“I FEEL LONELY”—THOUGHTS MOMS PARENTING TEENS AND ADULT KIDS ARE ASHAMED THEY THINK | EP. 292
Welcome to the Almost Emptiness 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 feel lonely. Do you ever feel this way? I think it's actually something we often don't want to admit. Maybe not even to ourselves.
You could even have people around you. A partner, friends, people who you love in your life. From the outside, maybe there's no obvious reason why you should feel lonely.
But every once in a while, you look around your life, and there's this sense that something's missing. I'll be honest, I've been noticing this in my own life lately. Both of my boys are out of the house now.
My oldest has actually been gone for a few years. And my youngest was home all summer, and now he's gone back to college. And he's actually told me quite a few times that he probably won't ever be at home again for long periods of time.
And that's my youngest. The house without my boys is so much quieter. But often what I notice is that I don't actually mind the quiet.
It's the loneliness that feels uncomfortable. It's so interesting because my boys are launched, and they're doing everything I've ever wanted them to do. They're out busy creating their lives, and I want this for them.
And still, I miss them. I miss the version of life where our worlds overlapped more. Those little moments of connection that happened just because we were all living under the same roof.
Life always felt so full when my boys were around. And now my life feels just a bit emptier without that. And I hear from moms all the time some version of the thought, I feel so alone.
And it feels so vulnerable to admit, as if we're sharing one of our deepest, darkest secrets. I think it's so easy to think unconsciously that we shouldn't feel alone. So today I want to unpack this thought, and all the reasons we do, in fact, feel lonely during this stage of motherhood.
This feeling can actually come from a few different places. And I think understanding where your loneliness is actually coming from matters. Because not all loneliness is asking the same thing of us.
So as I explore some of the different ways loneliness can show up in our lives as our kids grow up, my hope is that in walking through this, you might understand your own experience a little better. And maybe feel just a little less alone in it. One reason I think the stage of life can feel especially lonely is that the relationship we have with our kids is changing at the exact same time that they're becoming less present in our day-to-day lives.
And if you really think about it, those are actually two different things. Sometimes you miss your kid because they're just not physically there. You miss seeing their face.
You miss hearing what's happening in their day. You miss those little interactions that used to happen without any effort. You didn't have to schedule a call or wait for a text back.
You were just living alongside of each other. And if you're lucky to have a close relationship with your kid, or to have had one in the past, losing this day-to-day connection can bring up a lot of feelings. And yes, loneliness can be part of it.
Especially if you've had the kind of relationship with your big kid when you've spent meaningful time together when they're home. For me, I have to say that I feel like I have a really close relationship with both of my boys now in different ways. But when they're home, it doesn't necessarily mean we spend tons of time together.
But there is something about knowing that they're there that fills me up. I have access to them in a way that I don't when they're at school. And so saying goodbye to that can feel like loneliness and grief mixed together.
And I'm actually surprised at how, even in this second fall of adjusting back to the empty nest, those feelings are still coming up for me. And maybe even more now that my baby has declared that he probably won't be coming back. Sometimes loneliness comes up not just because you miss your big kid's physical presence, but because you're missing the kind of relationship you thought you would have with them.
Maybe your kid doesn't call very often, or they don't tell you very much. Maybe conversations feel more superficial than you expected. Some moms have said to me, my relationship with my kid feels transactional.
They only call when they need something. And then when you do see them, you find yourself wanting more time, or more openness, or more affection than they seem willing to give. And if your relationship with your big kid is strained, it's easy to feel like you lost something you thought you would always have.
I was talking to a mom the other day who said, I always dreamed of having the family I never had. And I tried so hard to create it. And now my kids are off living their lives, spending more time with their girlfriend and boyfriend's families.
They're just focused on their own lives, and it sucks. I feel so alone, and I don't know where I went wrong. And I want to acknowledge that this is a different and harder kind of loneliness that also feels like loss and grief.
When our kids were younger, connection happened so much more easily, and also on our terms. We got to decide what connection looked like. Family dinners, and movie nights, adventures together, and vacations.
And we also had so much more access. We knew everything about their lives. But as they get older, that changes.
And isn't it interesting that it's hard to pinpoint when it actually changes, but all of a sudden you look at your life and your relationship and realize how different it is. Our kids suddenly stop sharing as much. And they're the ones who decide how much time they spend with you, or how often they call, even how often they come home.
