This article speaks to the positive ways we can live during estrangement or the empty nest syndrome. You know what? As with everything else, we can choose how we will be when our adult children need time away from us. The outcome, on the other side, is directly related to how we react or respond to our empty nest situation or to an adult’s child’s choice to estrange from us for a little or a long while.
Truth is, our lives as empty-nesters or estranged parents can either go south or lead to health and healing in the long run on both sides.
Respond, Don’t React
I am five years into this empty-nesting experience, and I can chart the times I felt I was growing and the times I felt stunted by it. Every time, 99% of my feelings directly depended on my response on any given day. This may get me into trouble with other empty nesters or estranged parents of adult children, but hear me out.
Ignore Thoughts About How You Think Things Should Be
It is not easy to come clean about our behavior or inner thoughts. But sometimes, we misbehave because we are nurturing specific thoughts about how our adult children should be in a relationship with us. I am just saying our inner thoughts are 100% the driving force behind how we move in the world not only as it relates to empty-nesting, but every area of our lives.
Make Friends With Your Shitty Days
Of course, we will have some downright shitty days when we are missing our adult children. We have all had those days when we want to tell the whole world to “just go away and leave us alone”. But it helps to make friends with even the shittiest of days.
I like how the French language puts it. “Tu me manque” translates to “you are missing from me.” An empty nest can feel like someone is missing from us.
When our adult children are not as close to us as we would like them to be, it can feel so heart-wrenching to wake up to another day when they are missing from our daily lives. That could be a good opportunity to accept your feelings without judgment.
Accept Your Feelings Without Judgement
Accept your feelings without relying on them to get you through the most challenging times of this journey, because they will change often. I have experienced a range of emotions after both of my children left home – everything from deep depression to confusion, anger, gratitude, thankfulness, and finally to pure acceptance. But I’ve learned to accept each phase of my empty-nest journey.
Above all else, this empty-nesting journey has taught me to be kind to myself.
Give Yourself Some Grace
In addition, it is easy to be too critical of yourself. The self-criticism can be brutal, but it is almost always not applicable and never helpful.
Where did I drop the ball? What did I say to piss my children off? I thought I was a good parent to them, but apparently, I wasn’t. My children must hate me. I am not worthy of their time and attention. I would just rather die if I cannot have my adult children in my daily life the way I need them to be.
Oh, boy! Would you stop it because you did your best, and your children know it, too!
Overthinking is a Demon
Coming from a notorious overthinker, I can tell you that you are overthinking things. Reading too much into your adult child’s reasoning behind their decisions can suck the motivation from your life, trust me.
I know about those days when you do not want to get out of bed for any reason. But worrying about all the WHYs behind our adult children’s choices and beating up on ourselves for their choices cannot be helpful.
Be Child-like Sometimes
Stevie Wonder had a song called, With A Child’s Heart, and the lyrics went, “With a child’s heart, go face the worries of the day. With a child’s heart, turn each problem into play.”
Go Out and Play in The Dirt
So, get up. Go out and play in the dirt as you did as a child. Put on some “feel-good” music and dance alone in your kitchen. Tear up some bits of paper and write down one thing you are grateful for on each. Gratitude has a way of leading you to a better emotional space.
Oh, yeah. You’ll need to do it whenever your mind is arguing and telling you to lie on the sofa in the dark all day. I know a little something about that. But I need y’all to trust me when I say your life is worth fighting for and only you live it. Your adult children cannot live your life for you.
Avoid Complaining About Your Adult Children
I see so many empty nesters online complaining that their adult children no longer give them the attention they think they deserve because the Bible says, “Honor thy father and thy mother,” they say.
Have you forgotten when you needed an emotional break from your parents? Yep, even from the best parents. Oh, how easily parents forget when dealing with the dynamics of the empty nest, just as their parents did a generation ago.
Are Your Adult Children Dishonoring You?
Have you ever considered that your adult children are not dishonoring you? What if they need a long minute away from you to figure out some things in their lives – oh yeah – even stuff concerning how they want to be in a relationship with you?
Many adult children are out there trying to navigate through a lot of shit having nothing to do with their relationship with their parents, trust me. I know I did as a young adult, but I got through it! And so will your adult children.
How Are You Spinning Your Story?
As parents, we decide how to tell our empty-nesting and estrangement story because it is our story to tell.
Remember that your story is evolving daily and may look different from one day to the next, so try to embrace it in all its confusing, quirky, and even emotionally debilitating forms.
Try To See It From Your Adult Child’s Perspective
So, the question is, how should you be in this world when your grown children have left home and made it clear, either by action, words, or both, that they need a minute away from you?
Let me assure you that most adult children do come back. I certainly went far away from home, both physically and emotionally. As much as I honored my need to leave, I also accepted when life let me know when it was time to return home, physically and emotionally. Returning to my childhood home was a healing time after the world had beaten up on my young, independent adult self.
Be Realistic But Not Cruel
I caution parents to be realistic but not cruel.
