"It’s a time of grief – there’s no getting around it. But beckoning, within this great goodbye, is the giddy sense of rediscovery of the person I have been waiting all this time to become."
Joanne Fedler
Hi Siren
Welcome to the Empty Nest issue! In the lead-up to the 2022 event, you will receive a monthly newsletter that explores one of this year's topics.
As a child-free woman, the empty nest is not an experience I can speak to from personal experience. However, I get to witness how my friends, clients, and women in our community are navigating this important rite of passage.
Researching for this edition also transported me back to when I left home and the impact my moving to the other side of the globe had on my mother. I ignored her tears while my heart was filled with excitement about the adventure ahead of me.
As a twenty-five-year-old, I was so self-centered that in the first year I only called her a few times a month. As I write these words, I cringe at my indifference to her suffering.
The above memory was stirred up even more because of the conversation I had this morning with author and fellow siren, Joanne Fedler. Our chat was in preparation for our first Book Club in the Silver Sirens Virtual Sanctuary. Joanne's book, Unbecoming is the subject of the book club and explores a number of themes that women of our age experience including motherhood, sacrifice, and empty nest.
In her article, "Mum says the reality of the empty nest isn't something to feel sad about" Joanne shares the following:
For decades, sacrificing my own needs for the sake of theirs has been at the core of my sense of who I am. I am good at putting myself second. Suddenly, it’s not necessary.
For years I’ve showered with other peoples’ underwear, basketball shorts, and running gear hanging over the shower. I’ve sighed silently over milk left on the counter to sour. I’ve cursed at peaches in the vegetable crisper bruised by beers plonked on top. I’ve lived with dumbbells under the coffee table, and a bike parked in the dining room. I’ve cooked and eaten Spaghetti Bolognese once a week for 20 years because it’s my son’s favourite.
There is a tipping point where you want your child gone. You do, but of course, you don’t. You want them to go so you can begin to bear what it is like without them and the rooms they leave behind, filled with their childhood. Until they actually leave, you’re always in a twilit space of not quite there yet. It will ruin you, the longing for those romanticised years when they were little.
There comes a time when adult children who should but simply cannot afford to move out will treat their home as a hotel, a halfway house between dependence and independence. They will treat you like a concierge at reception, cordially at best. Truthfully, it’s a splendid relief not to be the center of their world anymore.
Jackie Knight will be speaking on empty nest at this year's Redefining Ageing event. She raised three children while juggling a busy career and through her Empowering Empty Nesters FaceBook group, she supports women struggling with this transition. The article below is available in full on the Silver Sirens Virtual Sanctuary in the Empty Nest room.
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