NOW WHAT?

I am officially an empty-nester.

As we drove away from my baby’s college campus, I realized this was it. This was the day I had longed for yet secretly hoped would never come. This was vastly different than when we dropped our daughter at college two years earlier, because we still had one at home. I can’t quite wrap my head around the idea that life as I have known it for what seems like forever has been dramatically changed. I am juggling my mixed emotions. I neither feel like crying nor do I feel like celebrating. I’m not all “Woe is me my kids are gone. What will become of me?” But I’m also not “Woohoo! The kids are gone! Let’s party!” It’s not happiness or sadness; anxiety or relief. The only word I can come up with is WONDERMENT. It’s the same feeling I had on my own first day of college, the first day of a new job, the first day of married life, the first day with a new baby…It’s the wonderment of what will this new FIRST DAY hold.

NOW WHAT?

“Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” Right now, I hate that phrase. Actually, I’ve always disliked it. I don’t know why this saying annoys me so much. I like the concept that every day is a new beginning. Every day is a first day. But unlike all the other first days in my life, I didn’t feel prepared for this first day. Actually, it wasn’t the first day that was freaking me out; it’s all the days after that. It’s the rest of my life. Every other first day started a life stage with a shelf life. This life stage ends when I literally end. No more first days after that—the ultimate expiration date. Have you ever noticed that whenever someone throws out that ever-optimistic “today is the day of your life” what they are really saying is, “Now what?” That is the perennial obnoxious question. Much like “When are you getting married?” and “When are you having a baby?”, people, including strangers, ask me, “Now what?” “Now that the kids are out of the house, what are you going to do?” It implies: surely you planned for this day. And that’s the rub. I don’t know what my “now what” looks like, and I admit I don’t have a well thought out plan. While I’m open to all possibilities, I don’t actually know “now what?”

NOW WHO?

Maybe bigger than “now what” is “now who?” Now who am I? For 21 years, I’ve enjoyed saying, “I’m a stay-at-home mom.” I confess I often said it smugly, because you know “being a mom is the toughest job I ever loved.” And while that may be true, it does, on reflection, sound a little self-important. When I was a single woman working twelve hours a day, paying my own mortgage and shoveling my own snow, I shot daggers at any mommy who tried to convince me how hard her life was. I get it now. Both are hard in their own ways. I marvel at the woman who juggle both roles at the same time. For me, I have loved both jobs in their seasons. But I’m here today wondering, “Now who am I?” Seriously, if I’m at a cocktail party and I get to the inevitable question, “What do you do?” I have no answer. I can tell you what I used to do but not what I do now. (Sometimes, just to see their reaction, I say, “Oh, I do laundry on Mondays…a small load.”) Truth is: I’m out of a job. This must be what it feels like when a worker has been a loyal employee of a company for decades and then is forced into early retirement. When your whole identity is wrapped in your vocation—in my case being a full-time mom—who are you when your job has been eliminated?

NOW WHERE?

While I’m thinking big thoughts, it makes me ask myself, “Now where?” Motherhood filled my days, my months and years, rarely giving me time to “giveback”. (Let’s be honest: Bake sales don’t really count.) So, I have to question, where will I use my gifts and talents for the greater good? Where is there a need that I am uniquely called to meet? Where can I make a difference that truly matters?

I can’t really answer “now what?” or “now who?” or “now where?”, but I can answer “now how?”

NOW HOW?

Now how will I approach my new life as an empty-nester? I will try new things: things that challenge me; things that scare me; things that make me happy; things that make me a better person. I will re-visit old things: things that I used to love and never made time for; things I dreamed I’d do and then put on the back burner. I will travel—a lot—and satisfy my wanderlust, and I will be ready for planned and unplanned adventure. I will make new friends and invest in old friendships that were sidelined during the mommy years. I will reinvent and reignite my relationship with my spouse. I will build new relationships with my young adult children. I will give myself—my time and talents—where I am needed. I will allow myself time to figure out who I am and what I want to do. And I will give myself the freedom to say, “I don’t know?” I will allow myself the time and energy to be who I am now and who I am becoming. Finally, I will use this little blog as a place to explore and document all these things. This is where my “now what” meets the wonderment of the first day of the rest of my life as an empty-nester.

EMPTY NEST. FULL HEART. READY TO GO.

#emptynest