Empty nest and Self Love

This morning I said to a friend my kids are on school holidays so I’m more free with my time since I don’t have to worry about drop off or pick up.

Then I realized it’s singular now – I have a child at school, not plural.

My children are growing up.

My oldest just went on her first overseas cruise with her fiancé 🙀 (yep there’s that growing up thing) this year. I missed them like crazy!

My oldest son is looking for his first job now that he has left school.

And I’ve been experiencing those first feelings of what life is going to be like with grown up children.

Children who no longer live with me and are out there living life no longer under my direct guidance.

And I feel so much gratitude that I’ve created a life for myself doing things for myself that I love and didn’t live through my children.

Because if I’m experiencing these, what I guess, are the beginning of empty nest feelings I can’t imagine what it would be like if I hadn’t invested in myself and found what it is that I love doing beyond being a mother.

Being a mother is an important job and yet it doesn’t mean that we aren’t first ourselves. The women we have grown into.

So often I see women forgetting who they are for the title of mother.

Seeing the experiences my children are now having and how they have responded to me doing things for myself and having boundaries around behaviors and expectations gives me peace to know that it really is ok to do things for me.

I was a young mum at 18. A mum who had plenty of unhealed trauma that really could have screwed my children up for life had I let it. My trauma did come into play a few times, as it naturally does, before my healing began. It may possibly still come into play, however I now have the awareness to recognize it.

I was in no way a perfect mum in the sense of the word perfect. Yet I know I was perfect for them.

Maybe being a parent would have been a totally different journey had I not had babies young. Perhaps I wouldn’t have had children at all if I didn’t have them young?

I was at an event not long ago where a woman stood up and spoke into the fact that she chose not to have children because she did not want to carry on her family genetics because she knew they should be stopped. And I thought wow how powerful to make a decision like that.

I also felt a little guilty that I had chosen to carry through some pretty crazy genetics.

Then I realized – I’ve been doing the work to ensure that this family line of genetics has healing. And I know so many other amazing people who are doing the same for future generations.

We are living in a powerful time where people are doing the work to leave a better future for the future generations.

Generational healing is happening on a large scale.

People are no longer just talking about healing, they are doing the work. People have begun to stop bypassing.

My children are just a small amount of proof for me that when a parent heals so does their family. When a parent can realize they were parenting from their traumas big change can happen. And when a child can realize their parents and grandparents and so on, were parenting from their traumas and still did the best they can that is when true healing can also begin. That was a turning point for me. Loving my parents for doing the best they can with what they had whether it had a negative impact or positive impact. In reality even the negative has had a positive impact because I learnt from their mistakes how I wanted to be a parent to my children.

I won’t stop recommitting to the work. After the changes I’ve seen how could I ever?

And I will keep reminding myself that my children being out in the world doing life just means that I’ve done the best job I could and taught them enough to believe in themselves and what they are capable of.

I’ll always be their mum. Even when I’m not on this planet anymore I’ll still be around for them.

This empty nest thing is just going to be another little tick off my list. Plus I still have my youngest baby, plenty of years before it’s actually empty nest time!

So for my last post of 2019 I’ll leave you with this – do not question if it is good for your children to do something that is for yourself, because ultimately it’s for your children anyway. A happy, relaxed, cup full, mother is never a bad thing for your children.

See you in 2020!

Xo S