THE EMPTY NEST STRADDLE
Welcome to the Small Jar Podcast, where we moms of teens find the power to step off the emotional rollercoaster between motherhood and the empty nest. I'm your host, Jennifer Collins. Episode 148.
Hello, my friends. In this podcast, I talk a lot about what I think of as the space between motherhood and the empty nest. When we sign up for this job of motherhood, that empty nest feels really far off.
But somehow, in a blink of the eye, 18 years pass, and there you are. I used to think of the empty nest as a place where you get to when your kids leave home. But I'm still months away from that reality, and I feel like I've been in the transition to the empty nest for a really long time already.
In fact, it's like as your kids grow up and become more independent, or they try to pull away, you feel the weight of being in both places at once. Both being a mom and feeling like you're already experiencing the empty nest. You find yourself constantly evaluating whether you're supposed to be holding on or letting go.
My youngest is in the middle of his senior spring. We are weeks away from him hearing from a number of colleges. In fact, by the time this episode comes out, we'll have received quite a bit of news already.
But right now, we're deep in the stress of anticipation, the waiting, wondering how things are going to turn out. At this point, I have absolutely no idea where he's going to end up. Even though I know I have absolutely no control over what happens with these college decisions, and I truly do believe that he's going to thrive wherever he goes, I still feel responsible.
I'm still deeply invested in how all of this plays out. Mostly because I so very much want him to feel proud of the outcome. My heart breaks to think of him feeling disappointed after all the work he's put into his high school experience.
But at the same time, I know intellectually and realistically that I have absolutely no control over the outcomes or any of his feelings about it. I also very much know that he has to be the one responsible for his own success and happiness. And my role in that feels like it's shifting, even though it feels really uncomfortable to let go.
I honestly feel like I'm straddling two realities. One where I'm still very much a mom in the trenches, making sure we have food in the house that he likes, helping support my son when he needs help, talking through the possibilities of his life. Honestly, waiting in the wings, just in case he needs me, even though he often doesn't.
I probably already spend much more time in the practical empty nest, not being needed. On the other hand, I probably already spend much more time in the practical empty nest, not being needed, not spending time with him, feeling like our time together is limited, and sensing that I'm already experiencing the emptiness of the nest. So I've felt in this in-between space for a while, maybe even since my oldest was a sophomore in high school.
Back then, I was desperately holding on, checking my son's grades, encouraging him to get involved, focusing on the upcoming college process and where he'd end up. I learned the hard way the price of holding on too tight. And while there was much about that experience with my older son that ultimately wasn't my fault or in my control, the truth is my desperate need to hold on caused me to not show up as the mom I wanted to be.
And it also made me feel absolutely terrible. I was anxious all of the time, frustrated when he didn't do what I really hoped he would do. I learned so many incredibly valuable lessons in my experience with my oldest that navigating this uncomfortable space between holding on and letting go with my youngest has been easier.
But I'd be lying if I told you it was easy. I also know in my heart that this feeling won't just disappear when my son heads off to college, because I still feel this pull with my oldest who's already in his second year away at school. It's this constant push and pull, holding on and letting go, feeling needed and being left out, wanting to protect them but knowing we can't control what happens next.
And I know I'm not alone in this. This is what I call the emptiness straddle. It's not just a moment in time when your kid leaves home.
It's a long season of transition, sometimes years, where you're caught between two roles. One you've been playing for 15 or 20 years, another you're just stepping into. It's a time when nothing feels certain.
You feel like you're constantly adjusting. It's like those brief moments when we were raising our little kids. You'd feel like, okay, I got them to sleep through the night.
Then there's a moment of relief. But then you find yourself stepping into the terrible twos, then on to the next stage and the next. Except for now, it's not just physically exhausting, it's emotionally exhausting and confusing.
You find yourself second-guessing everything. I absolutely know that I am not alone in this. So today I want to talk about why this transition is so hard.
Why being in a liminal space, in between two versions of your life, is one of the most uncomfortable experiences we go through as moms. I'm also going to tie this conversation back to the mindset traps I've been talking about in other episodes. Because the truth is that these traps make this transition so much harder.
But I also want to offer you some hope. Because while we can't control the reality of our kids growing up, we can learn to navigate this long transitional space with more trust, confidence, and peace. So let's talk about what the emptiness straddle looks like for us moms in different stages of this transition.
