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?