MY LIFE IS BETTER WHEN MY BIG KID IS AROUND—LETTING GO AS YOUR CHILD BUILDS A LIFE OF THEIR OWN | EP. 277
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.
What happens when your big kid is doing exactly what you raised them to do? They're growing up, becoming independent, and building a life of their own. But instead of feeling simply proud, you also feel lost.
You know intellectually that letting go is part of parenting teens and moving into the empty nest. But knowing that doesn't make the change feel any easier. In this episode, I'm going to look at why this transition can feel like so much more than simply missing your child, and how to understand what you're really afraid of losing.
Because your child's life may be changing, but that doesn't mean your own life has to feel empty. Let's dive in.
Hello, my friend.
I spend a good amount of time on this podcast talking about how hard it can be when our kids pull away from us, or when they make choices that we don't want them to make. But today, I want to talk about a different kind of hard. The kind that can happen even when you have a beautiful and strong relationship with your child.
Maybe nothing has gone wrong. In fact, your kid could be doing exactly what you raised them to do. They're going to college, they're graduating, starting a career, maybe moving to another city.
Or maybe they've gotten involved in a serious romantic relationship, and suddenly so much of the time they used to spend with you is being spent with someone else. These are all things you actually want for them. And you also know it's what's supposed to happen, that our kids will grow up and build lives that are increasingly independent of us.
You know this intellectually, but then you reach a point when you see this happening, and you realize all this independence, it's everything you've ever wanted for them. And man, can it be hard. I've had moms say to me, my life is just better when my kid is around.
Some moms are lucky to have a child who they genuinely enjoy being around. Whether or not they open up to you or even spend a lot of time with you, you can feel this sense of joy and peace. Just having them be in your orbit.
Some moms have shared with me that they consider their big kid to be one of their best friends. Others have said to me, my kid's quiet and they keep to themselves. But they're just good, interesting people.
And these moms love being close to their kids, and having a chance to be connected to their lives. But then inevitably, something changes. Maybe they leave for college, or they move further away.
They could get busy with school or work. They spend more time with their friends. Maybe they fall in love.
Sometimes it feels like it happens overnight. You can feel like one minute you had your child, you understood your relationship and you knew what to expect from it. And then suddenly, you don't get to see them or connect with them in the same way.
And there is real loss in that. Anytime our lives change in a measurable way, we're forced to grapple with the reality that something that used to feel predictable and certain is no longer the same. And I think it's especially jarring when the thing that's changing brought you so much joy and connection in the past.
The truth is, when our lives with our kids change, as much as we know this is what we want for them, it's also perfectly normal, and in fact perfectly human, to feel that you're losing something in the transition. But as we consider these moments, I think it's valuable to ask yourself, what do you believe that you're losing? Because after coaching so many women through this transition, what I've noticed is that this loss is not the same for all of us. In fact, 10 different women could come to me and say, I feel lost now that my kids aren't as much a part of my daily life.
And then I could coach all 10 women, and all of them could be experiencing a completely different kind of loss. One mom might be grieving the physical presence of her child. Another might be afraid that less contact means she'll lose the close relationship she has with them.
Another mom might be looking around at her life and realizing she doesn't know what to do with herself. Yet another mom could be judging herself for the way she spent the last 20 years, convinced that if she'd worked more or worked less, she wouldn't feel this way now. I've even had moms say to me, I actually really like my life, but I worry that my kids or my husband won't be proud of me if I don't do something with myself.
We tend to use words like sad and empty, lost or even devastated to describe this experience. But this experience is actually so much more layered. It isn't just one thing.
For example, when your kid leaves home or they don't spend as much time with you as they have in the past, being sad because you miss them, it just makes sense. But when we struggle at these transition points with our kids, it's often not simply sadness that we feel. Sometimes moms will even describe it to me as feeling grief.
And if that sounds familiar, I think it's worth taking a moment to try to understand what's creating those deeper layers of pain. One layer of thinking I hear really often is the belief that we can't feel connected to our kid in the same way if they're not physically close to us. And on the surface, that feels pretty obvious.
I mean, of course, it feels different when your kid is right there in front of you. You can see their face. You can read their body language.
You can hear them moving around the house, even when you're not with them. And even if you aren't doing anything particularly meaningful together, there's just something comforting about simply having them nearby, especially when you have a good relationship with them. But I also want to invite you to get curious about what happens in your mind when you believe that physical closeness is the only way that you can feel connected to your kid.
