Empty nest syndrome

Are you stuck in the past, or are you moving on?

You may have experienced “empty nest syndrome” yourself or seen it happen to your parents. It’s one of those unavoidable moments in a parent’s life when the last of their children has left the home to strike out on their own.

Empty nest syndrome may seem like a silly thing to worry about, but it can hit as hard as menopause, male midlife crisis or a death in the family. In fact, it’s the polar opposite of the sandwich phase when the sheer number of things to do creates overwhelm, now it’s the lack thereof that creates symptoms similar to retiring from work into the retirement void.

After decades of organising life around the needs of the family unit, dealing with every drama life has thrown at you, your home may feel empty, lacking engagement, no longer require constant attention. You are finally in a position to return to doing what you loved to do before children were a part of the equation.

For some, this is a time of hyperfocus on the children: they try to engage more intensely with them, ask them to return home more often. Many actually keep their rooms as they are in hopes that they might return, but also in an attempt at keeping the memory of things as they were: a true “museum of childhood”.

Don’t get me wrong: it’s okay to mourn the loss of this part of your life, but it’s important for your mental health to move on at some point and make changes that allow you to move forward rather than getting stuck in the past.

Focus on who you want to be rather than who you were. Changing your routines, developing new hobbies and habits doesn’t mean you disregard your past life: rather it means that you cherish life as a whole and are living life to the fullest. Your children will not love you any less, they might even be relieved to see you active and engaged with the things you love. So, how do you get started?

Step one: ask yourself what your favourite things are. You probably have just spent a couple of decades dropping interests for lack of time or energy, so it’s not unexpected that you have forgotten about many of them. Also, there may be new interests that you never had time to explore – NOW is the time!

Step two: pick one or two interests and explore them thoroughly. It is usually not productive to start many things at once, so go slow. Remember, you have lots of time on your hand, so why hurry?

Step three: Don’t expect those new activities to happen on their own. Make sure to schedule them into your day as you would have scheduled a school run or family shopping in the past. Hobbies and activities are now even more important than they were in the past.

And the good thing about all those things … you now have time to properly explore them.