We’ve heard the saying, “The only sure things are death and taxes”. And change. Change is occurring every day yet we don’t always see it. The seasons. Relationships. Work. Our bodies. Hopefully we’re learning and growing in maturity. And then a dramatic change such as a death of a person we love. Or children move away. Like both of mine have done.
I read the parenting books as my kids grew up, but nothing prepared me for the true empty nest. Although my son hasn’t lived with me since he was seventeen, and my daughter only was with me half the time till she was sixteen, moving across the country felt entirely new. This great grief and feeling of emptiness overwhelmed me when my daughter moved to Chicago in November 2021. When I drove through town or went to the grocery store, everything felt empty and dull, because she wasn’t anywhere in the area. Even though I didn’t see her much for the year before she left, I could imagine her somewhere. Getting sushi or a boba tea with friends, swimming in the creek, working at the ice cream place, etc.
And then she was somewhere big and unknown and having to do everything for herself. The grief exhausted me and I slept a lot for the first couple of weeks after she left. And then I adjusted to life without her. We texted and Facetimed and talked on the phone but that was it except when she visited. And then Alan and I went out and visited her at the end of June. I loved being shown her city through her eyes and what she thought I would like to see and experience.
My son lived only fifteen minutes away from me, but last year he said he wanted to move. After a visit to Colorado last April, he decided that’s where he wanted to go. All winter and spring, I helped him sort through his dad’s belongings and whatever my daughter left behind at the house. And we began to pack. Leading up to him leaving I was so sad; it felt like the same grief I feel when someone dies. So intense.
When he moved in the middle of June, I felt a peace and a sadness. But it hit me hard at the beginning of July. Not only the sadness, but feeling this sense of lostness, of purposelessness. All those years of parenting were really over. If you’ve parented in any capacity, you know how physically, emotionally, and mentally labor intensive child rearing is. Even though you love them with every bit and breath of yourself, you have days when you want it to be over. But you do your best to enjoy your kids at every stage because you know, from what the older parents tell you, that it’ll be over too soon. And then it is. The last time you nurse. The last time you hold them on your lap. The last bath you give them. The last bedtime story. The last kid birthday party. The last sleepover. The last time you remind them to take out the compost. The last time you drive them somewhere. The last teenage tantrum. The last school event.
And I think: no one prepared me for this sense of loss combined with being in my forties and experiencing hormonal and body changes and how high my emotions are running. And how sad and bereft I feel.
This is where I am right now. In this in-between place and time. Reflecting on what has been and questing into the dark to discover what my work and purpose is now. The three woman archetypes of Maiden, Mother, and Wise Woman remind me that I am moving into the Wise Woman stage. Even though I’m still a mother, my children are grown and don’t need all of my energy to keep them alive and well. They can now do that for themselves, and I support them as needed.
So what is the focus of the Wise Woman for herself, with her family, friends, and community? That is what I am becoming, where my path is leading me now. Part of me wants to run away from the pain of death of the old and the waiting time that is necessary for transformation into something new. I’m remembering, in her book When the Heart Waits Sue Monk Kidd writes about the chrysalis that she kept all winter, waiting for the emergence of the butterfly. And this is a book I need to reread for this time.
I’m also reading Walking With Persephone by Molly Remer which is her experience with getting to midlife, making changes, and learning to live fully and find magic and beauty in her everyday moments. These books and other women’s experiences can help me as I navigate the disorienting and unfamiliar.
Isn’t this how life is all the way through if I think about it? As a child, going to school for the first time. Becoming an adolescent, high school, friendships, first jobs, first loves, college. Serious relationships or marriage, having babies and/or careers, giving time and energy to our communities, friends, and extended families. Then older children and teens, and then the sudden clean quiet in a home redolent with the sounds of a noisy, messy little people who once needed so much and now are strong, bold, and smart young adults flying with their own wings.
I asked my therapist how can I make sure I don’t miss the beauty of the now while I wait for my heart to heal from the losses over the past seven years: divorce, leaving my faith community and everything familiar, changes in my health, my former husband’s sudden death last year, my sister-in-law’s death last year, and my kids moving away.
How can I live fully into each moment, even through the tears, even while I grieve and try to make meaning of my small life in an ever-changing, magnificently complex and vast creation? She’s given me three pieces of advice in the past couple of months that I want to share with you in case they help with your own healing:
- Honor your experience and those who you love by planting a tree or shrub, having an altar of remembrance, or doing something to honor them.
- Do something you enjoy at least every week to remind yourself you are alive
- And write about it.
So why am I sharing all of this with you? To tell you that you’re not alone if you’re going through a season of grief of any kind. We are human so we love and we get attached to people and places and to how things are and we want the good things to last forever. And we want the people we love to live forever. We want our bodies to stay young and live forever too. And everything changes. We change. People and places and our roles come and go. And our hearts and minds have to go through the holding on and looking back and move forward and into the letting go.
I’ll leave you with Stephen Guntheinz’s EP ‘The Other Side’. It fits the mood of these musings and I hope you hear and feel the beauty and longing in it.
Life of Kim 