THOUGHTS MOMS PARENTING TEENS AND ADULT KIDS ARE ASHAMED THEY THINK—“NOTHING CHANGED THIS YEAR” | EP. 214
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.
There's something about this time of year that invites reflection. I don't know about you, but I feel like time seems to go by so fast. The passing of another year brings to mind that saying that we associate with motherhood, the days are long, but the years are short.
Ever since my boys hit middle school, I feel like the years have gone by very quickly. So on the one hand, you have this sense that time is passing you by, but also a sense that you're supposed to be doing something meaningful with that time. Maybe even that you're supposed to be growing or improving with every passing year.
When you think back to this time last year, I wonder what resolutions you tried to set. It might not have been anything lofty. Maybe it was just something about being more patient or enjoying life a little more, being more present with the people you love.
I don't know. It feels like big New Year's goals seem to be something that only Instagram influencers make a big deal about these days. For many of us, I think, especially us moms, raising and launching teens, our goals and resolutions tend to be more about how we want to feel in our life.
And so I wonder what goals you set last December. Is there any part of you thinking right now, nothing changed this year? I still feel anxious. I still second guess myself.
I'm still getting triggered by the same things, but the same people. I still react in ways I wish I didn't. If anything, we can sometimes feel more stuck because we're frustrated that things haven't gotten better.
So if a part of you is feeling this way right now, I want you to know that you're not alone. In fact, I felt this way for so many years. Year after year, I would set a similar goal.
And more often than not, I'd find myself right back at the same place, maybe even further behind, whether it was a goal about losing weight or starting new habits or breaking bad habits, or just being more present and mindful in my life. Year after year, I would find myself feeling disappointed in myself that I didn't quite live up to my resolutions, even when they seemed like they were relatively straightforward or realistic. And if my weight loss and habit goals weren't hard enough, I found resolutions around my relationships even more challenging.
I'd make resolutions about how I wanted to show up as a mom, as a wife, a daughter, and a friend. I would often focus on things like spending quality time with my kids, planning more adventures, reading with them more, or cooking dinner more. As a wife, I would feel like I needed to be more attentive to my husband.
I would tell myself I'd visit my parents more and reach out to my friends more often. I'd make resolutions around doing more. And inevitably, I wouldn't.
Sometimes I did want to and I couldn't fit it in. But sometimes the truth was I didn't want to. But either way, at the end of the year, I'd feel like I didn't do what I'd set out to do.
And as a result, it meant I hadn't been the mom or the wife or the daughter or friend that I'd really wanted to be. It meant I'd let other people down. But even more, I'd let myself down again.
Because I wanted the joy that came from my perception of what all that effort would mean for my relationships. But when I didn't create that, it felt like I was back in the same place. Nothing has changed.
Or I haven't changed. When we have this thought, we often don't even question it. It feels like it's simply the truth.
But this thought, like any thought we have, carries emotional weight. Our minds look at the circumstances of our life and they tell us a story about what it means. And typically, if we're thinking, nothing has changed, the story we're telling ourselves carries the weight of self-judgment, disappointment, and maybe even shame.
So if there's even a part of you that feels this way, stuck and feeling like you've been stuck for a while, that nothing seems to be changing, I want to invite you to question this. Because our brains love to simplify our lives. So they tend to overgeneralize.
At times like these, at the end of the year, we can tend to make sweeping all-or-nothing judgments about ourselves. And let's face it, our brains also default to focusing on the negative. So we zero in on what didn't happen or improve, what didn't get resolved.
Our brains focus on all of the goals we haven't yet achieved and the moments of our life that were messy. Our brains love to take these shortcuts, keeping things simple by overgeneralizing and focusing on the negative. It's the part of the motivational triad where our brains default to conserving energy.
But these sweeping generalizations we make as we reflect back on our year truly don't tell the whole story. In fact, what our minds are really doing is looking back on the year through a lens shaped by expectations and hopes not met. And honestly, even through the lens of the exhaustion we can feel as we come off the holidays and settle into this post-holiday moment where we feel tired and maybe even a little let down.
So we're thinking nothing has changed, but what's really happening is this thought is like an emotional shorthand for a mix of emotions we're feeling. And at the top of the list is probably disappointment. And disappointment is simply the sense that you wanted to feel different, and you didn't.
