For the past few decades your life has been full of carpools, homework, play dates, swim meets, soccer games, summer camps, after school programs, extra curriculars, a house full of smelly shoes, pizza boxes, gym bags, piles of laundry, teenagers draping themselves over your furniture making noise and messes. Now your house is clean, the laundry is folded and put away, and things are way…. way….. too quiet.
You don’t really remember who you are outside of being a parent, or who you and your spouse are outside of being co-parents. You are having trouble letting go of your need to manage your young adult children’s lives but want to give them the space they need to figure things out on their own. You may be feeling left out, lonely, empty, depressed, unneeded and obsolete.
Navigating an empty nest means grieving the loss of a role that you cherished and figuring out what your roles are now that this major shift has occurred. Your role as a parent to your adult children, your role as a spouse now that you don’t have the shared focus of children living at home, and deciding what you might add to your life to fill the void.
Counseling is a place where you can explore and process your feelings of loss and begin to embrace what the future may hold for you with hope and optimism. This can be a time of reflection, transformation and reinvention. Taking the time to tend to yourself in this in-between period when you are no longer who you were, but not yet who you will become, can help you set a more intentional course toward what you want for yourself in this next phase of life.
CONTACT ME to schedule a free 30-minute consultation and learn more about how counseling can help you navigate the life transitions associated with an empty nest.