THOUGHTS MOMS PARENTING TEENS AND ADULT KIDS ARE ASHAMED THEY THINK. I'M JUST A MOM | EP. 168
Welcome to the Almost Empty Nest Podcast, where we moms of teens and college kids reframe what letting go really means to feel more connected, confident, and at peace.
I'm your host, Master Coach Jennifer Collins. Welcome to Things Moms Are Ashamed They Think, a special series inside the Almost Emptiness Podcast. If you've ever had a thought about your teen or adult kid that makes you feel like a terrible person, this series is for you.
In every episode, I'll be naming one of those honest but unspoken thoughts out loud, and I'll unpack what's really going on underneath. Because these thoughts don't make you a bad mom. They make you human.
And when you learn how to shift the way you relate to these thoughts inside your head, everything changes. Let's dive in. Hello, my friend.
Let's talk about the thought, I'm just a mom. Okay, now first, this is probably something you wouldn't say out loud. You know that being a mom is everything.
I know I feel like having my boys has been the most important and meaningful thing I've ever done in my life. I'm not only proud of being a mom, I'm grateful. I realize this is a privilege not every woman gets to experience.
And when our kids were little, they needed us constantly. There was no question that being a mom was a full-time responsibility. In my life, I've experienced both being a stay-at-home mom and being a mom who works full-time.
And from my perspective, neither role is easy. When our kids needed us, every day was full, and our role was clear. But now our kids are growing up, needing us less, pulling away, or just moving on to college and what comes next for them.
So now the house starts to get a little quieter. And for some of us, the job of mom feels different. I've worked with moms who for decades have poured everything into raising their kids.
These moms volunteer at school, they run the car pools and keep track of their kids' schedules and appointments, really managing every detail of their kids' lives. And these moms will tell me how much it meant to them, how much they loved the purpose of being a mom. Some of them are stay-at-home moms, and some of them work full-time.
We all do what we need to do and construct our lives based on what makes sense and what our goals are. But truly, whether you work full-time or stayed at home, all of us still reach this stage where our kids don't need us in the same way. Women will come to me saying, I'm just not sure who I am without this meaningful part of my life, without being a mom.
We're so proud of our kids and know that this is the reality of life, that they grow up. But you can also find yourself reading a chapter of your life that felt so defining, and then you feel unsure about what's left without it. Some moms will come to me and say, if I had only just kept up with a career, the stage would be easier because then I'd have something to keep me busy.
But what I always tell them is I've coached an equal number of women who have had careers who also feel the weight of this transition because this role of mom truly does become a key part of our identity. Do you ever find yourself in one of those situations where you're talking to friends at social events and they ask, what are you up to these days? And you're not sure what to say. On the one hand, if your kids are still at home, you can still feel like it's valid to say, I'm busy with the kids.
But if you're really honest, the amount of time your kid takes up in your life in terms of what you need to do with them starts to become less and less even when they're at home. You're starting to already see that empty space in your life, those times when you're waiting around for the kids to come home, or you're not sure when they're going to be back home and you feel unanchored. Like, what do I do with myself now? I've worked with women who were in this stage, this in-between before the kids leave, and they're already dreading that moment when their kids leave home because they know that the house will get even more quiet.
And how do you fill those days? How do you explain it to other people in terms of what you're doing? How do you justify how you spend your time? This is when that thought comes up, that I'm just a mom, that I haven't created space for myself and who I am outside of this role. Or you look around at your life and you think, is this enough? I think this is something that we don't always admit. We worry that we've lost ourselves in motherhood, that if we're not the go-to person for our kids anymore, we're not really sure what makes us valuable in life.
It feels like we're standing in this strange in-between where we're still a mom and we still have responsibilities of our kids and the home. And that's true even if your kids are at college, there's always something they need or something to worry about with them. But this need and the way that you're needed isn't the same.
You find yourself feeling the loss of something really meaningful to you, and you're not sure how to fill that void. So if you've ever had this thought, I'm just a mom, or I'm not sure what to do with myself in my increasing free time, and you feel this sense of not-enoughness or even shame. What I found with my clients is that the prevailing feeling underneath this thought isn't even shame, it's actually grief.
