I originally published this piece with Covey Club and I re-read it this morning to remind myself that it's okay to dream about the future in exotic ways. After five months of a very full nest, after a very empty one, I’m back to living solo. The last time this happened, I hit the road. …
I originally published this piece with Covey Club and I re-read it this morning to remind myself that it’s okay to dream about the future in exotic ways. After five months of a very full nest, after a very empty one, I’m back to living solo. The last time this happened, I hit the road. Spent a month in Morocco, and two weeks in Spain. I’m so grateful for that trip and for all that it showed me in the way of wandering, and in the way of fortitude. Now…this sort of wanderlustful travel isn’t really an option. So I wonder, for those of us newly in empty nest, how to travel at home. I am lucky to live in Montana where I can wander in the woods. But with so much going on in the world, sometimes the only place I want to wander is downstairs to make tea. And then to wander out to the porch and wander in my watching. Spiderwebs glistening in the grass. A hornet’s nest humming and growing in the corner. A chipmunk chirping in the woodpile. A red-tailed hawk riding thermals off the ridge. And then to close my eyes and wander in my mind, wherever it takes me, exotic travel or not. Then some word wandering: a pen and my journal, or a splayed open book. That all feels like travel to me now. I’m not sure when I’ll be on a plane going somewhere far away again. Not many of us are. But there are places to wander right in front of us. And lessons to learn from stopping and watching and isolation. That said, this morning on my porch with my tea, reading about a time of being boldly outside of my comfort zone gave me faith that it will happen again. That I still have that fortitude. And that the world is still out there. It’s just a time for taking stock. And so many of us are doing it in solitude. Let’s have it be sacred.
Here is that essay. I hope it helps.
She mourned her kids moving on. And then she flew the nest herself.
Ten years ago, I watched my Montana friend go through Empty Nest. Her solution: drive a massive ice-breaking truck at the McMurdo Research Center in Antarctica (because she’s a badass). She brought some home-made hula hoops too (because she’s the maker of fun), and a few instruments, (because she knows the power of music). She faced Empty Nest with the same electrifying spirit and adventure with which she’d raised her boy and girl…and now they were off to see the world, replete with bad-assery, fun, and music. And she was too.
Back then, my boy and girl were still thick in the throes of music lessons and sporting events and homework at the kitchen table and weekend slumber parties. I couldn’t imagine letting them fledge the nest, much less myself. Not like that. I was sad for her, even though I knew she’d come back with tales to tell and more life experience under her frost-bitten belt. But I felt like she was running away from the grief. I mentioned it to another friend and she said, “Are you kidding? Motherhood is great. But you’re always a mother, even after they leave. It’s just different. Your kids are onto new things. And you get your life back! Reclaim it!”
My life back? I felt like I was finally getting the life I’d dreamed about. Being a mother was the most fulfilling thing I’d ever done. Sure, I’d travelled all over Europe and the Eastern Bloc in my teens and twenties with a backpack. Intrepid, stubborn, solo, and full of wonder. Writing my way through it all. But it felt like all of that was preparation for the most hair-raising, plot-twisting, heart-warming, soul-feeding work of my life: raising children.
And I did it well. For twenty-two years. The last stint, as a single mother.
And here I am. My boy is off to college. He’s got a great roommate and will be living out his dream playing baseball at an institute of higher learning. My daughter just graduated from college and moved into an apartment in San Francisco. She’s got a great job, great friends. A mother couldn’t be more proud. We both moved him in. My daughter flew back to California. I flew back to my house in Montana. It’s over. That part. And I’m afraid of the grief. I’m afraid of who I’ll be without them. Here. In my empty nest in Montana. But I’m not here for long.
Just like my friend…I anticipated this pain and tried to prepare. Two years ago, I started imagining the next chapter of my life. The fear of Empty Nest had me by the throat, but I took my friend’s lead and my other friend’s comment, and I decided that I was going to grab this chapter by the ponytail and yank the weeping woman attached to it back out into the world. To trust-fall into travel and adventure, as the woman she is now.
So this winter, I’m hitting the road. I’m going to live my own version of breaking the ice in Antarctica with my own version of hula-hoops and instruments: my journal and a group of seekers. I’ve started a new Haven Writing Program: Haven Wander. My primary programs still take place here in Montana, but for people who are less writing focused and more travel focused, I offer a new adventure to exotic places around the globe. With the help of some fabulous and inspiring locals from Marrakesh, I have put together a week of intentional wandering around Morocco using writing as our guide. It will be a feast for the senses and soul, with a component of giving back. I want to reconnect with my stubborn young dreamer/traveller. I know that her confidence and curiosity are still in me. And I want to meet her with the wisdom she’s gathered along the way as a mother and as a woman and an author and teacher. I want to scoop her up and tell her that she doesn’t have to do this next phase alone. She can do it in the company of kindred souls.
