bed worrying about my kids, their grades, their friendships, whether they'd get exposed to drugs, sex, their safety, their mental health, getting into college.
And as I reflect on all of this now, it's so interesting to consider, what was the purpose of all of this worry? The short answer is that, at that time, I had an unwavering belief that this was my job. And let's face it, from the moment I knew I was pregnant, it was my job to protect and nurture these boys. The maternal instinct didn't come naturally to me at first, but I always did my best.
I've loved my sons with everything I have. If my boys were in the path of danger, I would literally throw my body in front of it to stop it or die trying. For 18 years, it's been my job to keep these boys safe, to make them happy, to help them be successful.
Can you relate? God, this role has been such a gift. I had absolutely no idea what I was getting myself into when I took on this job, but I'm convinced that the highs of the job are unlike anything I have ever experienced. The depth of my love for these beautiful humans, the pride I feel for everything they do, from their first smile and their first steps to the times when I burst with pride, like when my son took the news about the second surgery better than I did, how my older son came home from college and told me about how much he's learned about relationships and setting boundaries.
Every step they take, however small, I'm in awe of it. Still, these moments make all of the effort and even the sleepless nights worth it. But let's talk about this job we have to keep our kids safe and happy, to help them be successful.
It feels so true that this is the role of motherhood. And for a long time, it actually feels like this is something over which we have some control. Think about it.
When our kids were little, we had quite a bit of control over their safety. We installed baby gates. We strapped them into their car seats.
We carefully interviewed babysitters, if we had babysitters at all. We got to know the mothers of their friends, even sat in on their play dates. I remember being on hyper alert at the mall or other busy places.
I would never let my boys out of my sight. And how about keeping them happy when they were younger? From the moment they were born, I've been trying to make my boys smile. At eight weeks, somehow that was the magic milestone when I got my first gummy smiles.
And do you remember those beautiful belly laughs, the giggles, the endless laughter? And somehow as I look back, I don't remember as much about those days when everyone was having tantrums and losing their minds because they hadn't napped. Looking back, there were definitely times, even then, when I couldn't get them to be happy. But I think I was fooled into believing that I had some control when often a snack or a hug could make everything okay.
And how successful were we actually at helping our kids be successful when they were young? What comes to mind for me is being at Little Jim with my oldest when he was five or six months old. I'd made friends with some of the other moms and it turns out our kids were all born a few days or weeks apart. So it was hard not to compare their developmental milestones.
I remember agonizing over the fact that one of my son's friends was sitting up so much better than my son was at that age. So funny to think about that now. I was so upset then, but my son has been successfully sitting up for over 18 years.
At the time, it felt like I was failing. Failing at tummy time. Failing at being a mom.
The fact was my son absolutely hated being on his stomach. So now as I really look back, I'm realizing that it was never actually true that I had control over my son's safety, happiness, or success. But let's face it, we've been trying our best to do this for our kids' entire lives.
Here's the problem. I'm willing to bet that somewhere along the way you started feeling less successful at this job. I know I did.
When my oldest started to drive, suddenly now he's out on his own, driving a three-ton vehicle with crazy New Jersey drivers, going out with people I don't know to places where I'm not sure who he's with. You try to keep your kids safe by giving them curfews and rules, but even that's a challenge. Drinking alcohol? You tell them they can't do it and you run the risk of them lying to you about it, or worse, not calling if they need a safe ride home.
But you also can't condone it. So you're left in this uncomfortable middle ground. As much as we still want to protect our kids, with every passing year you realize how much less we can influence how our kids take their own safety seriously.
As moms, we have a ton of opinions about how our kids should take care of themselves. From brushing their teeth and eating healthy meals, to driving the speed limit and saying absolutely no to drugs. But will they listen? Sometimes we might resort to punishment and threats to get them to take their safety seriously.
But in the past when I ended up at this place, I realized how much I was pushing on a string. And then they go to college and you don't even have the punishment to fall back on. Maybe you can threaten to stop supporting them financially, but then it turns into this terrible tug-of-war where there are no clear winners.
