EMPTY NEST SYNDROME?
My littlest starts school in a couple weeks. I’m not even going to sit here and figure out how many days that is, because it is giving me agita, and i am in great denial. (agita is totally inappropriate word choice, its giving me full blown avoidance techniques… and i’ve been painting my nails like four times a day.)
I’ve been a stay at home mom for ten years. I have now divorced. Last year I worked in a lovely lovely job at my littlest’s preschool, so I was with her full-time even amidst the work.
and now?
Home alone. and unemployed. and so much time to miss her.
The boys have been gone for so many more years. The next in line is entering fifth grade and the first is in 8th. I’ve had time to get used to missing them. But this? The last?
Oh my good god. I don’t really know what I am going to do.
and because i have been writing, and figuring out my emotional upheavals and past issues, i know that i am having a lot of grief about my dad lately. and boy, if that isn’t an untapped reservoir, and intimately tethered to my decision to get a break in my marriage… (tether, tether, tether… its everywhere… even in this new old man who likes tethers!! oye, just wait…)
there is just a lot of grief going on, and its a murky chocolate lake.
I feel powerful to have realized the grief of losing my dad has been so connected to my decision to recognize my marriage for what it was.
It is powerful to experience a change in seasons of womanhood in letting my littlest go into full-time school… I’m no longer a stay-at-home mom, I’m just unemployed. (!) and the next stages for my children and I are radically diaper-free, and momentous. and so enormous as they navigate a larger world with just the tools they’ve seen used.
and i’m proud of the tools they’ve seen me using. grief and sadness and anger and confusions… no quick fixes and no tools of avoidance. (beyond nail polish… )
i laugh a hell of a lot more than i ever did before. There’s a hell of a lot of power moving around over here.
Let yourself be stained with light, babes. as you navigate the murk.
You. Are. AMAZING.