Have you experienced ‘empty nest syndrome’?
I want to tell you how it affected me, because although I had heard of it, I didn’t know what it was at the time, and it wasn’t until much later that I realised. I am still coming to terms with the fact that at my age (78) life passed me by and left me standing and I didn’t realise it was happening because I was so caught up with being a working mother, but it was something I thoroughly enjoyed.
A little bit about me
I have four sons and by the time my youngest left home I had been married and divorced twice. After my second failed marriage I decided the best thing I could do was concentrate on bringing up the boys on my own and so I did, I worked to support us all and my parents helped with picking them up from school and having them for the school holidays. I enjoyed being a mum, and although I missed spending more time with the boys, I was able to give us a better lifestyle because I was working. And so when my youngest left home I was quite excited, although somewhat anxious, but the boys were all happy in their lives and doing well and I was looking forward to taking advantage of the freedom I had not had for over 40 years. But instead of taking time to think about what I wanted to do with my new-found freedom I became restless and made some badly timed decisions and choices, one in particular. I thought I should be thinking about retirement, even though I was only in my early 60s, and so I bought a property on the coast, but then it gradually dawned on me that I didn’t want to retire yet. The problem was I loved living by the sea, but the journey to and from work was far too expensive, and so I decided to rent out the property which meant I would be able to keep it. The one good thing to come out of this very bad decision was that I kept my original property and was able to move back in.
When unexpected tragedy strikes
I did slow down a bit after that and was beginning to take things in my stride a bit more and think things through, but then tragedy struck when one of my daughters-in-law died and left my son with three children, one of whom was just 11 months old. It was as though a bomb had gone off – the impact from her death was everywhere, affecting all of my family’s lives, but seeing the impact on her husband and sons broke my heart, it was so devastating. They were like ships that were lost at sea – they needed to be organised and there was also a desperate need for stability in their lives. I had been helping out and supporting them and became more or less a surrogate mother to the boys, so I eventually went to live with them, because it seemed the best thing to do for them as well as me.
It didn’t take that long to get them all organised (although trying to organise that son of mine is something else!) and it became obvious to me and them that I had made a difference especially by giving them stability in their lives. Whilst the boys were coming to terms with losing their mum and my son was trying to come to terms with losing his wife, I too was missing my daughter-in-law terribly. She was the only one of my sons’ wives or girlfriends who I had regular contact with, we would phone each other and visit each other – it meant a lot to me and it was nice to have a female in my family who I was close to. It was hard to talk to my son and grandsons about how I felt at the time, they had enough to deal with, so I used my work colleagues to off-load my grief at her loss – they were the only people I felt I could talk to openly. When I think back though, I wonder how they put up with me constantly going on about the situation my whole family was in.
What will I do with the rest of my life?
As time went on I retired from my job and after a while, and once I had everything under control in the boys’ lives, I became restless again. I realised that, much as I loved my son and grandsons, I had become their housekeeper – cooking, cleaning, shopping, washing and ironing which at first I enjoyed, it was after all what I was used to when I was a mother to all my sons and it was what I was good at and so it didn’t take long before it became second-nature to me.
I had started to think about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life though, and the more I thought about it the more I realised that not only did I not know what I wanted to do, I didn’t know what I liked to do, or even what I liked. Over the years and all the trauma, I had ended up with no friends through having lost touch and so I couldn’t ask them if they remembered what I liked! It gradually occurred to me that, in the process of being a mother and then caring for my son and his sons, I had completely lost sight of myself. It was such a shock, I can tell you, and it left me numb for a while.
I didn’t really know what the expression ‘I need to find myself’ meant, but this is exactly what I needed to do, although I didn’t know where to start. After I got over the shock and stopped and thought for a while, it became clear that I had immersed myself in being a mother to the exclusion of everything else and this is how and why this had happened. I suppose that was another reason I had not noticed what was going on outside of my life (let’s face it, when did I have time to notice or realise anyway). Thinking about it though did nothing to remind me of who I was or what I liked, so I did some research on Google (How Do I Find Myself?). There was plenty of information, but nothing that really applied to me to help with the situation I found myself in, mainly because most of the research I did was suggesting you concentrate on what your passions were. Going back, back, back into my childhood, the only thing I can remember I really liked doing was writing (English was my best subject), but it wasn’t something I would say I was passionate about, nor had I put it into practice as I grew up for one reason or another.
I decided that counselling would help and I looked for a female counsellor as I thought it would be easier for her to relate to what I was experiencing. I found talking to the counsellor was as beneficial as I hoped it would be and after a few sessions with her I realised I had to re-learn how to focus on me and to ask myself what I liked and what I would like. This was quite difficult at first (still is, to be honest), purely because it was something I had not done since I was a teenager, but the counselling was really helping me in that it was encouraging me to think about me.
Getting to know myself
I gradually realised that one of the things I liked was living on my own (hardly surprising after having my own four sons and then living with one of those sons and his three sons!) and I missed living by the sea. I decided the property I already owned was no longer suitable and so I bought a property in a retirement community on the same part of the coast. One of the first things I noticed about it was that I felt so at home there, which I took to be a good sign and which helped me to settle in.
Now that I have been through this episode of my life, I feel much better and really glad and relieved in a way that I experienced it, even though a lot of it was extremely painful. I think if it had not happened, I may not be in the position I am now where I’m really looking forward to the rest of my life.
I wonder if any of this resonates with you? I would love to hear your experiences, so please feel free to share them here.