And even when we understand that this is a normal part of them growing up, it can still feel like a loss. I think this is where loneliness can get especially confusing, because we can be genuinely proud of our kids and still wish they wanted to spend a little more time connecting with us. We can be thrilled that they have friends and plans and full lives, and still feel hurt when their full lives don't include us as much as we'd hoped.
Those things can actually exist at the same time. You could want your kid to be independent and still miss being important in the same way you once were. And when that hurts, our brains naturally start looking for a solution.
We start thinking that maybe our kids should call more or should act like they miss us when they do. It's so easy to fall into the trap of thinking that it's our kids' fault that we feel so lonely. Because if they would just connect with us a little bit more, show us that they care a little bit more, then maybe we wouldn't have to feel so bad.
And on the one hand, that makes sense. If the person you miss would give you more connection, you probably would feel better in that moment. But this is also where we can accidentally hand our kid the job of being responsible for solving our loneliness.
And I don't say this as a criticism. I think it makes perfect sense that we would do this. For years, so much of our connection was built around our kids.
So much of our daily life was structured around being their mom. And they've been one of the biggest sources of conversation and activity and purpose and belonging in our lives. So when all of that starts to change, of course, we're compelled to look at them and think, maybe I just need to get more of what I used to have for my big kid.
But I wonder if part of the work in this stage of motherhood is learning to separate two things that can feel almost identical. One is I miss my kid. The other is I need my kid to make this loneliness and emptiness go away.
And those are actually not the same thing. Another place I think loneliness can sneak up on us at this stage of motherhood has much less to do with our kids themselves and more to do with what happened to the rest of our relationships while we were busy raising them. I've been thinking about this a lot in my own life lately.
Because if I'm honest, when I look back over the past 20 plus years, so much of my life has revolved around my family. And that's not to say that I haven't had friends or a life of my own. In fact, I've always worked and I have friends.
I've been involved in so many different organizations and communities. But if you ask me where most of my emotional energy and attention has gone over the past 21 years, it went to my family. And I think that's true of a lot of us.
When you're raising kids, there is always something that needs your attention. When they're little, you're dealing with shuttling them around and feeding them and getting them to playdates and childcare and activities. Then they get older and the logistics only get more complicated.
You want to be emotionally available for them and you're not even always sure what that's supposed to look like. They have all these activities and things that you want to cheer them on for. You want to make sure they're on top of their homework and all of their other obligations.
And then you get to college visits and applications. When your kids are home in high school, it feels like there's this ongoing process of places that were needed. And if at the same time you're also working or taking care of a home or managing your marriage or helping aging parents, dealing with everything else life throws at you, friendships can very easily become the thing that you'll get back to when you have more time.
Except sometimes that time doesn't really come. Or by the time it does, you look around and you realize a lot of those relationships have changed. What's interesting is that for a lot of us, motherhood actually gave us a built-in community for years.
When my boys were little, I was constantly connecting with other moms during playdates and school events, the interminable birthday parties, parents standing around on the sidelines of games or in the audience of performances. You met people because your kids were doing the same things at the same time. You didn't have to wake up one morning and say, I really need to work on building a community because community was kind of built into the structure of your life.
And some of those relationships became real friendships. And others were probably friendships of convenience. You were friends because your kids were friends or because you were both sitting at the same baseball field three nights a week.
Or maybe you were volunteering at the school. And those relationships were valuable in a way. They gave you people to talk to and people with whom you shared a connection.
But then our kids grow up and move on, and those communities start disappearing. You're not standing on the sidelines anymore or sitting through the school events. Even during high school, your kid might change friend groups.
And then they graduate and move away. And suddenly you aren't naturally crossing paths with some of the same people you used to see all the time. And I think for me, I noticed that over time, I've pulled away from many of the communities that used to give me ready sources of connection.
And it didn't happen all at once. During high school, I pulled away from many of the other parents of my kids' friends for a variety of reasons. I also stopped being involved in volunteer organizations where I'd actually formed really close friendships over time.
And as life has evolved, some of my closest friends have actually moved away from where I live. Overall in my life, I have wonderful friends. Some of them go all the way back to high school and college.
Different stages of my adult life. But most of those friends live far away from me. And if I'm really honest, there are also relationships I probably could have maintained more actively and I just didn't.
Because life got busy. Or they were busy. Sometimes moms would go by and we'd text and we'd say, we really need to get together.
And then sometimes we just never did. And I find it so interesting because your kids leave and you get to this moment where all of the time and the energy that used to be absorbed by family life opens up just a little bit. And you look around and you think, wait, where did everybody go? I think for me, that's a bit of a surprising part of the empty nest.
