I recently sent out a survey to moms of teens. I want to get insight into what women are struggling with in anticipation of this next stage in life.
When our children were young we marked time as “before we had kids” and “since having kids”. Soon time will be marked “when the kids were at home” and “since the kids left home”.
In the meantime there is also the grey area of the kids are home, but they hardly know we exist except to feed them, do their laundry and be their safety net if they screw up.
Women have been sharing very honest thoughts in my survey about this time of life. It brings up a lot of thoughts and emotions. And I wanted to process my own thoughts so I thought I’d answer my own survey and share with you my journey.
Q. How do you feel about this next stage in life? (w/ kids that can fend for themselves)
A. Such a mixed bag of emotions. My husband and I have already started planning our life when the kids are all old enough to be at college or home alone (youngest babe gets done Grade 12 in 8 years!!!) and that is exciting. On the other hand I’m acutely aware of my teenager and her ever growing independence. Thankfully they don’t change from snuggling, mommy centred kids to full grown adults with lives of their own over night. Instead it is a continual emotional readjustment to years of small tweaks that move our teens a little further out into the real world and away from our protective arms. I’m sensitive to the fact that I need to keep my opinions to myself about a mean friend so as not to frighten her off. Sometimes it feels like I’m approaching a deer and the wrong move will send her fleeing.
In an ideal world we will still have lots to do with them when they are living away from home and this makes it doubly exciting.
Q: How much do you think about this next stage in life?
A: Often
Q: How often do you think about making changes in your life?
A: Often
Q: What changes do you consider?
A: Lots of them, hee hee. What we eat. Where we live. Career wise I am slowly making changes to incorporate more of what I love – coaching. Our social life needs to get on the calendar before we fill it with other stuff. Get comfortable with camping – roughing it style. I grew up in the UK, nothing to be frightened of there. Canada has bears – I barely sleep in a tent.
Q: What motivates you into action?
A: If I think about changing where we live and moving more into coaching it has to be vision / daydreaming that motivates me, which means the great life I envision pulls me towards it. Sometimes though, when I’ve procrastinated for too long I get so frustrated with myself that I get moving. With the camping situation it has to be love that is motivating me. I personally could live without it but it’s part of my husbands dream and he has agreed to live in the South of France with me for a couple of months when we have independent kids so I am easing myself into camping now – it could be a long road.
Q: What stops you from making changes for you?
A: How I might affect others. Yes, I said it. I coach around this because it is such a limiting belief but I do suffer it too. Sometimes I think “who am I to have the life I am dreaming about 10 years out from now” which is dangerous territory because I NEVER want to stop moving towards that.
Fear stops me too. In my tracks. That’s when I find distracting and numbing things to do. I’m getting better at recognising that about myself and training myself to stick with the uncomfortable feeling – work in progress.
Q: Where might you be lacking confidence?
A: Crikey, where am I NOT lacking confidence? I’m trying to keep away from age reducing my circle of confidence in respect to trying new things. I’m confident where I’m comfortable but that is not where I want to stay. I think lacking confidence is not a problem as long as you are willing to work through it still to get to where you want to be. Lack of confidence can be expected, just like fear. It’s what you do with those emotions that matters.
Q: What would you do with a “magic wand for a day” to improve your life?
A: Oooohhh, what to do, what to do?!?! I’m wary of quick fixes because I believe in the value of the learning, however, I’d take that magic wand to reset my body clock. I’d love to get away with 6 hours sleep a night and get up at 5am bright eyed and ready to rock it. As it is 7am still doesn’t feel good to me and that’s even after 8 hours. Which leads back to knowing I need to change my eating habits and up my water intake. I’d use that magic wand to condition myself to drink my 8 glasses of water a day.
There’s a lot to be learned with self reflection. I feel we don’t check in with ourselves enough. It’s far easier to pick up our mobile devices and check in with others instead.
If you are willing, share your responses to these questions with me here.
Dream up some idea’s of what you can do for yourself when the kids don’t need you so much anymore. You’re worth it.
Vicky x