WHO DO YOU WANT TO BE IN 2026?—PARENTING TEENS, LETTING GO, AND LEARNING TO TRUST YOURSELF IN THE EMPTY NEST | EP. 213
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 stopped to wonder how much you've already had to grow just to get here? As we step into a new year, so many moms of teens and almost-empty nesters feel caught between holding on and letting go of their kids, of old rules, of who they thought they had to be. In this episode, I'm not talking about resolutions or fixing yourself. I'm talking about honoring who you've already been, learning how to trust yourself through change, and discovering how to let go with grace, without losing yourself in the process.
If you're navigating parenting teens, the emotional complexity of the empty nest, or wondering who you're becoming in this next chapter of your life, this conversation is for you. So let's dive in.
Hello, my friend.
We're stepping into a new year, and this new year episode is one of my favorite podcasts that I do every single year. In fact, you can go back and listen to the past few years when I've done this episode. The first one I did was Who Do You Want to Be in 2023, and so this is my fourth year of this Who Do You Want to Be episode series.
And every year, I've taken a slightly different approach, honestly, depending on where I was in my own journey and what I thought would be helpful to you in terms of framing your new year experience. And I think what I've been struck by this year is the incredible compounding power of a sustained commitment to personal development. When I look back on my own journey, both as a mom and as a woman finding peace and purpose in my own life, what's kind of amazing to me is that everything I've achieved has happened because of very small, gradual shifts, small decisions, tiny mindset shifts, one on top of another and another.
And over time, these small shifts have created something I could never have predicted when I was in the middle of it. In this episode, we're going to talk about who you want to be in this new year. But before we even go there, I want to invite you to look back, not to judge yourself or to create a list of everything you should have done better, but to honor who you've already been, to honor the past versions of you, the versions who were doing their best, trying their best, surviving hard seasons of your life and showing up even when it was messy, even when you didn't feel strong or know where things were headed.
Because here's what I know. The version of you listening right now. She didn't get here by accident.
She got here because of all those other versions of you who kept going. So as we step into this new year together, my friend, I want to spend a moment reflecting on that truth. And I want to start with a personal story.
Because when I think about compounding growth, I think about where I was when I first found this work. It was at a time of my life where I felt really stuck. I was frustrated in my job.
I didn't feel much joy day to day. My life felt overwhelming and monotonous. And I was pouring so much energy into supporting everyone else, my kids, my family, all my responsibilities, that I kind of felt like every day was Groundhog Day.
I was constantly feeling overwhelmed by how much there was to do and juggle. And on top of that, I spent a lot of time judging myself. I judged my weight and how I ate.
I judged how much I drank. I judged how I felt emotionally and physically. So I was hard on myself.
Not only did I put a lot of pressure on myself to meet the demands of my life, but on top of that, I thought I should be doing a better job of taking care of myself and feeling better. So not only was I not happy, but I was judging myself and disappointed in myself for being unhappy. And I'll be honest, what made it even worse was that there was so much about my life to be grateful for.
So then I judged myself for that too. Like, who was I to be complaining? Why couldn't I just get my act together? I kept thinking that if I could just fix my bad habits, eat better, drink less, be more disciplined, then I would finally feel better. But when that didn't work, it just reinforced this belief that something was wrong with me.
The first real spark of hope came for me when I heard a life coach talk about something that completely shifted how I saw myself. She said that overeating and over-drinking aren't signs that something is wrong with you. They're signs that your brain is trying to make you feel better.
These bad habits are actually your brain's solutions. And I remember thinking, wait, what? There's actually a very rational reason I'm doing this? That idea almost felt too good to be true, but it made me curious. And that curiosity, that willingness to consider that maybe it didn't have to be this hard, is what changed everything for me.
Because for the first time, instead of judging myself, I started asking a different question. What if there's actually nothing wrong with me? What is the problem I'm trying to solve by engaging in these behaviors? What's incredible to me now when I look back over the past 10 years is not that everything suddenly became easy. It definitely did not.
In fact, if anything, the challenges kept coming. My kids kept growing up. And with that, the stress of figuring out where to hold on and stay involved and where to let go only got more complicated and stressful.
The very honest truth is my life didn't suddenly get better. But what started changing was me. And that happened slowly because I kept showing up to this mindset work.
In the beginning, I had absolutely no aspirations to start a coaching business. Honestly, I just wanted to feel better in my life. And because I started dropping the self-judgment and got really curious, I began to understand myself very differently.
I stopped seeing my emotions as problems or even my reactions to my emotions as failures or signs of weakness. And what this meant is that I started trusting myself more, not because I get everything right all the time, but because I understand how to meet the hard moments of my life with compassion and strength. And now I have the privilege of seeing this same transformation in my clients.
