The empty nest - how to move forward

I drove away from the mass of new students and their parents milling around outside the university halls of residence, weighed down with boxes of books, kitchen equipment and huge wide screen TVs.

The house was very quiet when I got home and still messy from the packing up of stuff.  It seemed the last 6 months had been geared to this point, revising for exams, anxiously waiting for the results, visiting prospective universities and finally today – when my youngest son left home to start the next chapter of his life.

It didn’t hit me at first.  I tidied the house and enjoyed a quiet evening in front of the TV.  On the Monday I went back to work, knowing I would find a tidy house when I got home.

I only realised slowly what I was experiencing, and it started with my job.  This was the job that I’d taken to fit around my children’s needs, with the later start to accommodate school drop off.  I found it easy and undemanding and my boss was flexible about any sudden need for time off when the children were ill and leaving early for parents’ evenings.

But now, if this was my main focus, it wasn’t enough.  But what would be enough?  What would I really like to be doing now I only had myself to think about?

I thought about what I’d wanted to do before I had children.  But I was different now, motherhood had changed me, my perspective was different.  I was no longer the activist who wanted to change the world.  The world was different now too.  The jobs that used to exist no longer did and there were jobs out there which hadn’t even been thought of when I was in my 20s.

Many women I knew were doing their own thing, running businesses from their kitchen tables or garden sheds.  They were writing books and hosting podcasts.

So I had to get back to basics and think about what I really wanted from my life.  I had always been interested in the stories of people making big changes in their lives.  Giving up high flying jobs in the City to run an organic farm in North Wales or to create artworks from sea glass in Cornwall.  Even moving abroad and setting up an environmental project in Central America.  These things both fascinated and scared me.

To skip large parts of the story and with a lot of twists and turns in the road, Clover Life Coaching is where I’ve ended up.  But I didn’t do it on my own.  I had help.

Are you questioning who you are, beyond the empty nest?

Have you found it easy to develop or reignite a vision for your life?