One of my clients described this so beautifully. She told me, when my kids are home, I feel like my cup is full. She feels happy and at peace.
She loves having her home be full again and having those easy conversations that just happen naturally throughout the day when her kids are home. But then she described to me what happens when her kids leave. The minute they pull out of the driveway, it's almost as if her cup becomes empty again.
And at one point I asked her, my friend, why are you dumping out your cup? Because think about what's happening here. When your child is home, you allow yourself to be present with all of the love that you have for them. You let yourself enjoy who they are.
You notice how interesting they are and feel grateful for your relationship. And then they leave. And without realizing it, you tell yourself that you're no longer allowed to feel those feelings.
And you might be listening and thinking, Jennifer, it isn't the same. And I hear you. Talking to your big kid on FaceTime doesn't feel quite the same as having them sitting at your kitchen counter.
But it is interesting to consider, if you can love your kid no matter where they are or what they're doing, why can't you also feel connected to them no matter where they are or what they're doing? Because notice what happens when we tell ourselves I only feel connected when they're here. Well, that's exactly what we create. We feel disconnected when they're not.
Another way we can experience these transitions is that we can start to worry about what the distance or the change in whatever's going on with our kid means for our relationship. You start to notice that they aren't calling quite as often or they take longer to respond to your texts. Maybe when you do talk, the conversation feels rushed.
Or maybe they're spending much more time with that girlfriend or out with their friends. They just don't have as much time to give you. And so it's not a stretch for us to start thinking that we're not as much of a priority in their life.
You start to feel like you aren't as close as you used to be. Or you worry that this is the beginning of you drifting apart. And I think this is where it can be so helpful to notice that most of us have some idea in our minds of what a close relationship is supposed to look like.
Maybe to you, closeness looks like your kid telling you what's happening in their life without you having to ask. Maybe it looks like your kid wanting to spend time with you in their home. Maybe it looks like them calling every day or two or answering your texts within a certain amount of time.
Think about it. I'm guessing that you have an idea of what you think it should look like for you to feel connected to your big kid. And look, it's not that those desires are wrong.
Of course you want to hear from your kid. Of course you want to feel included in their life. And it feels great when your kid wants to spend time with you.
But it's also interesting to notice what happens when those preferences become the way you measure the closeness of your relationship. A few weeks ago, I was talking with a group of moms in my Mom 2.0 collective. And during an exercise we were doing, I shared that my son hadn't texted me in over a week.
And a few of the moms said, oh, that would not be okay with me. And they weren't judging me or my son. They were simply expressing how they genuinely felt.
In their mind, if a week went by without hearing from their kid, that would mean that something was wrong. And I think that's worth getting curious about. What do you make it mean when your child doesn't call? Or when they don't respond the way you hoped? What do you make it mean when they spend more time with their friends than they do with you? The truth is, the experience you have of the way your kid connects with you depends entirely on the story you tell yourself about what it means.
You could be thinking, they're busy, they're building a life. I miss them, and I'd love to hear from them, but they're doing what they need to do. Or you could think, I'm losing them.
And those two sets of thoughts create a very different experience of the exact same relationship. And look, I'm not saying that you don't have a right to want more time with your kid. And it also makes sense if you feel hurt when your kid seems less interested in connecting than you are.
But what I want to invite you to notice are the expectations you might have about what connection is supposed to look like. Because when the reality of your relationship doesn't meet those expectations, that's when we start to experience the relationship through the lens of everything we think is missing. And before long, we start feeling the loss of connection.
And not even necessarily because the relationship has been lost, but because it no longer looks the way we expected connection to look. A third layer that we can be experiencing in these transitions has less to do with the relationship itself and more to do with what changes for us when our big kid no longer needs us in the same way. Let's face it, for a long time, motherhood gave structure to our lives.
There were meals to plan, practices to drive to, problems to solve, decisions to help with. Even when our kids get older but are still living at home, there's still this sense that you're involved in the details of their life. And then, little by little, or sometimes all at once, so much of that goes away.
You wake up, no one needs a ride. No one's asking what's for dinner. No one's coming home and telling you pieces of what happened during their day.
And all of a sudden, you aren't the first person your kid turns to when they need help or have a decision to make. And again, this is actually what we want for them. We don't want our kids to need us to manage their lives forever.
But I think we can underestimate what it feels like to have spent decades being so necessary and then to suddenly feel far less necessary. And for some moms, this is where the feeling of being lost starts. It isn't just, I miss my child.
