THOUGHTS MOMS PARENTING TEENS AND ADULT KIDS ARE ASHAMED THEY THINK—“I DON'T KNOW WHO I AM IF I'M NOT A MOM” | EP. 232
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 know who I am if I'm not a mom." This is a thought that comes up so often in conversations I have with moms who are on the brink of the empty nest or who are already settling into it. And it can feel like a scary question.
For those of us moms who have invested so much in raising our kids, organizing our lives around them, structuring our days around what they need, or who needs to be where, what time practice ends, or what's for dinner, when that begins to shift, it can feel like not having them around leaves us feeling untethered and directionless. It's like all of a sudden there's simply more time in your day, fewer distractions. And what moms often realize is that that space gives them more time to feel.
It's almost like a bicycle wheel that keeps spinning when the bike's left on the ground. You're so used to worrying about your kids, planning your days around them, and thinking about who needs help, that your brain, like that bicycle wheel, keeps spinning. But then you start to realize it doesn't have to anymore.
And that can feel freeing, but it can also feel disorienting. I'll speak with women who tell me, I don't know what my purpose is outside of being a mom, or I don't know what to do with myself. Maybe even, I don't know what I want my life to look like now.
And if any of these thoughts have ever crossed your mind, I want to invite you to consider a different question. What if telling yourself, I don't know, is protecting you? Just consider that for a second. What if that phrase, I don't know, isn't a problem to solve, but a form of self-protection? Because if you think about it, not knowing gives you permission to stay where you are.
You don't have to change or commit to anything new. But you might be hearing this and thinking, but if I don't know what I want, how can I commit? And I hear you. But also, telling yourself, I don't know, can feel safer than putting yourself out there.
There's no risk, no risk of disappointment or rejection, no risk of failure or being wrong. When we tell ourselves we don't know who we are or what we want to do, in some ways, we're giving ourselves permission to not choose, even not to try, not to risk wanting something and not getting it. So I wonder, are there areas in your life where you're telling yourself you don't know? And could that actually be a signal that you're protecting yourself from something? When a mom says to me, I don't know who I am without my kids, there can be so many underlying reasons why that state of mind feels safer than trying something new.
But very often, the women I work with present not knowing like it's the problem, like it's a block. I just don't know. I don't know why I can't figure it out.
I don't know what's wrong with me. But if you really think about it, when you don't know something, the simplest way to find the answer is just to try something, to research possibilities or test ideas to see what might work. And it's interesting because when we're younger, we're so much more willing to do that.
Think about how you approached life after high school or college. You probably had no idea what you really wanted back then. But we can typically feel so much more willing to not expect ourselves to know when we're younger.
At that point in our lives, we didn't have any life experience. We were just figuring life out. And somehow back then, that was enough.
But now we're women in midlife with decades of life experience. We've invested our lives in raising kids, maybe even having a career alongside of it. And so with all this life experience, it's almost as if we tell ourselves that we should know, that we shouldn't be this far along in life and not know.
And so the not knowing becomes the problem in our mind instead of us recognizing that this is just the reality of this stage of life, that we're transitioning into something new again. When I'm working with women who tell me I just don't know, instead of tackling the big question of what's your purpose, I'll simply ask them, what brings you joy? What do you enjoy spending your time doing? And when you start to explore this question more around the concept of just joy, it can feel a little easier to answer. I'll often hear things like I love to travel or I enjoy reading.
I've thought about taking a class in photography or art. And sometimes, once these moms have given themselves a little space to think about it, they'll admit something a little bit bolder, like I've always had this dream of being an author or I've imagined starting a small business. Maybe I'd love to move to a new place or find love again.
But what's fascinating is how quickly these moms will discount these ideas. They'll quickly say, oh, it's just a silly idea or I don't even know why I'm saying that. It would be so much work.
I don't have any skills to do that. It's like their immediate reaction is to push down the desire as soon as it comes up. It's fascinating what comes up as we get curious about that.
When we explore it, there are often a few common fears that surface. One is, what if I'm not good enough at it for it to really matter? What if no one takes me seriously? Or they'll say, what if I put myself out there and it just ends up being this small little hobby that doesn't mean anything? There's this fear that if it doesn't turn into something big, that it doesn't approach some metric of success that we haven't even really defined in our minds, but that seems unattainable. We can fear that if we can't make that happen, then it's somehow not worth doing.