As I mentioned, the emptiness straddle isn't just a moment in time when your child moves out. It's a long season that can begin honestly as early as middle school and well beyond college. It's a period where you're caught between two identities, two realities, two versions of motherhood.
One where your child still needs you, and the other where they're learning to stand on their own. It can feel like you're constantly shifting between them, never quite sure when to step in and when to step back. It looks different depending on where you are in the journey with your kids, but the emotional experience is the same.
The amazing thing I've realized in coaching my clients, and I can see this in my own personal experience as well, is that this transition starts much earlier than we think. One minute they're asking for help with the homework, the next they're rolling their eyes at your suggestions. They need you to drive them everywhere, but they barely talk to you in the car.
You see yourself reminding your kid to study, trying to get them to be responsible with their homework. They insist that they've got it, but you're pretty sure that they don't. And this shift can feel like it happens overnight.
In these early stages of the emptiness straddle, you still feel fully responsible for your kid's well-being, helping them make good choices, keeping them safe, teaching them to be responsible. But at the same time, you're losing control over the details. They're making their own decisions.
Ultimately, they're the ones in charge of whether they actually study or how they act with their friends, whether or not they take your advice. It's like you're still holding the steering wheel, but they've got their hands on it too, yanking it in every different direction. You don't know when to grip tighter and demand that they do it your way, or whether it's better to just let go.
Let them take the wheel and let them face the natural consequences of their actions. For many of us, middle and even high school can feel too early to let go. This may even feel more true during those last few years of high school, when the impact of right or wrong choices seems so monumental.
If they get good grades, will they have better college outcomes? Should they get a job to learn how to be responsible? What about driving? What type of responsibility and risks are they taking? It can feel like all of these decisions and actions matter so much when it comes to the trajectory of our kids' early success and even their basic safety. And we as moms carry the weight of all of this responsibility. Then there's this moment during senior year or during those last few months before college when you start to realize this is it.
Every last moment feels a little bittersweet. You want to soak it all in, but they're already pulling away, spending more time with friends, pushing against the rules, acting like they don't need you anymore. You can find yourself constantly shifting between trying to cherish and stay present in every moment to feeling frustrated and angry with your kid because even though they're about to leave, they sometimes can act so terribly.
Then you can agonize over what they haven't learned yet. Are they actually ready to be on their own? The number of times I have to wake my son up, I can't help but wonder, is he going to wake up for class when he gets to college? How is he going to keep up with his laundry, especially given how often he seems to work out? And then, of course, you can't help but think about how quiet the house will be. My friend, I don't care if you're working full-time or not working or how you spend your time as a mom.
The thought of that empty space in your house, those extra hours when you would have been home waiting to be needed, all of that space opens up and you can find yourself wondering who am I going to be when they're not here? Even though there are parts of me that are honestly ready for the empty nest, at the same time I'm already feeling a sense of loss before my son leaves. It's the end of a very important chapter. This role I've had for so long is about to change.
You can feel happy and excited for your big kid but also feel this sense of uncertainty about what comes next for you. And this is what makes the empty nest straddle so difficult. It's not just about our kids growing up and moving on.
It's about us figuring out who we are as they do. Once your kids leave home, you'd think that this tension would go away, that you'd somehow get used to it. But believe it or not, it doesn't.
The emptiness straddle doesn't just end when your child moves out. They could still call you all the time asking for advice, sharing their struggles, maybe just looking to vent. In those moments, you can feel like you're still right there in the thick of motherhood, helping your kid and guiding them through their life.
Or maybe they barely check in and you wonder, do they still need me? Do they even care about me anymore? You start to see a life where they need you less and less and you fear losing the connection you want to have with them. And I know I've experienced this. When they come back home from college, you fall right back into the rhythm of being a mom.
You cook their favorite meals. You find yourself waiting up for them again, suddenly tracking their movements again because they're home. Maybe driving late.
I somehow never worry if my son made it home safe when he's in college. But when he comes back home for breaks, suddenly I'm texting, asking him when he'll be home, checking to make sure he's safe. And then like whiplash, they leave and you're right back to that empty nest.
That first year of transition at least, you feel like you finally get used to one reality and then the other reality comes back in. Even when our kids are adults, you can still feel the emotional tug of war between holding on and letting go. You aren't in charge of their life anymore, but you never stop caring about how it plays out.
And this is one of the things that makes the emptiness straddle so hard. It's not a clean break. It's this messy, long transition where you're constantly redefining your role as a mom.
