An Empty Nest

This school year has been the start of so much new in my world.  I left my school I had been working at for almost 10 years to start a new career, but at the last minute received an offer I couldn’t refuse from another school to continue my path as a high school counselor.  Not a new career, but a new school and new environment.  Seamus, my oldest son, has graduated college and is starting his path in life trying to kick start his career in the film industry, moving to Atlanta and making his own way.  Aidan, the youngest, has graduated high school and headed off to college.  Leaving me all alone with the menargery of animals I own, left to figure out what is next.  I didn’t think it would be all that difficult to be living alone, until it happened.  And then I realized I never really lived all alone.  Right after college I basically moved in with Pat and then we were married and then quickly all three boys came along.  Even after Pat died, I still had the boys at home with me, so living on my own is new for me.  And let me tell you it isn’t the logistics of being alone or not having the boys here in my daily routine, it’s the silence that came with it.  And in that silence came everything and every emotion I never took the time or had the time to process or experience when Pat died.  It all came up and I had to deal with it all.  There were alot of emotions…missing the boys, worrying about the boys, trying to find my way in my new job, feeling lonely in the house while i was figuring out yet again another new normal.  But the worst of it all is the grieving that I never did.  The grieivng that I couldn’t do because I had to step up and take care of the boys and our lives and survive for the past ten + years.  It was grieving the loss of me and the life I had and the life I felt I was supposed to have.  I had shoved all that down and just did what I had to do and left all of those emotions behind to be dealt with later.  And so here we are….LATER.  I was not ready for this.  I found myself lost – not the lost of what do i do now that the kids are gone, but lost as in who the hell am I.  Where did this person come from?  What am I doing?  How did my life end up like this?  Why am I where I am?  What am I supposed to do now?…Simple questions to ponder in the stillness and quietness of your home, right?  I spent a lot of time in bed, a lot of time crying, pages and pages of journaling, searching for books on empty nesters as a widow – which don’t exist…yet (stay tuned! :))  I felt like I was right back to the time after Pat died where I snapped out of my daze and started searching for help.  I was falling quickly into despair, not wanting to talk to anyone, do anything, get out of bed or make anymore decisions.  I just wanted to disappear and forget it all.  I know for a mom, when your kids leave the house there is a time period where you have to figure out what you are supposed to do now because all your time and attention had been on the kids.  And I had some of that too, but it was compounded by the work that hadn’t been done or the grace that I hadn’t given myself in the past that rose quickly to the surface.  I didn’t know any other way to get through it than to simply go through it.  

I allowed myself to feel it all. I felt the pain, the sadness, the anger, and the bitterness. I let myself feel sorry for myself until I was almost ready to just throw in the towel and give up. And then that was enough. I started to do some inner work and tried to look at my “Former” life without the rose-tinted glasses on. You see, when we look back and remember what was, we recall all the good; it is romanticized and idealistic, often overshadowing the struggles we faced. But when you step back and look at how life was, and list it out for real, and then make a list of how it is now, and add in what you want it to look like, it was amazing to see that I really am doing great despite everything. I have truly grown and changed, and I have a life—though not fully created just yet, there is a path forward filled with potential and opportunity. Things are growing and moving along, and though I loved my life before, I was a different person then. I needed the opportunity to say goodbye to the girl I was before, to reflect deeply and acknowledge who I had been. I actually wrote her a letter—to the woman I was before he died. That was an extremely therapeutic exercise, a cathartic release that allowed me to articulate feelings I had bottled up for so long. I even found that there were still pieces of that girl inside of me that I had kept pushed down, almost as if to protect her from further hurt. I think it is finally time to remove the armor and let her out again, to embrace the fragments of my past that still resonate with who I am becoming. This act of saying goodbye to what once was has released a great deal of pain and shame I had been carrying around for years, even if it was hidden beneath the surface. It has given me the freedom to start focusing on what I want and who I am now. I now have the chance to see who this new Denise truly is and where she fits in my new normal, which I am creating as I go, piecing together my reality one piece at a time. As scary as it all is, it’s a little bit exciting too. I have been thinking a lot about how I used to do things, back when I was a goal setter… I had dreams and goal markers I wanted to hit, a timeline mapped out with expectations of achievements. But now, I just want to find my peace. I want to discover joy in the little moments, simply finding my way one day at a time. A lot easier said than done, but I am happy to say that this empty nest timeframe, though painful and difficult, has been profoundly transformative for me. I am still at the beginning of this new chapter, brimming with uncertainty but also hope. I know that in the near future, there will be even more life changes—moving, retirement, chapter 2, weddings, and grandbabies. I want to be able to be fully present for all of those moments, to bask in the joy that each new milestone brings. So for me, this season of having an empty nest has been about cleaning out my house, literally and figuratively, which was previously full of pain and sadness, to make room for what is to come, hopefully a fresh start filled with light, laughter, and love.