Sounds silly, huh, if it’s empty then how can anything be in it? The physical space may be empty but no way is the space in your heart or your head. Those places are full of longing memories, regrets, love, relief, wishes, and the hopes and dreams that were born the day you first held them in your arms.
I’d never considered my mortality until the day I brought my son home from the hospital. I sat there on the coach with this tiny, helpless being whose hands now held my heart, thinking, wow, I want to live forever because I don’t want to miss a thing. Of course as he got older and hit those pre-teen and teenage years and the dirty socks began to take over my house, my thoughts changed to, gads, when is he gonna grow up and move out, and will we survive that long? We did, and he has, and one year later, I've found my equilibrium again.
If you’re like me, you raised your child to be independent, to think for themselves, to be strong and self reliant. How much does it suck sometimes that it worked? They are as stubborn, creative, willful and defiant as we ever imagined ourselves to be, and masterful at making both good and equally bad decisions. We’d like to put our arms around them and talk them back from the cliff's edge so they can learn their lessons from our own deep well of painfully gained wisdom, rather than watch them fall and have to struggle through their disappointments, sadness or loss of heart. Like we were ever willing to do that.
So what do you do to bridge the gap between dependent child to independent young adult? How do you prepare for it before it happens? Can you even do that? And here’s the big thing, our own life experiences are going to color whatever happens! A little known fact is that for every age of your child, you’re going to relive what was going on in your life at that exact same age, consciously sometimes, unconsciously more often.
This can mean a lot of mixed emotions. Were your parents supportive, did they send you off to college, buy you a car? If not, and now you can do that for your kids, you’re probably thrilled you can do this for them. But what if they don’t want that? Are you resentful at their rejection of this gift? And what if they do want it, are you also (somewhere deep inside) feeling a bit like a martyr that you’ve done for them what your parents didn’t do for you?
Maybe you never thought of this stuff, maybe you’re shaking your head now, thinking, why stir up a can of worms I never even considered? And what does this have to do with having an empty nest? And now that I'm all stirred up, what am I supposed to do?
These are all things in the gap. And there’s so much more. Things you wish you’d done, things you wish you hadn’t done, things you still hope to do, and all colored with the warm and wonderful memories of those children who once held your hand and looked at you with all that trust and love.
What you’re supposed to do is go on. Allow them to make their mistakes. Grow and be bigger than your parents before you, even if they were the best parents ever born, you were born to be greater. If they were the worst parents ever, it’s not for you to say, hey, I survived it, so will they. Don’t pass it on. Heal it. Give your kids what you never got and you’ll be making the world a better place. Oh, and get a hobby. Quick. And a cat.
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