Peri-Empty Nest

As I write this newsletter, I am now officially the mom of three adults. My youngest kiddo turns 18 today.

Very little has actually changed between yesterday and this morning, but legally, quite a lot has. I am still her mom, fierce champion, emergency contact, personal advisor as requested, and the keeper of family history and information she may call to ask about one day. But I no longer have the same access or automatic responsibility I have carried since the day I learned I was pregnant with her.

On paper, my vigilant-mom role has changed. My nervous system has not yet gotten the memo.

For more than 20 years, some part of my energy and identity has been held for my kids. It feels like being a coiled-up spring, compressed (willingly) by responsibility, ready to act whenever someone needs protection, guidance, transport, medical attention, emotional support, or a sounding board for when they’re encountering a challenge for the first time.

That readiness becomes so familiar, it just feels like your baseline. You stop noticing how much energy it holds.

Now I’m being asked to let some of that spring uncoil. Not to care less or become less available, but to adapt to what’s needed now. My responsibility is no longer automatic. My involvement will increasingly come through invitation, conversation and relationship, rather than by default of age or authority.

We talk a lot about the empty nest change of life – the empty rooms, missing routines and voices, and glimpses of our kids’ new lives. But the transition begins before that. It starts when the architecture of responsibility changes while everyone is still physically present.

I can already sense that some things will be returned to me – attention, emotional bandwidth, and more self-directed time. I’m excited to see what my kids do with the independence I raised them to have, and equally curious about what happens for me when a good portion of my energy no longer need to remain constantly ready for action.

So I’m in the peri-empty-nest phase, and as with all transitions, it follows a cycle of disruption, reorganization, and expansion. I’m being shown what I’ve been holding, invited to release some of it, and given the opportunity to discover what becomes possible when that energy is available to me again.

And of course, this wouldn’t be me writing this if I didn’t point out that this is not only a parenting transition. There are so many roles that we inhabit so completely that we stop noticing how much of ourselves they require. When the responsibility changes, because of an internal shift or external event, our circumstances may change immediately, but our internal systems take time to catch-up.

And so I believe the real invitation of any transition is not merely to adjust to what has changed, but to become conscious of the energy that has been released, and in choice about where it goes next. Because the energy we need to grow into what comes next is already available for us in what the previous phase no longer requires of us.