Moms will also often tell me that they're worried about what other people will think. They'll say, my family will think I'm being ridiculous or they won't understand. They'll even tell me as proof that they shared the idea once with someone, maybe their mom or their husband.
And when the response wasn't particularly positive, it felt like confirmation that it was a silly idea. I mean, it feels like too much of an uphill battle to have to convince everyone. And by the way, you might even think, maybe they're right.
Maybe it is silly. I've even had moms tell me that they have a fear that if they grow or change, that they might grow apart from the people in their lives. That if they start spending evenings or weekends at a class or pursuing something for themselves, that the people around them won't quite know where they fit in anymore.
And all of those fears just tap into our own inner insecurities. So one of the ways I don't know protects you is from the risk in your mind of trying. Because what if it's even harder than you expected? Or you think about how exhausting it'll be to have to put up with comments from family that aren't supportive.
You don't want to have to let people down by choosing yourself. Even worse, you can think about how you could put in all of that effort and hard work and let people down and still not get the outcome you'd hoped for. Just think about how staying in I don't know saves you from all of that pain.
Saves you from disappointment and feeling vulnerable. From having to experience that judgment. So in actuality, it makes so much sense that your brain would want to protect you from those experiences.
But it's worth asking, is the discomfort of trying actually worse than the discomfort of staying stuck? Because sometimes we convince ourselves that not knowing is the problem. But the real obstacle isn't confusion. It's fear.
Fear of being seen, of failing, of wanting something and not getting it. And so I don't know who I am becomes a safer belief than I want something new. There's another layer to this that I see all the time.
Sometimes this I don't know isn't just coming from fear of trying something new. It's actually coming from an ingrained sense of responsibility. The role of being mom in the ways we've always been can be really hard to let go of.
And even when our kids aren't home anymore, even when they're away at school or living somewhere else, we can still feel a deep sense of responsibility to stay connected to that role. I mean, the truth is your kids don't even have to be home and you can spend the whole day thinking about them, worrying about them, wondering if they're okay, planning what you're going to say the next time you talk. And this isn't necessarily wrong.
I just want to invite you to notice how much time and energy you can still invest in that role, even when your child isn't physically close to you. And here's the thing, when you're still actively invested in feeling responsible for your big kid's safety and success, then letting go of that role doesn't feel safe. And this can be especially true if your child is struggling or making choices you don't agree with.
You can feel pulled to try to manage and intervene, to try to help guide your child's path. And this can also feel true if your child isn't connecting back with you in the way that you'd hope that they would, when they don't call as often, or when they seem distracted when you talk to them or just wrapped up in their own life in a way that doesn't seem to leave space for you anymore. You can feel like it's your job to keep the connection going.
In fact, it can feel like if you stop actively maintaining that connection, if you stop trying to pull them back in, you might lose the relationship you worked so hard to build. And keeping hold of that sense of responsibility, staying vigilant, staying mentally and emotionally connected to your child, it can feel necessary because the alternative feels like failure or loss. So in this sense, the I don't know who I am could really mean I'm not ready to loosen my grip on this responsibility because if I start investing time and energy into myself, then I have to shift how much mental space I'm giving to my child.
And again, that can feel terrifying. Our worry can truly feel like a form of protection. In fact, it often feels like being a good mom looks like.
So letting go of that can feel like you're letting your child down. So it becomes much easier to say, I don't know what I want. Because as long as you don't know, you don't have to reallocate your time or set a boundary with yourself about how much emotional energy you're spending on your kid.
You don't have to redefine what responsibility means now that your child is older. And again, this isn't a judgment. You get to invest as much time and energy into supporting your kids as you want, no matter how old they are or how far away they live.
The question is simply, is hosing on to that level of responsibility creating the results you want in your life? Or is it crowding out the space you might need to rediscover yourself? Because sometimes underneath I don't know is simply the thought, I'm not ready for this role of being a mom to change. And that is very different from being incapable of figuring out what comes next. There's another related thought that we can feel deeply at this transitional stage.
And that's that nothing else I do will ever be as meaningful as motherhood. I've had women say that to me almost word for word. And the thing is, when moms say this, it's not even presented as a mindset or a philosophy they have about motherhood.
It's literally said as a fact. And listen, there is absolutely no doubt that this role of motherhood is special and meaningful in ways that are incomparable to anything else. But when we tell ourselves that nothing will ever be as meaningful as motherhood, what we're often telling ourselves is why bother? Why try to build something new if it can't possibly measure up? Why put in the effort if it's just going to feel like a consolation prize? And it's so clear how these thoughts just put out the fire of almost anything new.
