THOUGHTS MOMS PARENTING TEENS AND ADULT KIDS ARE ASHAMED THEY THINK. “THE HOUSE IS SO QUIET.”
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.
Have you ever had a thought as a mom and then immediately felt terrible for thinking it? Believe me, you're not alone, and you're truly not a bad mom for thinking it. In this series on the thoughts us moms are ashamed we think, I'm exploring these thoughts and where they're coming from. Because when you shift from judgment to understanding, that's when everything changes. Let's dive in.
Hello, my friend.
It is so quiet in my house. We got home from dropping my youngest son off from college, and we came home to a house where the quiet, frankly, feels deafening. There's not the constant thud and slamming of doors of our boys, living their lives, engaged in their rooms, and busy with school and friends.
There's not even the jingle of my dog's collar as he runs through the house, looking for anyone with a snack. It's just quiet. And that's just a fact.
If you were over at my house and we were sitting in the silence, you would be able to observe that fact with me. But the fact itself doesn't necessarily carry any weight until you add the story you have about it. There was a time when my boys were little, when our house was, frankly, definitely loud.
There was always someone calling my name, asking for something, wanting to play and wanting a snack. It was the sound of my boys fighting over some toy or arguing over a game. I remember there were times when my husband took my boys out for some activity over the weekend, and especially when they were younger, I would feel such a sense of relief to be sitting in that quiet.
Finally, just a moment to be in the silence, which was honestly so rare at that time. In fact, I still drive without any music because I've just, for so long, craved silence. But what I was really looking for was peace.
The constant noise felt like this continual pull for me to do something, to respond in some kind of way. And so for a long time, the silence, to me, felt a little bit like I was let off the hook. That's the story I used to tell myself about the quiet.
But it's so amazing how different that quiet feels now. I've had so many women come to me and tell me that with all the struggles they had with their teen as they were going through high school, they were frankly looking forward to that time when they could get their kid out of the house and off to college because they were just done with the stress of managing their kid's life and done with dealing with the attitude. All of it just seemed like it would be a lot easier once their kid was off at school.
But then some of them felt surprised. Their kid went off to college, and they weren't as relieved as they thought they'd be. That quiet didn't bring the same sense of peace that they were hoping for.
So maybe your house feels quite a bit more quiet now. Your teen could be spending more time in their room or out with friends, or maybe they're already off living their life wherever they are, and you're sitting in a home that feels quiet. I wonder what story you're telling yourself about that quiet.
I think we often associate the empty nest and just the reality of our kids not needing us as much anymore with the feeling of sadness. And for me, that emotion is absolutely there. You walk by that empty room, and you just feel this reminder like, oh, right, they're not here.
Particularly if you have a generally good relationship with your kid. And even if you don't, you miss them. That sadness makes sense.
But the truth is my boys spent time away from home before they went to college, mostly for summer camps, camps where they'd be away for weeks at a time. And while I would miss them, their absence didn't hold as much weight. It didn't carry this emotional heaviness that it seems to now.
When they were at summer camp, I missed them. I felt sad that they weren't around. But maybe it felt temporary.
Again, the story I was telling myself about that sadness or about that quiet in the house was that they'd be back, that they were having a great time at camp, and I was happy they were having that time, having that amazing experience. But back then, I didn't let the quiet mean anything other than, all right, they're not here, and I miss them. The difference is now with the quiet is that the sadness of simply missing them is intertwined with so many other more heavy emotions.
And I wonder if any of these resonate with you. One is a feeling of loss. For some of us, raising kids has been such a powerful, beautiful, and meaningful chapter of our lives.
And now, with your kids gone or increasingly independent, it feels like you're letting go of something really powerful. The sense of loss can actually feel like grief. It's letting go of something that you perceive that you'll never get back.
I'm actually surprised for myself that I feel such a profound sense of grief. For me, I think motherhood caught me totally off guard. I didn't start off necessarily dreaming about being a mom or looking forward to it even.
Honestly, I dreaded the thought of being a mom a little bit. I was pretty focused on the pain of dealing with whining little people. I hated babysitting growing up.
