THOUGHTS MOMS PARENTING TEENS AND ADULT KIDS ARE ASHAMED THEY THINK—“I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT I WANT ANYMORE” | EP. 218
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.
I don't even know what I want anymore. I remember having that thought years ago when my boys were still in elementary school. They were old enough at that point that they started to have activities that they would go to every week that they actually enjoyed.
And one of those was music school. Every Sunday, they'd leave the house together to play in a band that was part of that school. And my husband, thankfully, was willing to take them because it was a four-hour affair between driving there and the music sessions and lessons for both boys.
And at first, I loved it. It had been so long since I'd had this open space to myself without the boys at home. And the quiet felt like a gift.
The house was still. I felt like I could breathe. I remember thinking in those early days, Oh, this is nice.
But then something about it started to feel different. Every Sunday, that quiet would come again. And I started realizing I was spending the entire time doing the same things.
Cleaning up the kitchen. Folding laundry. Catching up on all the things I hadn't had time to do when the boys were home.
And at first, I was glad for the chance to do those things. Finally, it felt like I was starting to get on top of my responsibilities at home. Except one day, in the middle of folding yet another load of laundry, I felt this unexpected heaviness.
Here I was in this open space. It was time for me. But I didn't actually know what to do with that time.
It wasn't even like I was asking myself these big existential questions like, What's my purpose? It was more like I was asking myself, What would feel good to me right now? Or what is it that I could be doing right now just for me? And I didn't have an answer. And to be honest, that felt uncomfortable. Almost embarrassing.
I mean, I thought of myself as someone with interests and friends. It wasn't like I was lost. But when I had this time for myself, it was like I didn't know what to do with it, other than taking care of everyone else.
I'll be honest, for a long time, I think one of the feelings that started to come up for me was resentment. Because there was a small and ugly part of me that felt like I had to be doing all of this work so my boys could go pursue their dreams. And yet, here I was with this open space in my day, and no one was making me do anything.
And yet, I had no idea what to do with that time. The truth is, I wasn't being deprived of the freedom to do what I wanted. I was just totally disconnected to that desire.
And I know that I am not alone. This feeling comes up when your kids become teens and are increasingly independent. They're gone more often and less interested in being around you, so you have more time in your life that's your own.
Then your big kid starts driving themselves, and suddenly your mornings and afternoons are freed up again. And then that big moment when you drop your kid off at college and come home to that empty house, and you find the structure of having a kid at home, even just someone to grocery shop for and cook dinner for, all of that is suddenly gone. There are so many different moments where this comes up for us as moms, where we have more space.
And instead of feeling freeing, it feels confusing. Because for so long, your time has been organized around someone else's needs, someone else's schedule. And when that organizing force becomes less structured, it's like we've lost the muscle to organize our lives around ourselves.
So if you've ever had that thought, I don't even know what I want anymore, whether your kids are 5, 15, or fully grown, I want you to know that you are not alone, and you're not doing something wrong. So often when moms have this experience, and when my clients describe this to me, they'll say, I've lost my purpose. I've lost myself.
It can feel like we've put our own needs on the back burner for so long that we feel like now there's nothing left. And just think about the weight and the meaning of that word lost. It seems to imply that we don't have something, and we don't know how to find it.
I mean, there's a whole emptiness self-help industry around helping you find your purpose, as if other people can somehow create it or locate it for you. But I want to offer a bit of a reframe today, something to consider if you're also in this place of feeling a little lost and unsure of what you want. What if you haven't lost yourself? The truth is, I don't actually think you don't know who you are.
In fact, I think a lot of us moms are incredibly self-aware, sometimes to the point of being overly critical of ourselves. You know your strengths when you actually take the time to give yourself credit for them. And you also know the ways you wish you showed up differently.
So you know who you are. And I also don't think you don't know what you care about. Most moms I work with care deeply about their kids, their relationships, their values, the kind of woman they want to be.
I think in your heart, you are very connected to these things. But knowing what you care about is also different from knowing what to do with your time. It's one thing to know your values.
It's another thing to sit with an open afternoon and ask yourself, what do I want to do right now? What feels meaningful? What would I enjoy? Especially when it's been a really long time since you've asked yourself these questions. And a big reason for this is because for years, you've learned how to be needed. In fact, I would even argue that we learned how to be needed as a survival skill.
It's interesting when you think about it, how much moms are praised for being able to juggle all the needs and responsibilities of caring for their families. From early on in our kids' lives, being needed meant being useful. So our time, in fact, became very valuable and meaningful.
Caring for our kids, it was a way for us to feel like a good mom, a good partner. So we got really skilled at being responsive. We notice what everyone else needs before they even have to ask.
Motherhood is like this constant game of triage, where you're always looking to optimize and manage your time effectively. It's like the right thing to do is to be productive and make the most out of every second so that you can keep everybody on track. I work with a woman who has a big family and often feels overwhelmed by caring for all of them.