Because if you truly believe that the best years of meaning in your life have already happened, think of the loss and the hopelessness of that for what comes next. But I do want to honor that this transition comes with a lot of grief. Letting go of the active years of raising children, it is sad in a way that I wasn't prepared for.
For so long, you're in the thick of parenting and you don't have time to think about anything else but getting through your days. And all of a sudden, all you have is time. And you wonder, did I even appreciate how good I had it? How amazing it felt to be adored and to share a love with these little humans.
And now we're supposed to let that go? So I don't want to discount the grief and the sadness that are a normal and almost inevitable part of this transition. But at the same time, grief is about the past. It's a recognition that this period of my life mattered, it was beautiful, and now something's changing.
But that doesn't mean that nothing meaningful will ever happen again. And sometimes we mix those things up in our minds. We feel the ache of missing who we were with our children, how needed we were.
And we interpret that loss as evidence that the best part is over. Of course it hurts. Change often comes with loss and grief.
But the truth is, that meaning doesn't disappear. It just evolves. You are still and will always be a mom.
It just looks different now. My friend, when we believe that nothing will ever feel as meaningful as motherhood did, we can stop looking for meaning. In fact, we decide ahead of time that whatever comes next won't measure up.
Now, what many of us hear when we start approaching or arrive in the empty nest is that people will tell us to find a new hobby. Pickleball is often offered as a solution. Friends will tell us the solution is just to fill your time.
Take a class. Go volunteer. And listen, there's nothing wrong with any of that.
But I want to invite you to think about this. Filling your time doesn't solve the real problem if the stuck feeling isn't actually about time. Because if the discomfort you're feeling is coming from what you're believing about yourself, no amount of busyness is going to change that.
And what are some examples of what we believe about ourselves if we feel stuck in I don't know? Well, I've lost myself to motherhood. It's too late for me to start something new. I should have figured this out by now.
I don't have the skills or the energy to try that big new thing. Nothing will ever feel as meaningful as motherhood did. Or if I try and I fail, it will have been a waste of time.
Or worse, it will confirm my worst fears about myself. These are the real drivers behind that stuck feeling. Filling your calendar might distract you from these thoughts temporarily.
But when you inevitably find yourself back in that quiet space, you're left facing that I don't know again. I mean, the truth is, you can be very busy and still feel lost. You can join that class or plan the trip and still be carrying that same belief that something is missing.
Because the stuck feeling isn't coming from empty hours. It's actually coming from the story you're telling yourself about who you are right now and what you're capable of. And if the mindset that keeps you from exploring that is I don't know who I am without kids, then the I don't know just shuts down curiosity.
It essentially shuts down your desire to be open to possibilities and experiment. Because when you tell yourself I don't know who I am, it sounds like the truth. Like you're just sharing the news.
But the truth is, this is simply a thought. A thought that feels heavy and convincing. But it's still just a thought.
And when we treat it like a fact, we stop getting curious about what's possible. The I don't know closes the door. But curiosity opens it, even just a little bit, to let something in that's new.
The goal here isn't to replace motherhood. And you don't have to set some high bar of achievement or prove anything to anyone. You just have to be willing to loosen your grip on that thought that you don't know and you can't figure it out.
And this is exactly the work we do inside Mom 2.0. In this program, we uncover the thoughts that are keeping you stuck in I don't know, and we gently untangle them. We look at the fears that are keeping you stuck and separate grief from hopelessness. We also talk about what it really means to let your role shift without losing your connection to your kids.
In this program, I give you tools to rebuild self-trust and confidence and let go of the beliefs that have convinced you that you're not capable of growing again. My friend, you are not lost. You're just standing at the edge of something new.
And your brain is doing its best to try to keep you safe. The truth is, there's no rush to figure out your whole life right now. You just have to be willing to ask one small, brave question.
What if I'm also allowed to grow? It occurs to me that we're watching our kids dream big for themselves and embark on their lives trying to be open to possibility, even when it's scary. And I wonder if we could take their example and be willing to do that for ourselves too. My friend, you are still and will always be alone, but you're also a woman standing on the brink of figuring out what's possible in the second half of your life.
You don't have to know all the answers, but maybe you just have to be willing to get curious and find out. 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.