It's also, I don't quite know what my role is now. What am I supposed to do with myself? So often, we judge ourselves for feeling this way. Moms will tell me, I should have built more of a life outside of my kids.
They look back and are convinced that if they just made different choices, they would somehow be handling this transition better. But what I find so interesting is that I've had the exact same conversation with women who work full time. They'll tell me, I should have been home more.
I should have appreciated this time more. I was so busy trying to do everything that I missed it. So interesting that no matter the circumstances of our choices, we can always find ways to judge ourselves.
You imagine some alternate version of yourself who made different choices and that somehow that would mean you would now arrive to the empty nest feeling completely prepared and excited about what comes next. Some moms even take this self-judgment even deeper, thinking if being a mom has been one of the most meaningful parts of my life, what could possibly feel as meaningful as this? Because motherhood wasn't simply something you did to fill your time. This was a role that has mattered to you.
Caring for your family, showing up for the hard moments with your kid, helping your kid make those important decisions, creating traditions, making a home, all of that has given your life meaning. So when someone says go find a hobby or go play pickleball, those suggestions can feel a little lame because you're not really asking how do I fill my time? What you're really asking is what could matter to me the way this role has mattered? But let's face it, even the idea of finding new purpose can start to feel like pressure. Now on top of missing your kid and adjusting to a different rhythm of life, you think you're supposed to come up with some exciting, new, meaningful thing to do next.
And so many moms will just tell me I don't even know what I want. There's so many choices and so many unknowns. We don't even know where to begin.
I hear moms say all the time I just don't do well with uncertainty. And honestly, welcome to the club. Of course, it would feel so much easier if you knew exactly what your life was going to look like 10 years from now.
Or even if you had clarity about what the right next step should be. But notice what happens when you tell yourself I can't handle not knowing. You start looking into the future and imagining the worst version of it.
You picture yourself feeling lonely, unfulfilled, disconnected from your kid and unsure of what to do with your time. And then you start to experience that terrible future now. You dread it before it's even happened.
Moms will, in fact, come to me well before their kid graduates and tell me they already dread the empty nest. And meanwhile, their nest is anything but empty. So as you hear me describe all of these different experiences, there might be some that resonate and some that don't.
And the truth is, you don't need to talk yourself out of missing your child or convince yourself that face time is just as good as having them at home. You also don't need to think that creating a meaningful next step is something that you should be doing. More than anything, what I really want to invite you to do is to get curious about what is actually hurting inside of you.
Because saying to yourself, I feel lost or I'm devastated can actually mean so many different things. And when you don't take the time to really understand what's going on for you, when you don't understand what's creating the layers of pain for you, then the entire experience can just feel like this overwhelming, heavy grief. This is actually an incredibly complicated transition because it holds so many truths at once.
You can both feel so proud of your kid and all that they're doing to become independent and feel profoundly sad that this independence also feels like loss. You can feel grateful for the close relationship you've always had and also a little jealous that other relationships are starting to take priority in your kid's life. You can also feel a deep sense of purpose in the meaning of this role of being a mom and also feel totally lost as you think about what to do with the other hours of your day.
So my friend, instead of asking yourself, why am I having such a hard time with this? Maybe you can start getting curious about all of the many layers of your experience. And this is the work we do inside of Mom 2.0. You may understand intellectually that your kid is supposed to grow up and become more independent. But that doesn't mean you know how to feel steady when your relationship and your role starts changing or when you find yourself wondering what comes next for you.
Inside Mom 2.0, we discover the thoughts creating the deepest layers of your pain so that you can stop feeling so powerless in this transition. You'll learn how to stay connected without needing the relationship with your kid to look the way it used to. You'll also discover how to stop measuring your worth by how much your family needs you.
And you'll also learn how to move into this next chapter with more calm, confidence, and trust in yourself. You do not have to lose yourself as your big kid builds a life of their own. In fact, you can let go of the unnecessary pain of this transition without letting go of your child.
You can learn more about Mom 2.0 through the link in the show notes. The truth is there may always be a part of you that feels like life is better when your big kid is close. And maybe that doesn't need to be fixed.
But as your relationship changes, I want you to remember that your connection to your child is not only found in how often they call or whether they're sitting at your kitchen counter. And your life doesn't have to feel devoid of meaning because this version of motherhood is changing. You can miss what was without deciding that what comes next will be empty.
Maybe the work is understanding the seasons of your life are changing, but that doesn't mean that the best parts of your life are behind you. 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.