And I have the gift of coaching women years into our work together. Women who trusted me early on with their hearts and their fears. Their lives are all different, but without exception, every single one of them has grown in ways they never would have predicted.
And this isn't because they beat themselves up with big goals and judgment and willpower. It's because they got curious and stayed committed to that curiosity. And so in the process, they built a new relationship with themselves.
And this, my friend, is the power of taking one small step at a time, believing in the cumulative power of that sustained commitment. As you hear this and you think back over the past five years of your life, I wonder if you give yourself any credit for how far you've come. I don't think most of us do.
And I think a lot of that is because the growth doesn't feel that dramatic or even impressive when we're in it. The other part is that we're often so focused on whatever's stressful in our life right now that we don't take the time to look back at what we've already accomplished or successfully gotten through. The truth is, our brains are going to focus on the part that's hard, the part that feels risky or isn't working right now.
That's just what our brains do. They look for the danger and tell us we have to find the safety and the comfort. For me, for a long time, I was just looking for relief from the constant feeling of being overwhelmed and resentful.
And I see this all the time in my work. I work with so many women for whom anxiety feels like a constant companion in their lives. And without even realizing it, they start believing that the way to feel better is to make the circumstances of their lives feel safer.
So they try to control more or manage it by working harder, trying to fix it and find new solutions. I see it so often in my conversations with my clients. We focus on the struggle, the things going wrong, and we don't give ourselves any credit for what we're doing right, the ways we're adapting, the strength and the love we're putting into staying committed, not giving up.
We also don't give ourselves compassion for the ways we're trying to cope with the stress and the anxiety of our lives. For example, I've worked with women whose children have faced serious health challenges, and they'll tell me how they've coordinated doctors and researched treatments and advocated for their kid, held their families together. But then, they'll almost immediately tell me how incapable they feel of handling their emotions.
And I'm always struck by that disconnect, because here they are meeting some of the hardest moments of their lives with courage and determination and love, and they don't see that part. So I want to ask you, when you think about the challenges you've faced, whether it's with parenting or relationships or just the daily emotional weight of your life, can you see how much intention and love you've already brought to those moments? I always think of us moms as these unsung heroes, superheroes without capes. We are tirelessly and loyally showing up for our kids in a thousand different ways every single day.
We're supporting them through the social landmines of middle school. We're holding our breath as they navigate high school and then college and then after college. We're constantly wanting the best for them, not just academically, but emotionally, socially, as human beings.
We want them to be kind. We want them to be responsible. We want them to feel confident enough to figure out who they are and what they want in their lives.
And as they get older, these hopes and dreams we have for our kids don't end. It's not like we let this go. But we do find that we have to juggle tricky decisions about how much to guide them and how much to step back and let them figure it out.
How much to protect them from their own mistakes or let them struggle and face the natural consequences of their actions. We're juggling how to stay connected with them while also setting boundaries. This isn't easy work.
And I wish I could tell you there are easy answers, some perfect formula, but there isn't. And that's why so many of us feel like we're getting it wrong so much of the time. In fact, as we navigate the hard work of raising and launching our kids, many of us don't see ourselves as strong, capable women navigating an incredibly complex season of our life.
What we feel instead is anxious, overwhelmed, frustrated, and sad. We don't give ourselves credit for the strength it takes to keep loving and hoping and believing in our big kids when the answers aren't at all clear. We don't recognize the courage it takes for us to let go of control, especially when holding on seems so much safer.
We don't acknowledge the emotional maturity it takes for us to say, this is my kid's journey, not mine. And yet this is the work we do every single day as moms, even when it doesn't always go the way that we hope, even when it feels messy and we're unsure and we feel like we're getting it wrong. We keep showing up.
We keep trying. The truth is, my friend, you are in a season of life where you are constantly trying to figure out how to support your child while also letting them become who they're meant to be. And this work is both incredibly hard and incredibly meaningful.
And you deserve credit for that. And when I really sit with that, when I stop and actually look back on my life, I can see that the hardest parts of motherhood for me weren't just about what was happening, but about what I was telling myself as I went through it. Now, as I look back on my journey as a mom, I can see so clearly how much my mindset at every stage shaped the way I experience motherhood.
For a long time, the story in my head was, my job is to take care of everyone else. And so in many ways, my needs came last. The narrative in my head was something like, this is just what I have to do.
This is what being a good mom looks like. I don't really have a choice. And if I'm being honest, there was a lot of resentment underneath that.
I love my kids so much, but I also felt like I had to do things I didn't really want to do in order to support them. And this felt terrible. Because I didn't just feel resentful, I felt selfish for feeling that way.
What I eventually came to realize, and this took a lot of soul searching, was that I didn't need to sacrifice myself in order for me to be a good mom. The truth was, I had a choice. No one was forcing me to do anything.