She tells me how guilty she feels when she scrolls on her phone or, God forbid, takes a nap. We talk through the responsibilities of her day. She's up with the kids bright and early, getting them to school.
She's taking care of the home and then getting the kids after school, making dinner, cleaning up again. Her workday essentially spans from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. And yet she feels guilty for taking an hour or two for herself. And the moms who work outside the home feel this as well.
Here they are, employed outside of the home, and then they come home to their second job, and they often feel guilty about taking the time and space to care for themselves. We all have the same 24 hours in every day. But as moms, when we're in the thick of raising our kids, every minute of that time becomes something we have to fill with the long to-do list of being a good mom.
So making space for something just for us, just because it feels good to us, can feel unnecessary, even indulgent. Thinking of ourselves and our own wants and needs as unnecessary, for many of us, has become a habit. Not even something we're choosing consciously, but something that we default to, always putting our own needs last.
Or simply not asking ourselves what we really would want just for us. And even as our kids grow up and need us less, our brains are still operating from this default habit of looking for where we're needed. Because the truth is, we've been rewarded for filling those needs throughout our kids' lives.
Whether from the smile our kid gave us when we came through for them, or simply the dopamine hits we've experienced from juggling the list for once successfully. So we're still looking for those rewards. Still anticipating needs, and looking for that thing that needs to be done.
Even though there's a lot less that our kids actually need us for, or want us to be involved in. But we want to be useful and productive. And so, we focus on laundry, and cleaning the house, paying the bills.
And my friend, I don't think any of this is because we're not capable of wanting something for ourselves. Or figuring out what that might be. I truly believe that it's because being needed has been this organizing structure for our lives for a really long time.
The truth is, when you find yourself in this place, of realizing you have a bit more space, that you don't really know what to do with, it's not like you feel dramatically unhappy. In fact, often everything about your life might look fine from the outside. But what you feel on the inside is this low level of sadness.
Or restlessness. Maybe you even feel some degree of irritation that's a bit surprising. For me, it showed up as resentment that felt ugly and uncomfortable.
And because we don't want to feel this way, we start judging ourselves. Maybe even gratitude-shaming ourselves. Especially if there's nothing tangible that seems really wrong.
So instead of getting curious, we can push those emotions down and just try to stay busy. And I think this is how many of us operate for a really long time as moms. We don't get curious.
We don't ask ourselves what we want. Or what it would look like to focus on ourselves again. Because it seems like focusing on our families is the right thing to do.
And this isn't a judgment about the effort we put into raising our kids. Believe me, I put my whole heart into raising my boys too. But at some point, every single one of us is going to realize that we are not needed in the same way anymore.
That there's more space. And simply not enough laundry to fill it. For me, I started to feel that pretty early on with my boys.
For other moms, it doesn't happen until their kids leave the nest. You might be somewhere in the middle. But no matter where you are on that journey, you can find yourself surprisingly disoriented when you have this extra space that you don't know how to fill.
And what's so interesting is that instead of saying to ourselves, of course this feels strange, we make it mean something's wrong with us. Or with our life. Maybe we think we should know what we want.
I mean, we look at other women and it looks like they seem to have it all figured out. So we beat ourselves up for being behind. Or for having done it wrong in the past.
I've had so many women say to me, I wish I'd kept my career going while I raised my kids. And even those women with careers have said to me, I wish I'd taken more time to develop my own personal interests and hobbies. We can feel like if we had just done something different in the past, that we wouldn't be feeling this way now.
You know, when we look back on our lives like that, when we replay our choices and tell ourselves that if we had just done something differently in the past that we'd be in a different place now, we're retroactively trying to optimize our time. Still trying to problem solve our lives. But then judging that we didn't do it right in the past.
So I truly believe that it's not that you don't know what you want. It's that somewhere along the way, wanting started to feel self-indulgent. Maybe even not allowed.
And again, this wasn't something you consciously decided. And no one sat you down and told you you weren't allowed to want things for yourself. But over time as moms, we internalize this thought that I can want things once everyone else is okay.
So we wait until the kids are settled, until we feel less pressure or less anxiety, until all the chores are done. The problem with that rule is that we never really get to the place where the kids are settled. In truth, even when there's nothing to do, there's still plenty to worry about.
Even when your kids are away at college or boarding school, you can invest time and energy into thinking about them actively. Whatever's coming up next for them. Are they getting to class? Making friends? Are they getting enough sleep? Making progress applying for that next internship or that next program? No matter how old your kid is, just think about how much time you spend every single day just thinking about them, wondering if they're okay, mentally keeping their to-do list in your mind, wondering when you should follow up with them to make sure they're making progress.
Look, the responsibilities of motherhood are by no means limited to laundry, dinner, and carpools. In fact, long after your kids need you for those things, there are still so many ways we can find to feel needed. And if you've been telling yourself that you're only allowed to want something for yourself once things are settled with your kids, then I'm willing to bet that that time for you keeps getting pushed off into the future.