And even the years leading up to it. It's not only that your kids are less available. You may also realize that some of the other relationships that used to surround you aren't as available anymore.
And that can feel especially lonely because now you don't have these built-in communities bringing people into your life as readily. You start to realize that if you want connection, you may actually have to go out and create it in a way you haven't had to do for a really long time. And I don't know about you, but making friends at 50 or 60 feels very different from making friends at 20.
Again, when you were younger, you had those built-in opportunities to connect. You were in school or living with roommates, starting new jobs, and meeting people who were also building their lives. I think there's a natural openness to making plans and meeting new people during those stages of life.
Then we get older and everybody's life gets more complicated. We have careers and families, aging parents and health issues, marriages and divorces and moves, kids who need us in different ways. In fact, I was talking to my college roommate recently, and she's someone I've always thought of as more social than I am.
And she said that she also finds herself wanting to stay home more. She said, I wonder if maybe in our 50s and 60s, we're just at a time where we naturally become a little more insular. What struck me was that she seemed pretty at peace with that.
And I realized that maybe I don't always feel the same way. Or I should actually say, I do love being at home alone. And I really enjoy my own company most of the time.
And I also love my work. But there are also moments when I think I wish I had a little more community around me. In fact, I wish there were just a few more people nearby where connection didn't require six weeks of planning.
But I think it's actually also important that we're honest with ourselves. Because sometimes we'll find ourselves saying, I don't have any friends. When that's actually not true.
Maybe you have wonderful friends who live far away. Or there are people you love, you just don't see them that often. Or maybe you have women in your life who you really like, but the relationship hasn't grown into the kind of friendship where you naturally make plans.
So there can be plenty of people in your life and still be a gap between the connection you have and the connection that you want. And meanwhile, everyone else is busy too. So when a friend doesn't get back to you or it takes months to find a dinner date, it's easy to make that mean, well, I guess I'm not that important to her.
And sometimes relationships really do change. But other times someone else's lack of availability has very little to do with how much they care about you. Or other times you might go to that class or club and everyone seems too old or too young, or just not people that you see yourself bonding with.
So you make this big effort and then you come home thinking, well, that didn't work. And then our brains use that as evidence. See, this is why it's so hard to make friends at this age.
Everybody already has their group. I don't have any friends. I think social media can make all of this worse.
You see these girls trips or birthday dinners where a group of women are celebrating together. And suddenly it looks like everyone else has this amazing social life that's not available to you. Of course, one post doesn't tell you everything about a person's life.
But if you're already feeling lonely, your brain can easily use that post as proof that everyone else has something that you don't. And that's when loneliness can start to feel less like a feeling and more like a judgment about your life. Instead of just noticing I want more connection, we turn it into, I don't have enough friends.
Nobody includes me. There's something wrong with me or something wrong with my life. And now we're not only lonely, we're ashamed of being lonely.
And I think that shame is part of what makes this so hard to talk about. Because saying I feel lonely can feel like admitting that we're not capable of being connected. But what if the simple truth is that we've raised our kids, we focused on what was important to us in the past, and now the structure of our life is changing and we're becoming aware of something we hadn't really noticed before.
We want more connection. And I think there's one more layer to this because you can have people in your life. You can even be married and still feel lonely.
For example, maybe you and your partner have spent the last 20 years building a family together. And so much of your relationship is revolved around that family. There was always something to talk about before because there was always something happening.
And then the kids become more independent and some of that natural source of connection goes away. You look across the room at this person you love and maybe you realize you don't actually know what the two of you do with all of this new space. Maybe you still love each other but the relationship doesn't necessarily give you the kind of emotional connection you're craving.
Or maybe you and your partner are experiencing this transition completely differently. You're walking past an empty bedroom feeling this wave of sadness and your husband is thinking, this is great, we can finally do whatever we want. Maybe you're worried because your kid hasn't called in four days and your partner doesn't understand why that bothers you.
You're feeling this huge shift in your identity and your purpose and the person sitting next to you seems completely fine. That can also feel incredibly lonely. And of course, not everyone has a partner.
Maybe you're single or divorced or widowed. Maybe you've been parenting on your own for years. And in those situations, your kids may have been even a bigger part of the companionship and the rhythm of your daily life.