And so instead of blaming my life for my choices, I needed to take a step back and ask myself, what do I really want here? And I began the journey of understanding my mind and seeing my emotions differently, so that I could make powerful, intentional choices about how I wanted to show up in my life. Not because I had to, but because it's what I wanted, what I was choosing. And look, as I was on this journey of growing and changing, living into intention in my life, becoming the person I want to be, my boys were also growing and changing.
And with every new season of their life, I had new lessons to learn about how to support them in that next stage of their growth. It was a gradual and ongoing process of learning to let go, but also giving myself permission to know I didn't have to let go of my connection with them, and certainly not my love for them. And believe me, I haven't been a perfect mom.
There have been times I've done things I wish I could take back. But as I look back, I can also see and honor those past versions of me who were always trying their best, showing up in the only way I knew how at the time. I honor all of those versions of me who were scared and still showed up, who loved fiercely even when it hurt.
I never gave up. I always kept trying. And maybe most importantly, I honor the version of me who kept forgiving myself and kept choosing unconditional love.
I see now how powerful every single moment of that work has been, even though I couldn't see it back then. So let's turn this back to you. Because when you hear me honor those past versions of myself, I want you to know this isn't just my story.
You have versions of yourself like that too. Versions of you who showed up when you were exhausted. Those times when you made hard decisions without knowing how they would turn out.
Every single moment you loved your kids through moments that made you scared or frustrated. And I wonder what it would look like for you to stop for just a moment and really see all of those past versions of yourself. Can you honor the mom who you were five years ago? Maybe the one dealing with much smaller problems, but who was building the muscle of facing the bigger challenges you're facing today? Or even think back to last December.
What challenges were you facing that you've gotten through? How did you figure it out, even if it wasn't perfect? How has your past commitment and effort helped you become the woman you are right now, even if it's not quite where you want to be? Instead of keeping that tally in your head of everything you got wrong in the past, what if you thanked her, that past version of you? What if you pictured her not as someone who should have known better, but as a younger version of yourself, still learning, still growing, still figuring things out? She wasn't failing. She was doing the best she could with what she knew at the time. Maybe instead of judging her, you could offer her the same kindness you would offer a child who was doing her best, even when it was messy.
What if you could simply thank her for trying, and for never giving up on her kids? My friend, the woman you are today depends on every version of you who came before. And if you're willing to look for it, I promise you'll find evidence that you've already been showing up in powerful ways in your life, even if you've never given yourself credit for that. You don't have to pretend it was perfect.
In fact, I'm willing to bet it wasn't. It was hard, and it was messy. I know that's been true in my life too, but we kept going.
We kept trying to do our best. The fact that you're listening to this podcast right now tells me everything I need to know about you. You are a mom who loves her kids, and is always trying her best, because your kids are constantly growing.
And that's meant you've had to constantly grow along with them. And you have been doing that every step of the way. The mom you are today wouldn't be possible without all of the versions of you over the past few decades, who has shown up for her kids tirelessly, with unconditional love.
I wonder if now your work is to start showing up for yourself in this same way. Because the version of you five years from now is going to look back on this version of you today in the same way. She's going to see a woman who was learning, who didn't have all the answers, but who was navigating a complicated season of motherhood with love, and a spirit that refuses to give up.
Who do you want that future version of you to see as she looks back? And you don't have to set some big intention for the new year, or decide that next year you're finally going to get everything right. You don't have to become a different person, my friend. But I wonder if the work for you right now might be about building on the relationship you have with yourself, where you're more kind, more curious, and where you give yourself permission to be human.
The opportunity ahead of you is to learn how to sit with the discomfort of a life that is ever-changing and uncertain. Learning how to trust yourself when the answers aren't easy. It's also learning how to give yourself the same grace you've given your kids through every stage of their lives.
And as I think about what this means for me in my life and who I want to be in this next year, the word that comes to mind is all. I want to be in all of my life. Not because I'm accomplishing big things, but because there is so much in my life worthy of all.
My kids are constantly growing and becoming new versions of themselves, and I don't want to miss it. But I also want to be in all of my own willingness to keep showing up in my life, every single part of it. I refuse to give up.
I refuse to beat myself up. And I choose to trust that even when I don't know what's coming next, I have the capacity and the strength to meet it. I now know how to sit with discomfort.
I can feel my feelings, and I can make thoughtful choices without needing certainty. And maybe that's what it really means to be confident at this stage of life. Not having all the answers, but trusting yourself enough to keep going.
So as you step into this next year, my friend, I don't want you to pressure yourself to become someone new. I want to invite you to see who you already are. I want you to honor how far you've come, and I want you to believe that your continued willingness to show up imperfectly, honestly, with love, is more than enough.
That's who I want to be in this next year, and maybe we can do that together. Happy New Year, my friend. 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.