Maybe you wanted to feel more connected to your big kid, but you still find yourself walking on eggshells or second-guessing yourself. Or maybe you wanted to feel less anxious, but you can't let go of the anxiety or your tendency to hover and try to manage your big kid so that they don't mess up. Or maybe you just wanted to feel more at peace, but you're still feeling overwhelmed and exhausted.
It's disappointing, to say the least, to get through the year and find yourself in that same emotional reality, feeling anxious, disconnected, and overwhelmed. And this is where the feeling of disappointment starts to feel heavier than simply the disappointment that comes when reality doesn't meet your expectations. Because we're not just talking about how circumstances didn't change.
What we're really comparing is how our emotional experience didn't change. It's really about what we were hoping for ourselves. Because behind our resolutions is this hope that if we work hard enough or try to do things right, then something outside of us would make us feel better.
But when you get to the end of the year and you're still feeling anxious and disconnected and overwhelmed, it's not just disappointing. It's discouraging. It's like your hope is deflated and you can't help but start to think, what's wrong with me? Why am I still here? Here's the part I want to slow down.
Because this is where our minds tend to move very quickly from how something feels to what it means for us. So when you're still feeling anxious and hurt and frustrated or just stuck, it makes perfect sense that your brain would say, nothing has changed. It's simply your mind's default response.
The thought isn't even likely a conscious choice. It just feels like an emotional reality. But what if you got curious about whether or not it's actually true that nothing has changed? Because we tend to assume that change should feel obvious.
That if we were really growing or evolving, we would feel different by now. So when those familiar painful emotions are still there, our brains judge that we're having the same feelings. Maybe we're even reacting in the same way or struggling with something that feels similar.
And so our brains naturally default to nothing has changed. But think about this for a second. Painful emotions, even the ones that seem very familiar to you, they're not proof that nothing has changed.
They're just proof that you're human, experiencing human emotions. In fact, emotional growth doesn't mean that you stop feeling anxiety or self-doubt. It doesn't mean you never get triggered again.
And it definitely doesn't mean that you never experience hard moments in your life. In fact, I would argue that as a mom raising big kids, the challenges inevitably keep coming. You get through one crisis or phase, and then you move on to the next one.
And you're constantly navigating this ever-changing landscape. As our kids get older, the importance and the impact of the decisions we make and they make feel bigger. And the margin for error feels way smaller.
And meanwhile, the circumstances are constantly changing. With my boys, anytime I sense that everything is good and okay, wait five minutes and then there'll be another big test to take, or a professional hurdle, or some challenge in a relationship. Or honestly, just a mood I don't know how to read or how to help.
So at what point, truly, are we supposed to feel at peace? Honestly, if we try to measure our own growth by whether or not life feels easier, it's going to feel like we're failing a lot of the time. Because the circumstances we're facing are constantly changing. And with every new moment, life is asking something new of you.
Consider this, the personal growth at this stage of motherhood often looks like feeling those same familiar uncomfortable emotions, anxiety, uncertainty, fear, grief, but feeling them in the context of new unfamiliar situations. You're still feeling anxiety, but the circumstances feel bigger. You're still uncertain about what the right path to take is, but these decisions you're making are new and they feel higher stakes.
You used to feel frustrated that your kid was slow to learn to tie their shoes, and now you're frustrated that they're struggling in school, or depressed, or not launching, or just being obnoxious. It really is true when they say little kids, little problems. Big kids, well, you know it from personal experience.
My friend, the weight of the emotions you're holding right now as a mom, you couldn't even fathom having this strength 10 years ago. But the truth is you are still showing up, trying your best, trying to navigate uncertainty in situations that feel like they're big stakes, trying to support your big kid when you have less control and less influence than ever. And you are still showing up.
My friend, could you have met the moment you're in right now 10 years ago? I can tell you without a doubt that for me the answer is a resounding no. I wouldn't have been prepared. And one of the biggest reasons why is that every single year of my big kid's life, I have been learning to let go.
And I don't mean that in some theoretical, inspirational way. I mean letting go in a very real, very imperfect way. Like letting go of control, even when I didn't want to.
Slowly letting go of the idea that it was my job to prevent every mistake my boys make. In small ways, letting go of the belief that if something went wrong, it meant I had failed. And I've had to learn some of these lessons again and again, but with increasingly bigger challenges.
First, I let go of their hand when they learned to walk. Then I let go of the back of the bike, even though I was still terrified they were going to crash and fall. Eventually, I let them go to friends' houses without me.