And at some point, it's not even because your kids really do need you to be on alert for them or worried about them, but because you've trained yourself to stay mentally engaged with what could go wrong. So the moment where it finally feels okay to turn towards yourself never really arrives. And before you know it, you've been waiting for a really long time.
My friend, anything you practice for a long period of time becomes a habit. That's simply how our brains work. And so after years of putting off your wants and focusing on the needs of others, your brain just stops spending energy on asking that question about what you want and need.
And this isn't us punishing ourselves. It's more the way we've adapted to our lives. Because the more you say to yourself, I don't have time to figure out what I want, the less energy you spend on it.
So then the more understandable it is that you simply don't know what that want would even be. It's truly the natural outcome of a life spent focused on what everyone else needs. It's not that you don't have your own wants and desires.
You've simply fallen into the habit of silencing those desires. So maybe the work now isn't to judge yourself for not knowing or even to force yourself to fill the time so it doesn't feel as empty. But rather to first question the rule that says you're only allowed to want something once everything else is settled.
So what does this look like? Let me give you a few tangible examples because it can look different at different stages of motherhood. If your kids are still living at home, the thought running in your mind might be something along the lines of, I don't have time for myself right now. There's just too much going on.
I have to focus on juggling the kids' schedules, making sure everyone's okay. They've done their homework and that they're doing well in school. You're mentally monitoring your kids to make sure they're on the right track, making the right friends, or not feeling lonely.
They're not making bad choices. So even as they grow up and they don't need you in the same hands-on way anymore, your mind is still very much on duty. And if your kids are launched, away at college or on to their next thing, you might be starting to have that thought that you don't know what to do with yourself.
But again, it's easy to push that thought aside because your mind is still very much connected to your kids. You're thinking about how they're adjusting at school, whether they're happy, if they're struggling in ways they're not telling you about. You're still watching for signs, texts that sound off, or the phone call they don't return.
And you know what's funny? I was actually surprised at how much you actually get to see your kid once they go off to college. I mean, it is an adjustment, yes. But you send them off and then parent's weekend is a month or two later.
And then there's Thanksgiving. And then there's the long winter holiday. And if your kid goes to school close to home, they might be home more often.
Some parents even regularly go to visit their kids if they're playing sports or engaged in some activity where they perform. And so again, even when your kids leave the nest, it's possible to arrange your calendar around their lives. But even more than that, even without regular visits, you can arrange your mind and emotional energy around your kids and their lives wherever they are.
You're still holding space for them, waiting to be needed, available just in case. You might tell yourself you shouldn't worry as much anymore. But you do.
You're thinking about whether they're happy, whether they're struggling. You might not even be fully aware of how much space all this worry and mental energy still takes up in your life. So across each of these stages of motherhood, the pattern is the same.
There's more space, but it doesn't feel fully yours, available for something new. So how do you actually break this habit of putting yourself last, of waiting until everything feels settled? What I see often is that our first instinct is to focus on what we're going to do differently. We say to ourselves, I'll pick up a hobby, maybe start exercising more, spending more time with friends.
Maybe I'll take a class. But then somehow we don't do it. We don't follow through.
Or we try it once and we don't feel inspired or excited, so we just drop it. And sometimes it's because we're picking hobbies or activities that don't really align with what we want. But I want to invite you to consider that maybe the real problem is that your mindset isn't yet in a place where you're open to the possibilities of what you want.
Because when your mental energy is still organized around everyone else's needs, it's almost impossible to hear what you want. So even when you try to do something for yourself, it can feel forced. Like you're checking a box instead of connecting with something that really matters to you.
When that happens, your brain takes it as proof that this whole idea of focusing on yourself doesn't really work. But what's really happening is that you haven't yet questioned that driving mindset that your first priority is everyone else, that you need permission to focus on yourself, and that you'll get that once everyone else is okay. This is why the work isn't about finding the right thing to do.
It's about rebuilding your relationship with yourself, learning how to trust and listen to your own wants and desires again. And that starts with understanding how to let go of the need to be needed without letting go of your kids. And this is exactly what we do inside of Mom 2.0. This is a 10-week, highly personalized coaching experience where I help you understand what's driving your thoughts, emotions, and choices so that you can shift from reacting from habit to living a life of purpose and intention.
In this program, we work together on letting go of the anxiety, pressure, and self-judgment that keeps you focused outward and we rebuild your ability to trust yourself and create a life that feels full and meaningful. So if you're tired of feeling stuck or unsure of what you want, and you're ready to stop waiting for everything to feel settled before you live your life, you need to check out Mom 2.0. My friend, if you've been walking around with this thought, I don't even know what I want anymore, please don't use it as evidence that something is missing or broken inside of you. Let it be a signal to get curious.
The truth is that you've spent years caring for the people that you love, and now there's more space to invest that energy in a new way. What if you don't have to wait for everything to be settled to give yourself permission to focus on you for a change? You don't need to know exactly what you want to simply start asking the question, to be open to the possibilities. Because my friend, you are not lost.
You just haven't been giving yourself permission to listen. But the answers are all inside of you, waiting to be discovered. 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.