So no matter where you are in this journey, whether your child's 13 or 23, you're living in two realities at once. You're still their mom, still loving them and supporting them. But they're also becoming independent, making their own choices, moving further into their own lives.
There are no obvious answers that help you to know exactly when or how to let go or how to be as a mom. So there's the length of time that this transition lasts that makes it hard. But it's also this long period of uncertainty.
It's a liminal space. It's an uncomfortable in-between stage of transition where one chapter of life is ending, but the next hasn't really truly begun. Think about other times in life when you've been in these liminal spaces.
When you wait for an important test result from a doctor. You don't know if it's good news or bad news, so your brain can't help but run through the worst case scenarios. When you're pregnant for the first time, you know your life is going to change drastically, but you only have a vague idea of what that's actually going to look like.
There's that time when you start a new job, that first day, you don't even know where the bathroom is. You don't know what you're doing. Everything feels unfamiliar.
My guess is that you've been through a number of these liminal spaces in your life before. These moments where you're leaving behind one version of life and stepping into another. But this transition between motherhood and the empty nest takes place over a long number of years.
It's a period of time during which so many circumstances of our lives are changing. But in truth, it's not just these facts that make the empty nest straddle so hard. What makes it truly difficult is that our minds are fighting this transition every step of the way.
In fact, your brain hates liminal spaces. Because my friend, our brains on autopilot crave certainty, control, and a clear sense of identity. This is our mind's default setting.
Our brains want us to feel safe and certain. But in a liminal space, all three of these things feel up in the air. First, we crave certainty, but nothing in this space feels certain.
So believe it or not, your brain tries to create certainty by envisioning worst-case scenarios. It's like our brain would rather be certain about a bad outcome so we can find a way to get through it than being open to an infinite number of uncertain possibilities. I can honestly feel the pull of this in my own brain as I think about what's ahead for my son over the next few weeks as he begins hearing from colleges.
I have absolutely no idea what the outcomes will be. But I kid you not, last night I had a dream where he didn't get into any of the schools. In my dream, my husband and I were spinning.
But then in my dream, I saw my son, and he was somehow okay. He wasn't happy, but he was already working through his options, getting his mind around what he wanted to do next. I woke up relieved that we hadn't gotten the bad news.
But I also love that in my dream, my brain focused on what I really believe to be true. That my son will be okay no matter what happens with these college decisions. Yet despite my really deep belief that this is true, my mind is still crawling for certainty amidst the uncertainty.
Another way our brain reacts to liminal spaces is that we fight for control. Even though we realize on one level that we can't force our kids to be safe, happy, or successful, we still try to push them in this direction. We remind them.
We nag them. We guilt trip them. We try to talk to them, to say the right thing, to get them to do what we think they should be doing.
Just this morning, I asked my son about an appointment he had this afternoon, and he said to me, Mom, I know my schedule. I tried to play it off like I was just curious, just wondering if he was going to be home for dinner. But there was part of me that wanted to know what his plan was.
I wanted that control. We can also agonize over boundaries, thinking boundaries are the thing that if we do them right, we'll get our kids to do the right thing, do that thing we want them to do. Then when none of this works the way we want it to, we end up pulling back, not wanting to damage the relationship we have with our kids, but also not being able to let go of the constant worry or frustration.
If you've experienced this, you've probably noticed that neither trying to control or just pulling away works. It doesn't create certainty. Instead, it contributes to disconnection with our kids, a power struggle, or just a feeling that we're further away from them than we want to be.
But again, we still feel that pull to either control or pull away. It's a form of fight or flight, because this is how our brains try to cope with the discomfort of uncertainty. The last reason these liminal spaces are so hard is that as humans, we need a clear identity.
We want to know who we are. But during the emptiness straddle, our identity and our role feels like it's changing in ways that we may not love, and that change can feel constant. Your brain resists this transition because it's wired to keep you in familiar roles.
Having a clear sense of who you are makes you feel safe and grounded. Even if you know a new version of your life is waiting for you, it can still feel safer to stay in the version you already know. It's comfort.
When you think, what kind of mom do I want to be for my teen, it feels more comfortable to default to the kind of mom I've always been. And as I look ahead, who am I outside of being a mom? For those of us who have spent a majority of our time and energy over the past 15 or 20 years focused on raising our kids, we may not have had a lot of time to focus on anything else other than that. Who am I? I'm a mom.