I let them study on their own and judge for themselves whether or not they'd studied enough. I let them drive off in a car that they were driving. Then I let them go to college and live very far away from me.
And all along the way, I've done this. I've let go. Not always because I wanted to, but because it was clearly what came next.
And I had to learn how to rise to that next stage, to that next challenge. More and more, I realize as much as I still want to hold on, I can't. Because there are so many aspects of my boys' life that I can't even grab onto if I wanted to.
I can't control how their friends treat them or how their professors grade their work. I can't control how they act, whether or not they're with me. And I can't control their choices.
And my friend, I know that you are in this same boat with your big kid, navigating this tricky balancing act between holding on and letting go. And you have also had to learn and grow at every single stage of your kid's development. Every challenge has asked more of you, that you trust a little bit more, that you hold yourself back a little bit more thoughtfully.
You've had to learn how to increasingly sit with the discomfort of uncertainty. And these changes have been happening inside of you, slowly but definitively, for the past two decades as a mom. So when you tell yourself that nothing has changed, I want you to picture that version of you letting go of your toddler's hand when they learn to walk.
Because the mom you are now, she's learning to let go of something that feels so much more risky, so much heavier. And you are still here, still standing. And you haven't given up yet.
My friend, I have no doubt that over the past year, you have shown up in situations that would have broken you 10 years ago. You're facing worries you couldn't have handled back then. You're having conversations you wouldn't have known how to have 10 years ago.
And none of that happened overnight. The truth is that year after year, you've been asked to let go a little bit more. And you have.
Even when it was hard. Even when you told yourself nothing was changing. Something was.
And maybe that incremental, small, step-by-step growth of learning to let go, it's the hardest to see, but it matters so much. You may be feeling the same emotions, but you're not facing the same circumstances. And you are also not facing them as the same woman you were 10 years ago.
So the question isn't, why do I still feel anxious? It's, what am I being asked to navigate now that I've never navigated before? Because when you see growth as your capacity to meet what's changing, rather than your ability to eliminate discomfort, it becomes clear that you haven't been stuck. You have been constantly evolving, learning, becoming that next version of yourself, even if it hasn't felt like progress. And this is true for your role as a mom, but also as a woman meeting the challenges of your life.
Your circumstances are always changing. Are you giving yourself credit for rising to those challenges year after year? So as we turn into a new year and you're thinking, nothing has changed, I want to invite you to pause before you believe it. Because what that thought is really pointing to isn't that nothing is changing, but rather that your old ways of showing up aren't working anymore.
And the new ways haven't totally taken root. You're being asked to parent and live your life, facing an ever-changing set of circumstances. And in your role as a mom, you have less and less control and more uncertainty, which requires you to tap into an increasing threshold of trust every single year.
Trusting you're a big kid, but more importantly, trusting yourself. That space can feel so challenging, but that doesn't mean nothing's changing. You are in the liminal space between who you've been and who you're becoming.
And that space feels uncomfortable because it's asking something new of you. This season of motherhood is about learning how to meet the ever-changing circumstances of your life as that next version of yourself, as a mom and as a woman approaching her next chapter. And that constant evolution, my friend, is growth.
And if you're listening to this and realizing that you're ready for support in navigating this liminal space, in learning how to create more confidence and trust in yourself, that's exactly what we do in Mom 2.0. Mom 2.0 is a highly personalized coaching program for you if you're a mom raising and launching big kids, and you know that the old ways of parenting and handling what's going on inside of you aren't working anymore. This program is for the mom who recognizes that she's constantly in the process of letting go, but wants to feel more at peace and confident and connected in the process. This work isn't about changing who you are.
It's about understanding your mind, learning how your emotions actually work, and developing the skill set to meet uncertainty without losing yourself in it. If this resonates with you, I invite you to learn more about Mom 2.0 and you can find all of the details in the show notes. As I close, I want to offer you this.
If it feels like nothing has changed this year, it may be because the change has been happening in the hardest places to measure. In how you're meeting the uncertainty of your life, in how much you're letting go, in how you're learning to stay present in your life without needing to control all of the outcomes. And that kind of growth doesn't show up in resolutions or results, but it shapes who you are becoming.
So I wonder if you could give yourself just a little bit of credit for how much you have grown, even as you look ahead to how much more you're going to grow in the future. 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.
