It’s a really awkward transition in life, when you all of the sudden realize that you can, and you should, put the focus back on yourselves, after raising a family. It’s all new territory. We raised kids for 26 years. (Our four kids are all adults now, ages 20-28) Our primary focus, decision making, and financial commitments were all centered around our family life. And now, just as our adult children are embarking on their young adult lives, we are also embarking on the same kind of freedom of choice, similar to what they are experiencing. And so are our friends and our contemporaries.
It’s fun and inspiring to watch our friends and family and contemporaries in their surprised giddiness, enjoying their new found freedom. It’s enlivening to watch “our people” move to new states, move to different houses, take vacations by themselves, put less focus on their jobs, enjoy rekindled or new-found romances, and focus more on their own re-discovered hobbies and interests. It’s delightful to get to experience our adult children as interesting adult contemporaries with their own lives. It’s a relief to no longer have the everyday family responsibilities, and to no longer have to make choices about other people’s lives, besides your own lives.
In my experience, it takes a while to realize that you are “there.” You’ve crossed the finish line, only to enter into your second lap of life. You feel a little guilty and giddy and amazed and grateful and confused and daunted and relieved. It’s a heady mix.
We parents are so used to taking care of other people other than ourselves, it feels strange to no longer have to do this. (I write this realizing that many of us empty nesters are having to caretake older parents, and sometimes grandchildren and so this freedom of responsibility is not quite over for many. I don’t mean to come across cavalier.) Still, when you realize that you do have more freedom than you’ve had for a long, long time, you almost feel incredulous. You almost feel like you need permission. I have the same feelings now that I had when they handed us our first child, and they wheeled me out of the hospital door to our waiting car. “Really? We can just take this baby home? You’re entrusting us with this whole other human life? Really?” I have the same feelings that my twenty-something kids seem to have, when it dawns on them that my husband and I have no “real say” (nor a desire for a “real say”) in how they choose to live their adult lives. They’re adults. The keys to their lives have been handed back to them. They seem puzzled, pleased and scared. This freedom of choice is exhilarating and a little fearsome and daunting at the same time. If I were a mind reader (and we mothers really are kind of mind readers of our kids, right?), I could see their thoughts as being this: “Oh wow, what if I make a wrong decision? This is all on me now. Where do I even begin?”
Facts are, the best part of this second go-around of freedom in our adult lives, is that we better understand, that there really are very few “wrong” decisions in life. When one of my friends recently purchased a second house, I asked her if she was worried about making the wrong decision. “No,” she said. “If it isn’t right, we’ll just sell it.” Those of us in these middle years, have usually bought and sold at least one home in our lifetimes. We get that there will always be places to live in and different environments to experience. We middle-agers get that even our worst decisions, have provided us with guidance and wisdom to put towards moving forward on our paths. We understand that nothing is truly insurmountable because we have a lot of experiences under our belts, that once seemed insurmountable, until they weren’t. Perhaps the only wrong decisions, are not making any decisions at all.
If you are feeling like me, and you feel like you almost need permission to be a little “self-focused” in this new phase of life, here it is: Permission granted. Great job on raising your family! It is not an easy task. You did well. It is time to celebrate “you”. It is time to love on “you.” It’s time to wind the circle of focus back on to your own life, and to rekindle the parts of you that may have gotten lost or neglected along the way. Go for it! As the favorite Dr. Seuss book goes, that so many of us read to our children, so many times, “Oh baby! The places you’ll go!”
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:
2677. Do you think you can learn something from everyone you meet?
I’ve been in this new stage of life for a couple of years now, and I’m pretty much settled into the routine. Next week I’m taking my 80-year-old mom to Maui just because she’s never been to Hawaii. Would I have even considered that a decade ago? No way! But it’s lovely to have the freedom to do it now.
I’m finding that it makes me crazy when friends continue to over-parent their adult children. My bestie is a wonderful, talented, intelligent woman who can’t stop hovering over her 21-year-old son. He is going to school part-time, doesn’t have a job, and doesn’t have a driver’s license. She gives him cash to take his girlfriend on dates. He has no disabilities that would prevent him from adulting. He simply chooses not to, because that makes his life very easy. I keep reminding her that at his age we were both going to school full-time and had full-time jobs and our own apartment. Her response is, “Things are different now.” That’s true – due to the economy, my son still lives with dad, pays minimal rent, and is fully aware of his good fortune. (I think my ex is happy to have a companion – he is not the kind of person who does well living alone!) But my son also has a full-time job and transportation. I have another friend who’s youngest daughter & her boyfriend live in their home and have brought an entire zoo full of animals into the house. My friend complains that SHE has to pay for a cleaning service and help take care of the animals. And she doesn’t charge them any rent. She constantly frets that she’ll never be able to retire. The solution seems simple enough to me, but I guess that asking her adult child to pay their fair share is insensitive.
My parents are loving, caring people I’ve always been able to turn to in dire need. But they never handed me anything, and I’ve always been expected to pay back anything I’ve borrowed (and have done so.) It’s crazy to me that so many of my contemporaries feel obligated to make their children’s lives cushy. That’s simply not the real world, and I don’t think they’re doing their kids any favors by teaching them to count on daddy’s money. Unless they intend to continue giving until they die, which just might happen.
Stepping off my soap box now.
This is a really interesting topic, Kelly and you bring up so many good points. I recently was lamenting to my husband what our kids are having to pay in rent these days. He said, “Kelly, do you remember the rat-traps and dives we lived in when we were young? Granite countertops, ha!!” I think this is a big part of the problem. Expectations and standards of living have gone way, way up (along with the expenses of a middle class life). Look at cars now. The average car has more bells and whistles on it, than the miles we had on the cars we drove around in forever, during our early days. I had a friend whose dad ran the bigtime radio station in town, and he didn’t even have a radio in his car. A/C was considered to be a luxury feature in cars, in my young years in Pittsburgh, PA. (yikes- I’m aging myself)
I agree, as much as we want to coddle them and make things easy for them, we are not doing our kids any favors by keeping the purse strings flowing.
I hope you have a wonderful mother/daughter trip to Hawaii!! How exciting for you both!
Your comment about the cars brings this to mind: I just bought a used car, a 2021 Hyundai Tucson, for $23k. My parents’ home, where they’ve lived for 57 years, cost $18k when they bought it in 1966. The house across the street from them just sold for $1.8m. No wonder our kids can’t afford a place of their own!
Wow! That’s nuts, Kelly.