I’ve learned that you don’t have to live with an empty next. Empty nest, can be a moveable feast. And you can feather it with a small group of women who are just as curious and hungry for connection as you are. Who long to have their senses activated in a rich and deep way, and who want to fill their souls with powerful and meaningful experiences, especially using the written word.
So my new baby, Haven Wander: Morocco, is hatching this February. Seven women will join me on a 7-day journey of intentional living and being, using writing as our guide. And before that, I’ll travel throughout Morocco alone. To the Atlas Mountains. The Blue City. Fez. Tangiers. I’ll see southern Spain, and take the ferry across from Gibraltar. I’ll be solo and as Joni Mitchell wrote, “unfettered and alive.” Deep sigh. It’s been a long time since I’ve been that woman. I’ve missed her.
Before all of this, however, I’m taking a very deliberate and very serious pause between my own chapters. A full stop to honor my transition. And I think that this is vital for all of us in Empty Nest, no matter how we navigate it.
I’m borrowing from the Jewish tradition of sitting shiva. Of mourning. Of stopping your world and observing your loss and your grief. I’ll light a candle and sit on low chairs around the house and reflect in thought and prayer, and write. No TV. No computer screens. Just observations of my motherhood and of who these children of mine have been. I’ll sit shiva for the learning to crawl and learning to walk and learning to speak and running barefoot in the grass and swinging on the swing set and making mud pies. I’ll sit shiva for piano lessons and guitar lessons and school plays and orchestra concerts and soccer games and track meets and football games and baseball, baseball, baseball. I’ll sit shiva for all the birthday balloons I put on the garden archway and the streamers taped to the corners of the porch. I’ll sit shiva for the pony rides in the front yard and the badminton, and the croquet, and bocce, and backgammon and cards and Farkle and Scrabble and Bananagrams played on the screened porch by candlelight. For all the bonfires and marshmallows and star-gazing in sleeping bags on the dewy cool grass. For every ahhhhh to every shooting star.
And then, on the seventh day, I’ll take a walk around all four corners of my twenty acres, and then return to my front porch to symbolize my return to society. I may even call my rabbi friend to read these customary words from the Old Testament:
No more will your sun set, nor your moon be darkened, for God will be an eternal light for you, and your days of mourning shall end. (Isaiah 60:20)
My kids have always said, “Mom. You walk so confidently without having any idea where you’re going. You even walk confidently in the wrong direction.” They’re making fun of me, of course. Millennials have never lived life without their noses in their GPS screens, robots telling them where to turn.
“I know where I’m going,” I’ve always told them. Even when I don’t, I still have deep faith in my ability to find my way. “Maybe it’s the sea merchants in our lineage,” I tell them. Who knows.
They part laugh, part roll their eyes.
But they don’t know that me I used to be, without them. So I tell them now: “You two are the joys of my life. I’ve loved every minute of mothering you. And now…it’s time for me,” I try to convince myself.
I press into the bruise of Empty Nest, begging myself to truly believe it. And it erupts out of me. “The truth is…I’m tired of trying to be everything for everybody. I’m tired of being so responsible. Of having a life where everything has to be so full and stacked and go go go. And perfect. We were so good, the three of us. I’m so proud of us. I’m so proud of you two! And now…I need to have room in my life to just…wander for a while. I’m going to Spain and Morocco for a few months this winter. I’m going to work there. Do one of my Haven programs. I’ll be back. Don’t you worry.” I smile at them, and try not to cry. They hate it when I cry. “I need this. I hope…if you have children…that you’ll have this time of reclaiming yourself too.”
Their faces fade. Perhaps the way mine did when my friend announced her Antarctica adventure. They think that it’s nice, their mother wanting to travel. But they are startled by this gung-ho fling-the-windows-open mother I’ve been, now pushing all of us out the door at once….as a woman. By my simultaneous flight from the empty nest and how we all need to fledge now, perhaps to be better when we come back home.
Here’s what I know and what gives me permission: I can’t get that old life back. I’ve experienced the last graduation. The last family boat ride of the last summer. The last bonfire with his buddies. The last home game. The last of everything.
So I’m replacing those lasts with new firsts: with wandering the spice markets of Marrakech for the ingredients for the tagines we’re going to cook with a world-renowned chef, with learning the history of tea, and having a special tour of the Medina. Riding camels. Sitting in olive groves and in cafes and writing with fellow seekers.
Motherhood never ends. But this phase of my motherhood is over. What better way of honoring it than by re-introducing myself to myself in a far-away place. In that case, today, in my own backyard in Montana, alone, I think I’ll take a deep bow. No one has asked me to. And I’m not going to wait for them to. It’s the bow that I have to give to myself. For now. And as the birds migrate…I know that soon, I will be migrating too.