Complaining and badmouthing your adult children on social media or with your friends and family may seem realistic to you, but it may not be the truth. Besides, it is unfair and cruel, to be honest.
Boundaries
Listen, I know the confusion around knowing when to reach out or how much. I understand the angst around not knowing when enough is enough, and we have overstepped our adult children’s boundaries.
As parents, we easily justify reaching out to our adult children, but the line between what’s an acceptable way to reach out and what is not is very thin. And it can be difficult to differentiate the two.
It Is Usually Not About The Parents
Making the empty nesting or estrangement journey about us is ineffective. It is healthier to try to see things from the perspective of our adult children. Try to be gracious enough to grant your adult children time away from you in peace, even if it is a very long minute.
Stop harassing them about texting you back, sending you birthday cards, coming home for the holidays, or even telling you about what’s going on in their lives. It can emotionally unhelpful on both sides when you really think about it.
Permit Your Adult Children To Be Away From You
I know how hard it is to want to be in touch and learn things about our adult children’s lives. It can make us feel left out, dismissed, and unwanted. But in most cases, adult children do want their parents to stay in their lives, although some may not. Most have no desire to hurt their parents.
Still, whether parents understand or agree with it, some part of their adult children’s brains tells them they need time away from us—even if only emotional time.
The Precious Friend-Zone
I think every adult child does or should experience a time when their friends become more important to them than their parents. It is when young adult children learn essential life lessons that their parents cannot teach them.
When I decided to stop feeling sorry for myself and reflect on my own young adult life, I clearly remember years when my friends were more important to me than my parents were. I also remember it wasn’t intentional, but just how it was.
Unless Your Story Contains Scary Stuff
Some adult children’s decision to distance themselves from their parents and primary family may be intentional. But parents have to be OK with it because their adult children certainly are.
Stand still, parents, unless your story contains scary circumstances that may adversely affect your adult child, stay away and let them decide when to return to you.
By the way, parents don’t get to determine how long estrangement should be, and I believe parents’ response to their being away can directly impact the length of the estrangement.
Dream Big While You Wait
Imagine Spending Good Times With Your Adult Children
If you are missing your adult children, there must be something you wish you could be doing with them if only they lived nearby, were not “missing” from you, or would visit more often. Daydream about that.
Use Your Mind To Manifest The Positive
Take a mental journey that allows you to enjoy spending quality time with your adult children and grandchildren. Do you want to be creative with your daughter? Set some time to daydream about it and feel the joy it brings both of you.
Allow a big, soft smile to run across your face. Take deep breaths to welcome the joy of precious moments spent with your adult children and grandchildren. Dream Big. You own your dreams.
The Ho’oponopono prayer can help to heal the dynamics of empty-nesting on both ends.
Ho’oponopono Can Enhance Your Life Right Now
Abandon Harmful Thoughts. Embrace the Healthy Ones
Abandon unnecessary, harmful thoughts and embrace thoughts of what could be, as if you and your children are experiencing it already.
Do you want to attend sporting events with your adult son, but cannot because he is estranged? Daydream about it and feel the joy of that experience, even before it comes to fruition.
Do you have grandchildren you would love to spend time with regularly, but can’t because their parents initiated a no-contact stance with you? Mentally live the joyful experience of your grandchildren’s giggles and love for you.
Think it, believe it, and live it long before it happens! And it WILL come to pass for you and your family. I know it will. If nothing else, it beats complaining, which only agitates you and your children.
Find Your Footing Outside Of Your Children
Again, unless your situation involves scary circumstances, just let things progress naturally. Stop trying so hard to control how your adult children relate to you. Find your footing outside of them.
You Need This Time, Too
You may think parents don’t need to be away from their adult children as much as they need to be away from their parents. But I argue that we do. We need this time to discover who we can be without our children, unearth our hidden gifts, and contribute to the world in ways that reflect our new phase.
Our adult children want us to focus on ourselves now, not on them. This is their time—it’s our time, too!
Make Friends With Solitude
Empty-nesting or estrangement can provide a useful window of time spent in solitude. That could mean rebuilding a social circle through shared interests. It could also mean using this time away from your adult children to learn or teach yourself something new.
Remember when you told yourself you wished you had time to learn to play a musical instrument, paint, cook ethnic cuisine, or travel abroad? Well, this is the perfect time for you to do all or any of the things you used to talk about doing if only you had the time and money.
Do Those Things You Never Had Time To Do
In closing, have you ever been overwhelmed by a project and gotten stuck? Your creative juices dried up, you were fresh out of ideas, and the project exhausted you. But then you stepped away, perhaps out of pure exhaustion or feeling defeated or overwhelmed.
The Value of Stepping Back
You encountered a problem with the project that you needed to learn how to solve. When you stepped away for an hour, a day, or even months or years, you came back and saw things with a fresh perspective.
Well, this is what I hope for you in your relationship with your adult children. Step away for a while and then revisit some of the dynamics of the relationship with a fresh mind. It will serve you and your adult children well.
