Figuring out what’s next in your life in your empty nest can be difficult.  

This is particularly true in the midst of a global pandemic.  

For instance, your kids, who are college students, may be back in your house because the dorms are closed.  Or your adult child may have lost his job during the pandemic and is now living under your roof again while he gets back on his feet.  

If that’s the case, your nest is not technically empty.  In fact, it’s currently overflowing.  But you have still entered the empty nest season of life and you need to have an empty nest mindset. 

Or, your youngest child may be about to graduate from high school, so you are actually not an empty nester. But you can see the end of the line approaching, so your mindset is shifting. 

If this is you, keep reading because this post is for you.  

If you are like many moms, you have not been center stage in your own life for a very long time. 

You were center stage at your wedding and at your baby showers.  And perhaps you had a big milestone birthday party at some point, but other than that, you have not had a leading role in your own life in a long time.

Your children have had big 1st birthday parties, preschool graduations, kindergarten graduations, first communions, dance recitals, music recitals, all kinds of sports tournaments and competitions,  confirmations, bat mitzvahs and bar mitzvahs, sweet 16 celebrations, high school graduation parties, college graduation celebrations and more.  Your children have been the center of the universe – your universe. 

(And we wonder why that generation of kids can sometimes be so entitled and self-centered?  Hmmmm.)

The main point here is you have not been the main character in any of those events.  You may have been the director, the creator, or the producer, but no one sticks around for those names to scroll through the credits. Everyone has left the theater by that time. 

So here you land after  25 or 30 years of relative obscurity wondering, what now?

I want to start by exploring who you are – in other words, what are the components that comprise you.  This is step 1 to figuring out what’s next.  

Below is a pie chart of the average mom’s life.  For simplicity’s sake all of the slices of this pie are equal.  In actuality, every person is different so some slices may be bigger than others. For instance, some moms have jobs or careers that are very substantial so they might have less time for other things.  But, in this example, let’s start with equal slices of the pie. 

In order to figure out what’s next, you have to know what’s now. In other words, to know where you are going, you have to know where you are.  To know where you are now, if would be helpful to know who you are now. 

The slices of the pie chart are the broad categories that make up who you are.

Relationships 

These are the people in your life. Your kids, spouse, siblings, parents, cousins, in-laws, other relatives and friends. 

Career 

This is your vocation. It is how you contribute to the world. People think of it as how you earn money. But you don’t have to earn money doing this.  If you were primarily a stay-at-home mom, you earned $0.00.  But you absolutely, positively contributed to the world.  It’s just that no one paid you any money for it.  (You should have been paid for it.)  And if you are a stay-at-home mom with an empty nest, you have experienced a major career shift.

Hobbies and Organizations 

This is what you do and enjoy in your free time. You might knit, play the piano, bake, or are active in your church or synagogue.  Or maybe you belong to clubs, social groups, or other civic organizations.  That is all part of you. 

Your  Home

This is your physical home.  Some people don’t consider a home as a part of you. But for a mom, homes are our nests and our nests are really important to us. We decorate, declutter, clean, rearrange, organize, and spruce up our nests. We raised our families in those nests so they are part of who we are and what we do as moms. 

Personal 

Personal is everything that specific to you. It is your mind, body, soul, personality, temperament, emotions, spirituality, psyche, etc.  It’s what you like to read, what you watch on a screen, what you eat, what you listen to, what you wear, how you style your hair, your makeup, how you exercise, how you care for your health, who and what you surround yourself with and more. 

Ok, now we have discovered the type of slices that make up your pie,  let’s discuss the size of those different pie slices.  

As you go into the empty nest season, those different slices will contract and expand. That’s the shift that can throw you completely off balance as your children become adults.  

This shift is particularly difficult for moms who were at-home moms, or semi-at-home moms.

Your career was raising your kids. Your career was taking care of your family. That was your vocation and your main purpose in life.  And chances are pretty good that you loved that job.  

But when your last child graduated from high school, you got laid off.  You were downsized.  You were forced into an early retirement. 

Some people hate their jobs and they are happy to be downsized. 

But that was your dream job. And you were good at it.  You worked at it for 25 or more years. So it was a huge part of your identity.  It was your key reason for getting up in the morning.  It structured your life.  It was your purpose. 

Let me remind you, you have had a sneak peek at being downsized. 

Assuming you weren’t a homeschooling mom, when your last little one went off to full-day kindergarten you were downsized then too. And you knew it. That’s why you were sad and lingered for a while at that kindergarten door. 

But you snapped out of it pretty fast.  The reality is that life is super busy when you have young children.  You were just happy to get to go to the grocery store by yourself.  There is precious little time for self-reflection during the season of raising little ones. 

And besides, you got heavily involved with your children’s school, their sports, their music and all of their other activities.  Raising a family can keep you running and distracted, busy but happy. 

Fast forward to now.  Your last one is graduating from high school or has already graduated and that piece of the pie that you loved so much has been reduced. 

There is no easy way to get around it this time.  There is no quick snapping out of it.  

You are still a mom, but how you must mother has changed. 

And this time, it’s not so easy way to distract yourself. 

There is a void. 

And it could be a tremendous void depending on what else you had going on in your life.  

For instance, if you were mostly an at-home mom and did not have many hobbies and weren’t heavily involved with clubs, church or other organizations, you can expect to have a huge void when your nest is empty.

Given this fact, it makes no sense for people to shame you for feeling sad or lost when your last child graduates.  

Of course you are happy and excited for your child.  But you have received a demotion.  Your child-rearing days are over. And it will take you some time to adjust to the change.

It is normal to feel sadness associated with this shift.  Don’t allow people make you feel even worse.  You can feel happy for your child and sad for yourself at the same time.  It’s called being human.  

There is a real void in your life and you must figure out how to fill it. 

Until you find a way to fill it,  sadness, emptiness  and feelings of loss may continue.

So let’s explore how to fill that void. 

Moms fill it in a few different ways. 

Some moms do a one-for-one swap. 

Last child leaves, and mom goes back to school. 

Last child leaves, and mom gets a time-consuming, fulfilling job. That is a one-for-one swap and everything else in life stays about the same.  (How to find that time-consuming, fulfilling job is the topic of another post.)

Some moms swap one child for another. Maybe they start caring for a grandchild. Or they decide to adopt or more likely, apply to be a foster parent.  Or they adopt a bunch of pets.  That is likely how cat ladies are born.  

For other moms, there is a shifting that occurs. That extra time and energy that spent on your kids is spread equally between your relationships, your hobbies, yourself, your home.  And every slice gets a little bit more. 

Or sometimes, just one area gets the nod.  For instance, the last child leaves and it’s time to remodel the kitchen, re-do the bathrooms, and do a major whole-house declutter.

Basically, it doesn’t really matter which method you use to fill that void. 

You just need to recognize that if raising your children and caring for those children was your reason for being and your primary purpose in life, you are going to have to sit down and figure out another reason for being. 

It’s not that your children aren’t important anymore, they are.  You are still a mom.   But your children are adults now and they don’t require the time and energy they did when they were in preschool, middle school or high school.  

That part of your mothering life is over. The day in, day out, hands-on mothering has come to an end.  And that is hard to come to grips with. 

You have poured your life into those little vessels (your children) and you don’t know another way to live.  

But now it is time to refocus and figure that out.  You are going to pour some of that life back into yourself because you are not done living. 

You still have things to do and places to go.  You just need a new, updated road map. The one you had is outdated and you have reached the edge of that old map.  You need to find a new roadmap so that you can keep on moving ahead.  

The posts in this section of my blog will tell you how to do just that.

Stay tuned.