The thought of having to figure out who we are once our kids can leave can feel daunting. It's why some of us feel the pull to hold on to that role, even dreading the emptiness because of what we think we need to let go. A big part of this is tied to the question of identity.
So needless to say, because of all this uncertainty, the lack of control and shifting identities, our emotions and the emptiness straddle can feel like they're all over the place. One day or one hour you feel proud and excited for your big kid, and the next you feel anxious, frustrated, or totally beating yourself up. Again, you experience this whiplash moment to moment, this emotional roller coaster.
But here's the thing, our emotions aren't just random. Our emotional experience comes directly from our thoughts. And in moments of uncertainty, our brains go into overdrive, trying to make sense of what's happening, trying to keep us safe.
And in doing so, they often fall into predictable patterns of thinking that actually make this transition even harder for us. These patterns of thinking are mindset traps, thought habits that feel automatic but that keep us stuck in fear, frustration, and overwhelmed. I've been talking about these traps in my series on the mindset traps of the empty nest, but I wanted to put a few of these traps into context in terms of our overall experience during this transition.
So let's talk about three mindset traps that are a particular challenge for us in the empty nest straddle. The first is the illusion of control. Your brain actually believes that if you just stay involved enough or remind your big kid enough or support them in the right way, that you can still control the outcomes for them.
Think about it. Why do we do this? Remind them, nag them, feel the need to check up on them. It's not because we're control freaks or that we have nothing better to do.
It's because we think we can control our kids' outcomes. The second mindset trap is emotional reasoning. This is when we believe that if we feel a certain way, it must mean something's wrong.
Look, your emotions, whatever they are, are valid. They're real. But the way you feel isn't necessarily based on facts.
Your emotions are based on your perception of the facts of your life. And we very often don't look at the circumstances of our lives objectively, particularly when it comes to our kids. So what can happen is that we feel something, like discomfort and uncertainty, during this transitional time of life.
And we react to this discomfort and uncertainty by thinking something must be wrong. The third mindset trap is catastrophizing. Our brains are incredibly creative and love to jump to the worst case scenario.
Our minds don't do this because there's something inherently wrong with us, but instead because we want to prepare ourselves for the worst. We're literally thinking, if I can anticipate this terrible thing, then maybe I can prevent it. Or worst case, I can somehow prepare myself to be able to handle it better.
So notice the combined impact of these thoughts. One, something must be wrong. Two, if I can anticipate the worst case, then I can prevent this.
And three, I can control this. When you take a step back and you look at these three thoughts, these three mindset traps, the illusion of control, emotional reasoning, and catastrophizing, you start to see something really powerful. These thoughts aren't the truth.
Just because you feel a painful emotion doesn't necessarily mean something is wrong. It's also impossible to anticipate every outcome. And so how exactly can you prevent a million different terrible outcomes? And how exactly does planning ahead help you process a painful emotion in the future? And finally, as much as I wish it were different, there is so much that is not in our control, particularly when it comes to how other people, how our kids, think, feel, and act.
The thought that we have control, that we can prevent the worst case, and that there is definitely something wrong, is literally just our brain's attempt to protect you from uncertainty. Your brain isn't working against you. It's actually doing exactly what it was designed to do.
It's trying to create a sense of safety in this time of transition. What it's really doing is giving you the illusion of certainty, even when certainty isn't possible. But how ironic is it that these mindset traps don't actually make us feel better.
In fact, they make us feel more anxious, not more in control. They make us feel more stuck, not more prepared. And they make us feel like we're in the midst of something terrible, when really we're just navigating something completely new and unknown.
And here I've only touched on three of these mindset traps. In the full series on these traps, I'm going to be covering 12 in total. So that's a lot of automatic, habitual thinking keeping us stuck.
So the real question for us is, how do you break free from these traps? Well, first, I don't believe the answer is to force yourself to think positive thoughts. It's also not about telling yourself you shouldn't be thinking these thoughts, basically resisting them and making the power of these thoughts bigger in the process. The key to breaking free of mindset traps is to understand them.
Because the moment you see a mindset trap for what it is, just a thought pattern, just your brain's way of trying to cope, you gain power over it. You stop giving in to reacting automatically. You stop believing everything your brain tells you as if it's the absolute truth.