But don't they realize we just want to keep them safe? How about helping our kids stay happy as teens and adults? I already told you about my oldest in middle school on the playground. And back then he told me everything. So the result was my heart felt just as heavy as his did.
But no matter how much I hurt with him, and no matter how many times I promised him that it would get better, it didn't make anything better for him then. It was so hard to see him in pain. But the truth was I couldn't fix it.
As my boys have gotten older and faced other much more complicated challenges, from relationships and dating to dealing with teachers, difficult classes, disappointments, and even failure, when they've been unhappy or hurt, there hasn't been one time when I've been able to take away their pain if that's what they needed to experience. Have I been there for them if they've wanted to talk? Of course. But more and more they go to their friends to share their hearts or they don't talk about it at all.
And so what I see in terms of my boys' emotions is often only one small part of the truth. If keeping my boys happy is still my job, I don't even know how to measure my success anymore. And finally, let's address the job of helping our kids be successful as teens and adults.
I've always thought about keeping my kids safe and happy as my basic responsibility. But somehow helping my boys be successful, that's felt to me like the prize. How many of us have seen another teen achieve something great or just do something that our teen isn't doing, and we felt a twinge of jealousy that somehow that other mom was able to achieve what we'd love to help our own kids achieve, to help them be successful and reach their potential? Which one of us wouldn't move heaven and earth to help our kids be safe, happy, and successful? As I think back to all of the ways that I tried to do this for my own boys, the problem isn't entirely that what I did was wrong, although I definitely have regrets and can point to a long list of things I wish I had done differently.
The problem really was that I was often parenting my boys from a place of anxiety and fear. I was so absolutely sure that my vision for my boys' safety, happiness, and success was right, that at times I was hell-bent on getting them to see things my way. This was my job, after all, my purpose.
I felt both responsible and powerless. When we look ahead to the empty nest, we think of that as being the time when we have to let go of the purpose of being a mom with kids at home. We start to have thoughts like, they don't need me anymore, or I don't know what I'm going to do with my time.
Nothing will be as fulfilling as being a mom has been. We have this sense that we have to let go, and our thoughts about what we're losing make us feel sad and lost. But I want to reframe this transition because, my friend, you've been slowly letting go of your child for years.
It started when you let go of their hand when they learned to walk. You let go of the back of their bicycle. You drop them off at school, at playdates, at school dances and sports practices, summer camp.
You've been letting them go for a very long time. And the point of all of this, this parenting exercise, has been to raise independent, self-sufficient humans. Do we want them to be safe, happy and successful humans? Absolutely.
But there is very likely not one of us that wishes for our 40-year-old child to be living with us at home still. All along the goal has been to let them go, to launch them into the world. So why then is it so hard for us to emotionally let go of our purpose? Here's my theory based on my own experience, but also countless conversations with my clients.
We create our own pain when our need to hold on to our purpose of keeping our children safe, happy and successful is in conflict with our teen's need for independence. I've started to call this the emptiness straddle. And honestly, for some of us, this can start as early as middle school and can last through and well beyond college.
In fact, I've coached grandmothers on these questions. It starts as soon as your teen is pulling in one direction and you're pulling and holding on in the other. The emptiness straddle.
Now, I don't at all mean to suggest that you should let go and give up. Let's face it, our kids start wanting independence well before they're really ready to handle it. But also, how will we or they really know when they're ready until they're given a chance to try? This dissonance, this pulling in two directions, it's subtle at first.
Maybe our kids start keeping secrets or staying closed up in their room more. They want to stay out later or hang out with people who we don't really know. With every experience and milestone, we're constantly judging.