So early on, before I had kids, the concept of motherhood actually felt like this life sentence of babysitting. But then my husband and I got to a point in our life where we looked at each other, and maybe we fell into the traditional expectation of what you do next after you get married. But we just got to this point where we said, well, I guess we're doing this.
And maybe I always assumed that it would happen. But I was surprised that even at the time we started on this journey, I wasn't necessarily excited about it. I'm not going to lie.
Those first few weeks of motherhood were also pretty tough for me. But I'll never forget that first time my oldest smiled, that gummy smile. And from that moment on, I was hooked.
Then came the giggles and the hugs and the kisses, this unbelievable stream of validation in being the most important person in someone else's world. It's an intoxicating feeling. And it's really no wonder that for us as moms, we've been willing to go above and beyond day after day in what can quite frankly be described in an objective way as a 24-7 grueling occupation, this role of being a mom.
And yet there were moments of beautiful validation. Those times when you were fully present in witnessing the growth and the evolution of a human being that you were directly shepherding. Everything from them finally sitting up to walking or tying their shoes, their first words, the first day of school.
Every single milestone leading up to high school graduation, you have been there for it every step of the way. And God knows there have been really hard parts about it. But at the same time, because of the effort you've put in and those moments of triumph along the way, we've stayed committed.
We've persevered. And along the way, we felt so much purpose and meaning in being the driver of our kids' well-being and their success in life. As you step into the quiet, my friend, what part of all of that is the hardest for you to let go? The other feeling I think that can be mixed in with the sadness and the grief is fear.
So much about the past 18 or more years of your life has been so clearly defined with purpose and meaning. Here I am 52 years old, and I'd like to think I'll live for another 40 or 50 years. Really, I'm only halfway done with my life.
Yet the first half was almost predetermined. Even though we didn't know exactly what that path would look like, we probably had in our minds a roadmap. Finish high school, maybe go to college, get married, settle into a home, have kids, raise those kids.
The order might've ended up being different, and there might've been surprises along the way that we didn't anticipate, like divorces or loss. But by and large, our course has followed some kind of rubric, one that was maybe set by our own internal desire, but more often was probably set by society, kind of by what everyone else does. And we've been following that roadmap and also comparing ourselves to what our peers are doing for a long time.
And now we're at the stage of life where the territory is totally uncharted. You look at other women, and have you seen that Instagram post where women in midlife fall into four different houses? There's the pickleball house, the sourdough house, the protein and strength training house, and I think there's one other that depends on the post. Anyway, if you're following these midlife influencers on social media, it can feel like you're supposed to be following one of these paths, as if this is your purpose now, really that you're supposed to be filling your time with some new activity or purpose.
Well, my friend, if you're not inspired by one of those houses, I'm with you. I suck at pickleball, and I've never really been a good cook. And while I try really hard to take care of my body, I don't have time for 10,000 steps a day.
And I work out, but not because I love it or that I want it to become my purpose in life. So what is this next chapter supposed to look like? The first half was really well mapped, and that made it relatively easy to just get on the bandwagon and do what everybody else was doing. But now the uncertainty can bring up so much fear.
And that fear can take a lot of different forms. Fear of failure, fear of regret, fear of wasting time, or trying something and completely making a fool of yourself. It truly boils down to fear about the uncertainty about what comes next.
And I wonder if the real uncertainty here is, will I ever find a sense of fulfillment and meaning in my life again? Will I ever be as happy as I was as a mom? And again, God knows there have been so many parts of parenting that have been excruciatingly hard. But now looking back, you wouldn't trade it. It's actually interesting to think about that.
Sometimes we can reflect back on our journey through motherhood and focus on all of the beautiful parts. We even do this when we start having challenges with our kids. We remember a time when they actively showed us affection and we miss that.
But if we're honest, motherhood has always been a 50-50 experience. 50% positive, the love and validation and joy of bringing this human being into the world and having the privilege of raising them. And maybe because that positive 50 is so worth it, we discount the negative part.