You start to notice the space between what your brain is telling you and what's actually happening. That space, that awareness, that is where your power is. That's where you get to decide, do I want to keep believing that I can control everything? Do I want to keep assuming that every uncomfortable feeling means something's wrong? Do I want to stay stuck in worst case scenarios that will never happen? Or do I want to step into a different way of navigating this transition? This is the work I do with my clients in my coaching program, Mom 2.0. Look, it's one thing to understand these concepts intellectually.
It's another thing entirely to actually shift the way you experience this transition. Your emotional experience is driven entirely by the conscious and unconscious thoughts you have about your life. But as I said, you can't just force yourself to think happy thoughts.
When you're really stressed or in emotional pain, your brain is going to call BS if you try to force yourself to think everything's fine, it's all going to be okay. So the way to shift your thinking is to first learn how to see and understand your mind, so that you can intentionally decide what serves you and what doesn't. When you gain the skill set, you gain the ability to experience this transition, this long-lasting liminal space, in a completely different way.
Look, life is going to bring us uncertainty, not just in the emptiness straddle, but throughout the rest of our lives. So I want to invite you to consider that this transition isn't just about your team growing up, but also about you stepping into that next version of who you are too. Something I've learned as I've navigated my own journey through this transition, and also as I've been coaching so many moms through it, is that the hardest part of the emptiness straddle isn't actually trusting that your kids will figure it out.
The hardest part is trusting yourself to be able to navigate whatever comes. Look, we don't know what's going to happen in the future. We don't know what struggles are in front of us.
We don't know how our relationship with our kid will evolve or what struggles are in front of them. And so if we're relying on certainty to feel okay, if we're relying on everything always going the way we need it to go, we're always going to be stuck on this emotional rollercoaster, desperately trying to create certainty and to control the world and our kids so that we feel okay. But when you trust yourself to handle whatever comes, you stop needing certainty.
You stop needing control. Because you know that no matter what happens, you will figure it out. I am in this liminal space with you, with one foot in motherhood and the other in the empty nest.
And I honestly believe I'm going to be in this empty nest straddle for quite a few more years, still wanting to play an active role in supporting my boys, but also navigating what I want next in my life. In fact, I wonder if this stage of parenting ever truly ends. What I've discovered by learning how to trust myself is not that I get to avoid ever feeling anxiety or disappointment or any type of emotional pain.
These feelings are part of being human. In fact, I recognize that these emotions are also the natural reflection of all of the beautiful emotions I also get to embrace in my life. And so I choose both.
And I choose to trust that I can meet these emotions with understanding and self-love, trusting that I will know what I need to do with each turn of my life and that I'll have my back about those decisions. The impact of this is profound, my friends. It's calm in the face of uncertainty.
It's strength and confidence in the face of challenge. It's an excitement that as the future unfolds, I will be there to meet it with intention, being the author of my story and not a secondary character or a victim to the circumstances of my life. My friends, you have already spent so many years growing and evolving and learning along with your kids.
I have no doubt you've been strong and resourceful and creative in a thousand different ways. So why would that stop now? This is the opportunity of the emptiness straddle. It's not about forcing yourself to let go or figuring everything out perfectly.
It's also not about waiting until you feel 100% ready or until you get to this fictional place called the empty nest. It's about building trust in yourself one step at a time. Because when you trust yourself to handle whatever comes next, you gain the power to decide who you want to be as a mom and as a woman stepping into her next chapter.
Self-trust is something you build. It's a skill. Actually, a skill that we were never taught.
Having this skill actually requires a shift in how you think not just about your kids but about yourself. And this is exactly why coaching is so powerful in this season of life. Coaching isn't about telling you what to do or getting advice.
It's about helping you see how your own mind is keeping you stuck so that you can shift into a new intentional way of being. I've seen it happen over and over again with my clients. Moms who come to me exhausted from anxiety or frustration from the push and pull of the emptiness straddle.
And in just a few weeks of coaching, something shifts. They don't just think differently. They begin to feel different.
They begin to feel a new sense of power in their life. Because when you learn how to trust yourself, everything changes. If you're ready to stop feeling stuck in the push and pull of the Empty Nest Straddle, I’d love to help you.
This is exactly what I do with my clients in my Mom 2.0 coaching program.
You have more power than you think, my friend.
And your next chapter? It’s just beginning.
Until next time.
If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review and check out our coaching program mom2.0 at www.thesmalljar.com. You have more power than you think, my friend.
