Living Your Best During the Empty Nest Years and Beyond!
A pretty meadow with blooming yellows and puffy clouds.
Now lets talk about living our best during the empty nest years and beyond, as we continue our short series on it. If you missed the first part, here is a link to it, A New Lifestyle Change for the Better?
You might ask yourself: what am I going to do now since the kids left? You have this empty time, empty hands and you want to fill them with things that help you feel needed, wanted. I understand. Sometimes we put so much time and effort into our kids that we forget we are individuals that need time and effort spent on ourselves too.
Living our best could mean:
Talk to your spouse. Let him know how you feel and ask for advice, a crying shoulder or some comfort. He might miss the kids too and it will be helpful if you 2 team up and share this time together.
Maybe reach out to girlfriends for support. It is wonderful to share with your husband your struggles but sometimes sharing with another woman, like a bestie, can be helpful.
Join a group. What to do you like to do? Are you active? Creative? Want to start a new hobby? Look at local groups or classes in your area for what you want to do. You now have the time!
Have a good cry. My goodness, I have cried so much as an adult compared to my childhood! Cry as you walk through your former kids rooms. Remember the good times you had with them and keep them close to your heart.
Turn your kids rooms into a different room. Like a craft room, a exercise room, a romantic room for you and your spouse - maybe put a spa in there!
Start a new job or career. If you ever wanted to finish or even start college, this is your time. Lots of women want to re-enter the job force, but need to update their skills, so college or a trade school could help. Or if you just want to work without school, I bet many jobs would want to have you. Just update your resume!
Travel. Lots of retired people tend to travel, maybe see places before life gets too hard, or have goals to visit national parks (highly recommend), or maybe sell everything and travel in a RV, like us.
Date night! Oh yes, remember dating your spouse before you two got married? Now you have plenty of time to date, whether you spend a romantic night at home, go out and dance your heels off at a dance club, go to the beach, go to the mountains or whatever fun place you want to! No more babysitters or worrying of your kids are destroying your house!
Yes, we decided to live in a RV and travel fulltime as the kids moved out and my husband retired from the workforce. This was many years in the making, lots of planning and tears shed as we said goodbye.
What I was not prepared for was the emotions of not only saying goodbye to my kids (even though they lived in the same area) but also selling our house so we could fulltime RV. We used to camp part time when our kids were young and we had a popup camper. Oh we had so much fun! I used to imagine us living in our popup camper and traveling the U.S., homeschooling the kids and working in different towns. Well, have you been in a popup camper? With 3 growing kids, it would have been very HARD to live together only in that!
Our living quarters!
So my husband and I have a travel trailer for our new home, a semi truck that pulls us and a Ford Bronco for our daily driver, that we have on a flat bed or the semi. It has not always been roses, like sleeping on the off ramp one night as we had no power in our pull vehicle; our awning breaking as we forgot to pull it in and a nasty storm came unexpectantly; a mouse decided to warm up in our heater one day, killing our heater and itself when we needed the heat the most and finding out it costs more to travel then what we budgeted.
But we are still together, traveling in a RV, looking for new places to visit, supporting ourselves with work camping gigs when we need to, visiting the kids when we get back to our home state, learning to accept and love one another as a couple again, like our dating and pre-kid years, just a little older and wiser. It has taken time for us, especially for me to accept that my husband is not a “30 something” anymore, maybe slowing down a little, and remembering he is the man I fell in love with almost 30 years ago. You can accept your husband as he is, warts and all.
So, what should you do now that the kids are gone? Looking at some suggestions I said above, there is much to do and only you can choose to do one or more of them. Do not let the empty nest years make you too sad, you knew it was coming, it was only a matter of time. This is a time to focus on YOU and what you can do participate in the world as an individual, not just someone’s mother.
Living your best during the empty nest years and beyond does not have to be boring, something you are dreading if you still have kids at home or and end to mothering your children. You will always mother your children, just from a distance as your kids spread their wings and fly the coop.
Mom, it is YOUR turn to live your best, share your skills, your creativity, your organization to others and not just to your kids. Start planning fun things with your spouse that you could not do with the kids at home, like planning a romantic meal, a trip out of town, make new friends with the neighbors or join a social club event. Remember what drew you to HIM before you had kids. He has not changed, just a little older and hopefully wiser.