Trust Me, Here Are 10 Things To Do To Get Ready To Become An Empty Nester

I like to swim. I like to go to the movies alone on a Sunday afternoon. I like hosting an outdoor karaoke night for the neighbors every year. I hate being late. I hate cleaning my house, but I love to go to bed with a clean kitchen.

I did not know any of this about myself when my kids were growing up. I learned it all in the Big After, when they left for college. Actually, no. I really started to meet myself before they left. In the years and then months and then days when they were looking over my shoulder at their own future. When they were getting ready to figure their own selves out and I could feel the big hole opening up inside me where our life together used to be. I felt the unfurling of all of us in those times. I sniffed the air. I smelled danger. I smelled change. And, much like a dog with its hackles raised, I instinctively knew. It was time to prepare. They would leave me. My life was about to change.

“The empty nest crisis actually starts years before the kid leaves,” Sapna Radhakrishnan, a teen parenting coach in Frisco, Texas, tells Scary Mommy. “It does not start on the move out day. It starts the first time your kid’s life visibly moves on without you needing to be in it.”

I won’t lie to you: It’s a little death, that realization. After scheduling days and months and years around other people, suddenly I was on my own. My schedule was my own. And, perhaps most terrifying to me, I was my own again. I felt like I hadn’t been in a room with myself for two decades when my kids stopped needing me as much. And so, I set about meeting myself again.

Here’s how I did it, and, as you prepare to have your kids leave, maybe you can too (or something here Jen)

Take a trip by yourself.

After my youngest son left for college, I found I couldn’t be in my own home anymore without feeling the ghosts of our life together all around me. Their old shampoo bottles. The closed doors of their bedrooms. The empty space in the hall where their shoes used to pile up. And so I skipped out of my own life, of our life. I took a few weeks and went on a road trip to Maine, then Martha’s Vineyard and Cape Cod and Salem and Concord, Mass. Places I’d read about in books that helped to shape me like Little Women and all things Stephen King, or featured in movies like my personal childhood favorite, JAWS. I pulled off the highway to eat at diners. I visited versions of my childhood to feel at home in myself again. And it turns out, I was giving myself an “empty nest moon,” something conscious parenting coach Janet Philbin recommends for parents sending their kids away from home for the first time. “Schedule a trip for the weekend or a week after your child moves out,” Philbin, a New York-based clinical social worker, advises Scary Mommy. “This allows you to return home feeling full because you have received something, even though there has been a change at home.”

Start shopping for that white furniture/outfit you’ve been wanting.

I always wanted white furniture. White walls. Just clean white linen anything, really, but a house with four boys does not lend itself to anything white. I bought myself one of those white, slouchy sofas that everyone in my family hates but me. It makes me feel like I’m living inside a ‘90s rom-com directed by Nancy Meyers. It makes me feel relaxed and cozy and, best of all, reacquainted with my own style. Impractical but comfortable. Find your own metaphorical white couch, whether it’s candles or a painting or a super luxurious throw, and buy it just for yourself.

Meet your partner again.

If you are married or in a relationship, this might be a great time to actually start just hanging out together again. “My husband and I never really went to dinner when the kids were growing up,” Brenda, a daycare provider and mom of three daughters, tells Scary Mommy. “After the girls left, we started to go to dinner on Fridays. We looked forward to it. We didn’t talk about the girls.” The dinners were their gateway to becoming friends post-child rearing. They started to play pickle ball together, go on trips. And just hang out on weeknights in the backyard. “It was like we met each other again for the first time.”

Consider what you set aside.

It can feel a bit traitorous to admit, but motherhood can put a lot of other things on hold. My career, for example. I was a single mother who worked to survive, not thrive. As lost as I felt when my sons left home, I made an effort to return to everything I’d set aside to raise them. Kaitlynn Blyth, a New York-based family educator and owner of Happy Day Play, agrees. “Name what you ‘set aside’ for your children and let that list guide you,” Blyth tells Scary Mommy. “Write out the interests, ambitions, and versions of yourself that went on the shelf while you raised these kids. Putting it on paper turns a vague ache into a concrete, workable list.” Give yourself permission to return.