Or we've come to expect the negative parts because, well, this is what we signed up for. And I think this might be why some of us moms really struggle with the teen years because you've got a whole lot of negative 50, a whole lot of moody attitude and struggle with just basic responsibilities. You don't have as much of the positive 50 to hang your hat on.
It's like those words of affirmation and hugs and even the sense of accomplishment that you used to feel when parenting felt a bit more controlled or predictable. But then we get to a place where somehow it feels so hard to connect with your big kid or connect with those positive emotions we used to feel. The negative 50 feels so much more all-encompassing with our teens, maybe even greater than 50%.
What is it about this stage of motherhood where we can kind of anticipate that the future or the upside of what's to come isn't going to be as fulfilling as what we're letting go of with motherhood? I wonder if because we're predicting less upside, I wonder if that's why it makes perfect sense that our willingness to invest the energy and the effort to get through whatever negative emotions lie ahead for us, that essentially our motivation to get through that is less. And the truth is, no matter where we are in midlife, we're going to fill our time, right? We're all going to find something to do because every single day you use all of the time you're given. Whether you're sitting at home or scrolling on Instagram or building a business or playing pickleball or baking bread, whatever you choose to do, you're going to spend that time during the day.
And if you're in a place where you're interpreting the way you invest your time as not meaningful and not as fulfilling as you want it to be, it's worth taking a look at why you think that. Because you could spend eight hours a day gardening or organizing your closet or playing pickleball for that matter, and you could decide that that was a valuable and meaningful use of your time. But if you don't make that decision or if you don't take responsibility for the unconscious thoughts about those choices, then you might default to an unconscious perception that whatever you're doing, it's not good enough, that it's not meaningful enough.
The truth is, the way you engage in your life, the way you decide to engage in your life, is only going to feel fulfilling to you because you decide that it is. So what's keeping you from deciding that the structure of your life, the way it is right now, is meaningful? And maybe even more than that, if there's something you think you want to do or accomplish that you think would be meaningful to you, what's holding you back from trying? Is it fear of failure? Or simply the fear of putting in all that work only to believe ultimately that no matter what you do, it's still not going to be worth it, not worth the effort, not as meaningful as the chapter you're giving up now? Underlying all of these questions is a story about what you're making the quiet mean, what you feel like you have to let go, what you're making the uncertainty of the future mean, and the weight of the effort required to pursue whatever lies ahead. All of these stories can be layered with shame.
It's almost like, how did I get to this point only to feel so lost, so uncertain about what I even want and how to make it happen? Or how did I get to this place where I just feel so exhausted and overwhelmed, feeling like I don't have the energy for this, like I don't have what it takes to do this. It all feels so true, feels so heavy and overwhelming and disappointing to be at the stage of life, sitting here wishing your kid well and telling them, you can do and be anything you want to be in my life. I love you.
I believe in you. And meanwhile, you're back at home, in the quiet, and you're saying to yourself, I don't believe in me. It's so interesting too, because again, all of us have different perspectives.
There is not one right way to approach the empty nest. And there's certainly not one universal challenge we all face, because we're all different women and we all have different desires and struggles. But also, wherever you are in the process, I guarantee you, you are not alone.
The challenge is, it's hard not to sit in comparison when so many of us just don't talk about it. We don't talk about the struggles we're facing. That's why I often share stories of my clients in this podcast, and even stories from my own life, about how many different ways we all experience this transition.
Not only the transition to the empty nest, but the ever-evolving transition of managing your kids through their evolving independence, from middle school all the way through the time when they're getting married and having their own kids. This doesn't look like one thing for any one of us, but there's so much that we can learn from each other's experience and how we're perceiving the evolution of our lives. As I think about the answers to some of these questions, what am I making the quiet mean? What am I letting go? What am I making the uncertainty of the future mean? And the weight of the effort required to pursue my dreams? For me, I realize I'm feeling the grief of letting go of a chapter that I frankly didn't realize ahead of time was going to be as meaningful to me as it was.
