It’s been two years now since my daughters left for university and it has been a time of big change, a reverse engineering of their arrival 18 years previously!
At the time I was worried about the loss of my ‘mum’ identity. Who was I to be now. What would I call myself? Could I reclaim my pre-children self? Did she even exist anymore? I wasn’t sure how best to navigate this time of uncertainty and change.
It helped that I had a lot going on for myself in my own life. I was starting a new career and setting up my own business which gave me a new purpose. I also had the tools and techniques I had learnt from Positive Psychology which come into their own when life gets uncertain. These things gave me confidence in my ability to cope.
So now, two years in, the kids are back for the holidays and it feels good. They are in that no-mans-land between childhood and adulthood, moving from one state to the other each time they come home. This was always the objective, to raise independent young people equipped to deal with the world. We have succeeded.
So here is what the experience taught me about transitions, emotions and resilience.
Positive and Negative Emotions
Change can be bittersweet. Positive and negative emotions jumbled together are hard to separate. The aim is to acknowledge these, trying to discern them as clearly as possible, without assigning judgements like ‘good’ or ‘bad’.
I am proud of my daughters’ successes and excited for the young adults they have become but there is also sadness, loss, regret and emptiness. I accept I will be feeling these things for a while. There is nothing wrong with that, in fact, there is a lot right with it.
‘Second wave’ positive psychology highlights the purpose to be found in negative emotions (Lomas & Ivtzan, 2016). By acknowledging them rather than denying them we can consider where they stem from and what they have to teach us. I notice a sense of grief that resonated with losing my father. Some of my sorrow was connected to that more permanent farewell and not about my girls leaving. This is an important distinction because it helps me keep a more balanced perspective. I am a great catastrophiser so the sense of loss might otherwise lend fuel to feelings of panic that I am not there to protect and reassure.
If negative feelings don’t lift then Fredrickson and Co. (2010) found that positive emotions help undo negative emotions by broadening our thinking, offering a way to boost us back out of a low mood. Try doing things you enjoy and keep a written or mental checklist of the good feelings each day. This focus on and savouring of the positive offers a helpful counterbalance.
Time Perspectives
Happy memories are great but there needs to be balance and that is not always easy!
Keep present but don’t make yourself over busy to mask the pain. Indulge in fond memories whilst not wallowing in the past. Make plans for the future but don’t use these as excuses to run away from our emotions!
It can seem like a minefield and there is no perfect formula. The main thing is to not get overly biased towards one time perspective, shifting your focus between the past, present and future. Set aside time to enjoy happy memories, then move on with your day.
Be Compassionate Towards Yourself
If you are prone to focusing on the not so good memories then practice holding some compassion for your situation. The children leaving home can bring up all kinds of regrets and doubts about the relationship but this is a change not an ending. How I am with my children has continued to grow and evolve. We all have things we wish we had done better, conversations that could have been handled differently. Remember you are not alone and be gentle with yourself.
Acknowledge your Achievements
Remember to acknowledge and celebrate your successes. Equipping our offspring to navigate adulthood independently was always the goal. This is a huge achievement. You’ve made it as a parent. Give yourself some space to celebrate this. Modern society can fall short when it comes to useful rites of passage so find your own way to mark this close of a chapter.
Embrace your Changing Identity
There’s nothing like raising children for keeping you so busy that you don’t have to think about yourself or your direction in life. Once they leave that changes. There are fewer excuses, less things to absorb your time and thoughts, and that can be daunting.
When your main focus in life moves on, you need to find a new source of meaning and purpose to replace that. I used this change as an opportunity to focus on the next stage of my journey. It needed some introspection, some journalling, some soul searching to help me remember who I was and what I wanted in life. Knowing what is important to me helped me build a future with these values at its core.
Reframing Change as Opportunity
As we move from one stage of life to the next it is a golden opportunity to do some amazing things for ourselves, our families and our communities. Focusing on the positive in this period of change doesn’t mean you’re not missing your children, you are just experiencing both sadness and potential all rolled together.
The image I had two years ago of an empty nest was bittersweet. Yet as I move forward and allow myself to change, this picture of two birds taking wing in their springtime seems more appropriate. That is reframing. Both can be true but the second image is more exciting. It is more useful. So it is the one I will focus on.
Take time to understand what you are feeling and why, try to be honest with yourself about this. The understanding will help with ideas for how to best to move forward. This is resilience. I hope it will inspire you in how you approach changes in your own life.
References:
Garland, E. L., Fredrickson, B., Kring, A. M., Johnson, D. P., Meyer, P. S., & Penn, D. L. (2010). Upward spirals of positive emotions counter downward spirals of negativity: Insights from the broaden-and-build theory and affective neuroscience on the treatment of emotion dysfunctions and deficits in psychopathology. Clinical psychology review, 30(7), 849-864.
Lomas, T., & Ivtzan, I. (2016). Second wave positive psychology: Exploring the positive–negative dialectics of wellbeing. Journal of Happiness Studies, 17(4), 1753-1768.
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