Claim one perfect hour a week.

I have become a breakfast person. I go to breakfast, with friends or my partner or alone. I drink two cups of coffee. I get a pancake for the table so everyone can have a bite. I make eye contact and talk and listen and dip my toast points into my eggs.

I pay attention to what I like: Eggs poached medium. Blueberries in my pancakes. Crispy bacon. Rye toast. For one hour every week, I sort of meditate on what I like and don’t let anything else in. Even when I’m alone, it’s always a good hang.

Reread a book/rewatch a show.

I have no clinical evidence to share with you but I promise you this: if you had a favorite book in your youth and reread it now, it’s like a fun ghost of you enters the room to read the Sweet Valley High series over your shoulder. You will reconnect with what you liked about these books, who you were, what you wore, what you wanted, even what you ate. It’s a lot of fun. Even better if you start a nostalgic book club with a few friends so you can share the wealth.

Belly dance.

Or take a knitting class. Or an improv class. Or tap dance. Think about something silly and fun that will take you out of your routine, and just give it a try. Blyth recommends claiming space for yourself ahead of your child’s launch to set a precedent. “You strengthen that part of your identity while the scaffolding of daily parenting still surrounds you,” Blyth tells Scary Mommy. “The change arrives as something you build towards.” Sort of like investing in a hobby savings account that will help smooth the transition once the kids are gone.

Play a little hooky with your best friend.

My friend Marcella and I became big sunset watchers before our kids left home for good. A few nights a week, we left the kids at home to figure out their own dinner, ordered a pizza, grabbed a bottle of wine, and went to a local beach to swim as the sun set. We played hooky from our mom roles while we were still in the thick of it, and built a foundation for our new routine together post daily kid life.

Become a joiner.

For almost the whole of my adult life so far, my days revolved around my sons’ schedules. I had no time and really no interest in becoming a volunteer beyond anything outside their school. Now I volunteer at our local community theater. I have a regular yoga class. I filed up those empty hours without my sons with little details that have become my life. Because it’s those empty hours that will get to you. “The part that’s getting to me isn’t the empty room, it’s the empty time,” Dara Wax, CEO of SAM+LEO, tells Scary Mommy. “All the hours that used to go to his pick-ups and appointments. I’m trying to put something of my own into those slots instead of just letting the worry rush in.”

Better to find a new path than sit staring at the old one.

Schedule a little sadness.

Say it’s a Tuesday evening. Your kids are still living at home, but they’re getting ready to launch. They are busy doing their own thing and you can see the future when it will always be them doing their own thing. Sit down. Eat cereal for a snack. Cry. Look at their baby photoseel sad however you want. Don’t try to change the narrative. Ella, a mom of one, was convinced she would feel fine once her daughter left home. She made busy plans for her daughter, focused on her future at university and her needs and ignored her own feelings of grief out of a desire to prioritize her child. When the feelings came, she was overwhelmed. “I was floored,” she tells Scary Mommy. “It was awful, I felt completely unprepared.”

Give yourself time to grieve the loss of the life you all had together, even as you’re excited for their future. After all, “a mother can feel thrilled to have her afternoons back and genuinely sad at the same time,” as Blyth tells Scary Mommy.

The trick is to become you again. Look back, way back, even if everyone tells you not to. Delight in the person you were. Invite her inside with the person you are now. Let them fit together.

Be young and old and you and her all at the same time. Your kids will love it, love seeing you blossom instead of wilt, waiting for them to come home as though your life ends when they are not in the room.

Being a mom is one of my favorite roles. But I learned it’s a role. It’s not all of me. I get to be all of the things. I get to return to me.

Jen McGuire is a contributing writer for Romper and Scary Mommy. She lives in Canada with four boys and teaches life writing workshops where someone cries in every class. When she is not traveling as often as possible, she’s trying to organize pie parties and outdoor karaoke with her neighbors. She will sing Cher’s “If I Could Turn Back Time” at least once, but she’s open to requests.