So when they leave, their absence can feel enormous. But I also think that there's something underneath all of this that's worth noticing. Very often when we feel lonely, we look outside of ourselves trying to find the person who can fill the loneliness.
Is it my kid? Is it my husband? Do I need better friends? But sometimes what's missing isn't necessarily another person. It's really about feeling disconnected from your own life. And I think this can happen so gradually.
For years, you've been focused on your kids' needs and then those demands start to go away and you finally have some space. But instead of immediately feeling free, you can feel strangely disconnected. You have more time, but you're not completely sure what you want to do with it.
And I think that can often feel a lot like loneliness too. Because maybe what you're craving isn't just someone to have dinner with. Maybe what you want is something that makes you feel engaged in your own life again.
Something you look forward to. Something that feels meaningful. Or somewhere where you feel like you belong.
A version of yourself that feels interesting and alive and connected to something beyond managing everybody else. And again, I don't think any of this means something has gone wrong. But I think it does help explain why loneliness at this stage of motherhood can feel so complicated.
We can miss our kids. We can wish our relationships with them looked different than they are. We can also realize that some of our friendships and communities have faded.
We might feel lonely inside of our marriage. And sometimes we can even feel a little disconnected from ourselves. And all of that can translate into us saying to ourselves, I feel so alone.
But just notice how feeling lonely doesn't mean the same thing for all of us. So this is your invitation, my friend. Instead of asking, how do I stop feeling alone? I think a more useful question might be, what is this loneliness actually trying to tell me? Because sometimes the answer might just be, I miss my kid.
And if that's true, maybe there isn't anything to fix. Maybe you're feeling the very natural sadness that comes with loving someone who isn't woven into your everyday life anymore. You can miss them without making their absence mean that your life is empty or that your relationship is broken.
And sometimes the answer is, I wish I had a different relationship with my kid. And that may bring up grief and disappointment. You may want more closeness than they're offering right now.
But there is a big difference between wanting more connection and believing you need your kid to show up differently before you can feel connected. The more we make our kids responsible for filling that space for us, the more pressure we can unintentionally bring into that relationship. And sometimes loneliness is pointing towards something we really do want to change.
Maybe you realize you do want more friendships in your life. Or more community. Maybe more time with your partner.
Or more fun or more experiences. Maybe that quiet is showing you that there are parts of your own life that you haven't been paying much attention to for a really long time. And that doesn't mean you need to panic and immediately join five clubs or find a new best friend.
I think it can start so much smaller than that. Maybe it starts with being honest about what you're actually looking for without judging yourself for wanting it. What kind of connection do you really miss? What kind of connection do you want more of? Are there relationships in your life that you actually can nurture? Or maybe you're waiting for someone else to reach out first.
Where might you be willing to put yourself out there a little bit more, even if it feels awkward? And maybe more than anything else, what parts of this loneliness are you simply willing to feel? Because giving that space to loneliness invites you to really get curious. Because I think some loneliness invites us to grieve and some loneliness invites us to create. The challenge is learning to tell the difference.
And my friend, this is exactly the kind of work we do inside Mom 2.0. Because this stage of motherhood brings up so much more than just the question of what to do with our kids. It also brings up who we are when they don't need us in the same way. How we stay connected when they're pulling away.
How we take care of ourselves when they're struggling. Also how we trust ourselves when they're pushing back. And finally, how we begin creating a life that feels meaningful and connected as our kids go off and build lives of their own.
In Mom 2.0, we work on learning how to feel the emotions that come with all of this without letting those emotions overwhelm you. We look at all of the thoughts that are making things feel even heavier than they need to. And we practice letting go of responsibility for what belongs to our kids while getting much clearer about what belongs to us.
And sometimes what belongs to us is noticing that something feels missing and deciding what we want to do with that. Not because there's anything wrong with our life, but because our lives are evolving. And you now have the opportunity to decide what you want it to look like from here.
And if you want support doing that work, you can learn more about Mom 2.0 through the link in the show notes. My friend, if you've been feeling lonely, don't rush to judge it or fix it. First, get curious about it.
What is it that's really missing from your life? And I invite you to consider that feeling lonely doesn't mean something has gone wrong. It may just be showing you where your heart still wants more. And once you understand that, you get to decide what comes next.
My friend, you can actually miss your kid and still feel connected to them. You can wish something were different and still be okay in the life that you have. And you can feel lonely sometimes and not make that mean that you are alone.
In fact, if you feel lonely right now, I'm right there with you. And knowing that, I already feel less alone. 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.