Grief for the version of you where you felt needed every day. The loss of feeling a clear sense of your role and the urgency to your role. Because every day, even those mundane tasks, they were all important.
You couldn't put off picking up your kids or making sure they were fed. On top of all of this, this was your identity. At one point in our lives, that felt all-consuming.
It felt so important. And now it slowly feels like it's slipping away. You might also feel a sense of fear that you've lost yourself and that it's too late to start now.
That you don't have what it takes to start something new. Or that you made a mistake when you didn't take time to build a life for yourself outside of raising kids. You could even feel a little resentful.
Not necessarily toward your kid, but to the concepts that you gave everything to motherhood. And at one point, you thought that would be enough. But now that this role feels like it's ending, it's almost like it's being taken from you.
And all of this makes so much sense through the lens of the motivational triad. That primitive wiring in our brain that's always trying to help us avoid pain, stay comfortable, and keep things simple. Uncertainty is painful.
And our brain looks for reasons for this discomfort and finds it by finding fault with our choices. We also, on autopilot, want to feel comfortable. We want to seek pleasure.
And we found that in the validation and purpose of being a mom. And look, let's face it, reinventing yourself in midlife, it can feel overwhelming. Our brains actually don't want to have to go to that much effort.
So your mind can latch onto a thought like, I'm just a mom, because it helps make sense of a hard and confusing moment in life. Believe it or not, even judgment of our past choices and holding on to an identity that feels incomplete is actually more comfortable to our minds than facing the uncertainty of the unknown and what comes next for us. So if you're in the midst of all this and feeling a sense of uncertainty and even self-judgment about where you are in this messy middle between motherhood and what comes next, I promise it's not because there's something wrong with you.
But what could be happening is that your brain is falling into a mindset trap. And one of them I want to explore today is the identity crisis. Think of it this way, your role as a mom is absolutely changing.
And so your brain is trying to make sense of it, trying to figure out what's left of it. And we don't like this quiet, empty space, the waiting around, wondering if our kids will connect, or even just that discomfort of not having them around to structure our days. When our kids are home, there's a rhythm to them getting up for school every day and having a Monday through Friday school week.
And even the fact that the school year is structured in a certain way. I've had moms say to me, doesn't actually matter when I wake up because nobody needs me to help them with breakfast or getting to school in the morning. So we feel this uncertainty and discomfort.
And that's what triggers this trap, because your brain wants to solve for this discomfort, really to simplify something that feels very complex and big. So it latches on to a thought like, I'm just a mom. Even if it hurts, it gives your brain something to hold on to, because the alternative is sitting with that question, who am I now? It can feel open ended and vulnerable, like there's not a clear answer.
And our brains absolutely do not love that. The identity crisis trap can tell you that if you're no longer fully immersed in motherhood, you must have lost your value in some way. That if you didn't build a career or some passion project outside of being a mom, then maybe you missed your shot.
It almost interprets transition into failure as if you shouldn't be going through it. And when you look around and see other women who seem to have it figured out, those women who have a thriving career or they've already started something new, your brain also falls into the comparison trap. It tells you, see, I should have kept working.
Or I did something wrong by not investing my time or energy into my own goals or hobbies. And even worse, then you start going down a spiral of, I don't even know what I would do now. What am I qualified to do if I haven't worked? There's so much self-judgment and even a sense of shame under all of this, that even though you frayed your role as a mom for anything, somehow you've also done it wrong by allowing this to be your main thing.
So you tell yourself, I didn't do it right. And maybe it's too late for me to fix it now. So what's the cost of falling into these traps, the identity trap and the comparison trap, really falling into all of this self-judgment? Well, first, it keeps you small.
It shrinks your sense of possibility. Because when your mind says to you, you're just a mom, it's not just a label you're giving yourself. It becomes something that limits your perspective of what's possible for you.