It has been the greatest gift, but also the greatest surprise of my life. But I am in this place where I'm experiencing so many emotions even as I cheer my kids on and know that in the scheme of life this was supposed to happen, that they were supposed to leave, and they were supposed to go follow their dreams. And there's no part of me that wants to hold them back from that.
In fact, I've been working their entire lives to help them make this moment happen, that moment when they go out into the world and they fly. But also, the grief about letting go, about ending this chapter of motherhood makes so much sense to me. But I think we can shame ourselves out of feeling the grief, like we should be stronger than this, or we should be more grateful or more excited for our kids.
And truly, I want to say for myself, I'm choosing to honor the grief because it is so real and true. Letting go of this chapter, I refuse to be ashamed of feeling the grief of that. For whatever reason, I feel like I went through my first stage of the transition to the empty nest back when my kids were in middle school.
I was already feeling a loss of purpose and a sense of not feeling fulfilled in my life, even in those first stages of them pulling away and becoming just a little bit more independent. At the time, I felt so stuck and ashamed of where I was. And I even felt resentful because I was so frustrated about where I was and I didn't feel like I had the flexibility or the power to create something new.
I see the same frustration and loss of hope in so many moms in different stages of their parenting journey. And because I went through that transition early, reconnecting with who I am and who I want to be, I so deeply understand the struggle and the frustration of being in this moment of transition where you feel stuck and hopeless. I remember thinking, how did I get here? How did I get to this place where I've completely structured my life around my kids and yet I've had to give up so much of myself in the process? I don't even know who I am anymore.
This question of how to create new purpose and meaning in our lives becomes something each of us grapple with at different stages. But if you don't answer this question about who you are, who you want to be, you can live a lifetime feeling stuck, really feeling regret ahead of time because you never decide actively what will make you fulfilled and how much effort you're willing to put in to make that a reality. My friend, I talk a lot about the motivational triad and there are so many different mindset traps at play here.
But I think the surprising one to consider is this, as you look at the quiet, as you just observe the fact of the quiet in your house, I wonder what story you're telling yourself that makes that quiet mean something about you. What you did wrong, what you didn't prepare for, what you didn't appreciate enough about the past. Maybe the job you didn't keep along the way or the hobby you didn't cultivate or the friends you didn't make and how it almost feels like it's too late.
I've invested so much energy over the past five or six years building my coaching practice and getting it to a place I feel so grateful to be reaching so many women and impacting so many lives. I truly at times feel like I'm making an even bigger impact now in the work I do than I even did while I was raising my boys. And God knows, the women I work with in my practice, they are doing the heavy lifting.
But I feel so grateful to have the opportunity to be a facilitator and a guide in these incredible women's journey to become everything they know in their hearts. They have the opportunity to be. This is a gift to me.
And because I think of this work in this way, I feel fulfilled. I create that meaning for myself. I can't rely on the women I work with to create that meaning for me because their journey is their own.
But I know I'm playing my part, showing them a path and showing you a path. And for me, that feels infinitely meaningful. My friend, what's meaningful to you? Have you ever given yourself the space to ask that question? The truth is, our brains will often focus on the negative.
And in so many areas of our lives, we can judge that we're behind, that we're not living up to our own expectations. And so as you sit alone in a quiet house with all of those thoughts and judgments about where you should be and what you did wrong, it's all of those stories. That's what makes the quiet, which used to feel peaceful when our kids were little and napping, or when you had that moment of solitude and peace, the change in the way you perceive that quiet now can make it feel the opposite of peaceful.
So if there's part of you that's thinking, the house is so quiet and that thought feels really heavy, maybe even layered with a bit of shame and judgment, I invite you to ask yourself, what are you making that quiet mean? The answer to that question is the first step to reclaiming your peace and your sense of fulfillment in this chapter. The truth is, the stage of life comes with quiet. But you get to write the story of what that quiet means.
And if you want support in creating your big, beautiful life in this next chapter of motherhood, I invite you to explore my coaching program, Mom 2.0. My friend, you don't have to fill the silence with more noise and busyness and empty activity. You can truly choose to fill that space with intention, meaning, and connection. This is actually in your power to create.
Until next time.
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.
