hi Beth:
my youngest of two daughters has also just started college and I too now have an empty nest, so I get it 100%. I am in the exact same position as you and experiencing much of the same emotional toll as you.
I dropped my girl off in Mass, 11 hours road trip away from MI here I live. I'm from the UK: nobody there is ever 11 hours by road away from their kid at college, the British isles just 'aint that big. So, it's taking me a while to process this also. I cried on and off all summer, I began my mourning of the end of the last 20 years of my life spent mothering early. That's how mourning is: it has its own timetable. I cried on and off on the journey home, but I did not cry much when we said goodbye because my baby herself was distraught and needed me to be strong to help her separate from me, stay where she is and make her life in her new community of friends and scholars.
Skype helps. Skype is bloody marvellous. We Skype every day at the moment: she chats with her big sister (eldest daughter still lives at home this year, but attends the U of Michigan here in town), then I walk by and see her on the screen and she shares highlights and lowlights (!) of her day with me. It's like she's right here in the room and has never left. I recommend Skype highly for keeping in touch. I am very close to my youngest: she is the member of family the most like me in terms of attitude, approach to people and society, in terms of reaction, humour, etc. I understand her and she me, better than I do my own husband, who, like my eldest daughter, is on another whole wavelength. That's how it is in families.
t is true: we are sad, but, it's because we did our job so marvellously well. I have always known that from the minute my children were born, it has been my job to prepare them to leave me and be independent. With each day that passes, I see less sadness on my daughter's face via Skype, so I know she is getting on with things, getting adjusted to college life and making a place for herself. This is all excellent. I would be in even more pain if I knew she was there and not here and in agony, pain and tears every day and not functioning. So, this is all good news and exactly what is supposed to happen.
But, I have a hole in my life now. How to fill it?
It doesn't help that I have been an adjunct instructor at the university for the last few years and that this year they did not offer me a contract, so I no have no job either.
You and I are now on the threshold of the new. It should be an exciting place, but for me, and i suspect for you also, it is still only scary and empty. I am re-evaluating. I need a new career path, so I have to choose a new avenue in which to venture. No real clue which to choose as yet. I am being very honest about my feelings and my position to anyone who knows me and who is interested enough to ask. They might have useful feedback for me, so I really can't lose. I am currently thinking about starting an online doctoral program while working, as the best way to change careers and also fund the change. I can't just do any old job for the next 20-25 years, I am not built that way. I need mental stimulation and satisfaction. So......
You are not required to stay in the same place career-wise either. You might, for example, stay in the same field, but take a different job, one with more responsibility, more contact with people, or one that requires more analytical thinking, whatever it is that your personality needs. Or, like me, you might need a major over-haul and radical new way of thinking. If so, start thinking, talking to people, reading about career switches others have made and how they did it, etc. Start researching possible further education classes you can take to help accumulate more credentials and offer you alternative avenues for employment. You are not required to stay in a stagnant place for the rest of your life. Our children are moving on and broaching the new: why should we not do the same?
More magazine specializes in talking to women at our stage of life. Each month features articles on women who have reached the stage of needing a re-boot,and shows ho they went about achieving it It can be inspiring reading. Try it.
I am still extremely angry and upset about my contract not being renewed, but I cannot dwell on it because otherwise the negativity will swamp me and drag me down. I was actually taking an antidepressant earlier this summer tome deal with perimenopause, Wellbutrin, the only one I have ever been able to tolerate, but I stopped taking it last week: I couldn't focus my eyes and had unexplained muscle aches all over, interfering with my workouts. Can't have that. I need to read and I need exercise and I need both of those way more than I need to take pills.
Medication has never been the answer for me, never. It has its place in treating bio-chemical depression and anxiety. But if your sadness is caused by life circumstances rather than recurring episodes of depression you have experienced your whole life, then you are actually better off having those feelings, experiencing them and dealing with them. We are not supposed to numb life away. Life is not happy, happy, joy, joy in an unrelenting manner. And neither does it help to be told to "think positive." For those for whom positive thinking comes naturally, I am happy for you. But we are not all blessed with that personality. Some of us are just more serious in our approach to life, some of us feel things more deeply and think about things more deeply. That's who we are. 'Aint no changing that.
That's the moment you and I are currently in, Beth. So, be in it. Feel your feelings. You are grieving the closing of a major chapter of your life: mothering, parenting, being NEEDED daily by another. These processes constituted a massive validation of our presence and role in our childrens' lives. Now, we need to locate that validation elsewhere. Back inside ourselves again ad in our own futures lived primarily as women and not mothers.
I am thrilled my daughter is thriving, at the same time as I miss her daily. Such a contradictory bunch of emotions! I am also making myself keep my workouts going. Now is not the time to embark upon a major rotation set for me by somebody else and whose daily requirements I will inevitably fail to accomplish because my mind is just elsewhere right now and I'm just too emotional in a potentially volatile way, flip-flopping around. Now is the time to workout when YOU want to, and to do whatever workouts YOU want to do, purely for FUN, for JOY, for the SAKE OF FEELING YOUR BODY MOVE THROUGH SPACE and to contact you and ground you back inside your physical body. You are more than a mother whose child has grown and gone on to learn from others. You are still a woman with plenty of life, years and adventures ahead of her: people to meet, places to go, things to do and not do (because you just don't want to!) and things to discover about yourself.
You are a territory that you have not fully mapped yet, a book whose pages remain half empty, waiting for you to fill them with actions and thoughts that describe who you are. Who you are beyond a mother.
It is exciting, and scary. I'm traveling the same road as you. You are absolutely NOT ALONE, nor weird, nor freaky for feeling these things.
I am trying also to include as much pleasure in my daily life as I can at the moment. I am reading for pleasure a lot. I am seeing people, friends, going to movies, chatting to people, getting out for long walks, reserving my workout time for me and also saying a resounding NO when people try to make me do shit I feel is wrong for me. I just did that. I said NO to a request and now that person no longer talks to me. So be it. How good a friend cans he have been anyway if she was only friends because of what I could do for her?
I'd love to drag my husband to ballroom dancing classes. He won't go. Maybe I will bump into a stranger at the bookstore one day soon who expresses an interest? I'm up for it! Open mind: say "yes" to things, opportunities and invitations. Risk new things. Dare yourself. Get out of that comfort zone, incrementally, to induce new growth as a human being. Start with reading a book in a genre you never usually even consider. Pluck a new magazine off the shelves at the bookstore. Speak to a new person in a cafe. Try a new workout style or sport or dance: rowing? fencing? ballroom?
Tell me how you are getting on, and I hope some of this helps.
Clare
you can just go, and dance with other guys. There are lots of men to dance with. They are always looking for someone new to try leading with.