It reinforces that belief that your best years are behind you and that this next chapter couldn't possibly be as meaningful as the one before. The other problem is that these traps keep you focused on the past, on what you did or didn't do, instead of turning your attention toward what's possible now. When your brain is busy stuck in the past or comparing yourself to thoughts about what you should have done, you're not investing that energy in creating something new.
The third problem with these mindset traps is that it can fuel a sense of resentment, even if you're not fully aware of it. You could resent your kids for not needing you in the same way, or you might resent your partner for having it easy because they kept their job while raising their kids, so it seems easier for them. And more than all of that, you can resent yourself for not doing it differently, for having chosen wrong, even though if you're really honest with yourself, you probably wouldn't have done anything differently.
You just wish you hadn't gotten to this part where it hurts so much. And I think the other thing that I've noticed in talking to clients is that these feelings of shame and self-judgment make us feel even more alone at this stage of life because we don't want to talk about it. We're ashamed to admit that we don't know who we are without our kids, so we keep it hidden, wondering if we're the only ones feeling this lost.
This is why I created the series, to explore these thoughts and fears in a way that I hope truly lets you know that you're not at all alone. I've worked with so many women who have struggled with this transition, questioning their value and feeling lost in who they are now. And I've also worked with them to step out of these mindset traps to open the door to who they truly want to be.
Still a mom, still holding on to the most important and meaningful role of their lives, but also stepping into a belief that you're also a woman who has value, not because of what you do or who needs you, but simply because of who you are. Have you ever thought about where your identity or your sense of who you are comes from? Most of us didn't consciously choose it. It was shaped by what we've done and how other people responded to us.
It's what we were praised for and needed for. And look, of course, we've been moms for a really long time, so it makes perfect sense that our identity has become wrapped up in that role. And there's probably a lot about that that we wouldn't change.
But it's also meant that we've learned to define ourselves in this way, that our identity has been in large part being a mom. But now as that role shifts, as your kids become more independent, that identity starts to feel uncertain. And so your brain interprets that as a problem.
But here's something to consider. Your identity isn't something that's given to you, and it's also not something you can lose. It's simply something your brain has constructed.
It's your mental concept of who you are and what you do and what that means. And this concept of our identity as a mom is something we've practiced and attached deep meaning to. So it makes sense that as this role shifts, we feel a sense of loss.
But also, the identity we've created for ourselves is still just a story in our minds about who we are. And the beauty of that is that you can also choose to shape the story of who you have the potential to be next. Being a mom will always be a part of you.
But who you are is actually so much more than one role that you've played. So if you ever find yourself discounting yourself, saying something like, I'm just a mom, or I don't have any interests or hobbies outside of being a mom and going to work, I want to invite you to get curious. You don't have to judge yourself for thinking it, but just get curious about what's going on underneath this for you and what actually might be possible beyond it.
Someone said this to me once, and it's always stuck with me. When you think about your kids, that moment when they were born and you held them for the first time, you knew in that moment that they mattered. They were already perfectly enough and worthy, and they didn't have to earn that.
They didn't have to do one thing to be deserving of being enough. And yet when we look at ourselves, we limit our value to the roles we play and the way that we spend our time, as if we have to earn being enough in our own lives. But you were also born perfectly enough without having done one thing.
When do you think that changed for you? My friend, you are the one who creates your identity, your concept of who you are. You are and always will be a mom, and it is such a meaningful part of your life. But also, you are so much more than this role.
Rewriting the story of who you are right now and who you want to be, this is the work we do inside of my one-on-one coaching program, Mom 2.0. If there's a voice in your head telling you that maybe there's something more for you in this next chapter, I'd love to help you find it. You're not just a mom, you are a whole, complex, evolving woman with dreams, desires, and a voice that still matters. Maybe it's just been a while since you tapped into her.
Even if you've lost touch with her, even if you're not sure how to get started, the possibility is still within you. This next chapter of life isn't about taking on new roles to fill your time or just doing more to earn your value. It's about remembering who you are underneath all of the roles that you play.
It's about choosing on purpose what you want to believe about yourself right now. Until next time, my friend.
If you enjoyed this episode, I'd love for you to check out my next free masterclass. There's a link in the show notes. You have more power than you think, my friend.