Are they ready? To be really honest, we're judging if we're ready. Is it safe for me to let go this time? Consider it from the perspective of these questions. Am I willing to let go enough to trust my kid to do the right thing? To trust them to know what's safe and what's not? Are my kids happy? Am I willing to trust them when they tell me they're fine? Or am I willing to let go and let them be unhappy if that's what's true for them right now? Am I willing to let go of my responsibility to fix it or to force them to be happy? Am I willing to let go of the need to fix it so that I can feel better? Am I ready to let go of my story about what my kid's success looks like? Is it safe for me to let go? When I think back to my most painful times raising my boys, I realize that it has been incredibly hard for me to let go of the instinct to try to keep my boys safe, to make them happy, and to not do everything I could to help them be successful.
As I look back, I realize that for me, if I wasn't able to achieve these things for my kids, that this failure would be my failure. You know, it's funny because you look back on your life and you realize that even when bad things happen, you see how everything turns out and eventually things turn out okay. Or at the very least, life goes on and you deal with it, whatever comes, step by step.
We've had trips to the emergency room and difficult, scary lessons, and every single one of them has made my boys stronger. Every single one of the failures and mistakes has taught my boys lessons that I could never teach them. And don't think I didn't try.
What I've also realized along the way is that every single one of these mistakes and failures has made me stronger. Now that I'm able to see the pain I experienced as a teacher, I understand how much pain I was creating for myself and actually how much conflict I was creating in my relationship with my boys because I was so fixated on this purpose of keeping them safe, happy, and successful. Well beyond when they needed me to do this for them.
As much as I truly want my boys to be safe, happy, and successful, I realize that it's actually not my job. Don't get me wrong, I still do what I can. My son at home still has rules.
If necessary, I can set boundaries with my older son. At times, I still find myself doing funny, unnecessary things to help make my boys smile. I still do whatever I can to support their dreams and desires.
As long as I live, I will always want my sons to be safe, happy, and successful. And I will do anything in my power to help them if and when they need me. But I realize that they don't need me for this anymore.
And the real truth is that I can't keep them safe if they make unsafe choices. Frankly, I can't keep them safe from the world, period. I also cannot ever make them happy if they're not.
I can't force them to be motivated or to care about school or their future. Their life, their happiness, and success, it's all up to them. It's no longer my job.
And what I'm realizing is that maybe it never was. The process of us letting go of the purpose we have as moms starts much earlier than we realize. It starts when your need to keep your child safe, happy, and successful conflicts with their need for independence.
Let me ask you, whose needs are more important here? Why do you need to hold on to your purpose if what your teen really needs is to pave their own way, to make their own mistakes, to forge their independence and figure out who they are without you? Navigating each of our own individual struggles on this transition from motherhood to the empty nest, this empty nest straddle, this is the work we do in my coaching program Mom 2.0. It's finding the confidence and peace as a mom to understand when to hold on and help and support our kids and when to let go and trusting yourself and even your teen and your child in the process. Having gone through this process myself, I had to come to grips with why it was so hard for me to let go. And I realized that I was making my son's journey about me and what I needed and not enough about what they thought they needed.
The amazing part about this is that when I truly owned that what I actually wanted was for my boys to self-actualize in a way that was true for them, I stopped needing to have it my way. I stopped needing to be right about what was right for them. So now rather than feeling anxious and frustrated, I get to experience a whole new level of pride and joy in appreciating my boys for exactly who they are.
And when anxiety and frustration still comes up for me because it does, I understand that that's a sign to look inside and really ask myself, what do I really want here? Do I need to step in and help or is it time for me to let go? We always have a choice. Understanding that we need to let go doesn't necessarily mean that we do nothing. I still offer advice and there are some things that for me are non-negotiable boundaries.
But with most things, I've let go of the need for my boys to do it my way. And I swear that by letting go of my need for control, I've been able to bring my boys even closer. Their journey isn't about me, but man, is it fun to have a front row seat.
This is the purpose of being a mom that I will never let go. And as I look ahead, I think that it's actually possible that this next chapter of being a mom will be the best one yet.
Until next time, friends.
If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review and check out our coaching program, mom2.0 at www.thesmalljar.com. You have more power than you think, my friend.
