Back-to-school time can be both stressful and enlightening for empty-nest parents, especially those who have just seen the last one go.
“There are certain points in your life,” said Manhattan psychiatrist Janet Taylor, “when the last one leaves the nest, and you look at yourself, and look at your partner, and say ‘What’s next? How do we want to spend the rest of our time?’ ”
Taylor helps empty-nesters navigate that transition with a free online course she developed called "Embrace Your Empty Nest Adventure." It walks young seniors through a guided path of introspection. "Our philosophy is that every transition is an opportunity to reveal your purpose."
It’s unsettling. But it’s also invigorating. Because it’s a good way to begin plotting your Empty Nest Bucket List.
The Empty Nest Bucket List is not like that final Bucket List. It doesn’t contemplate mortality. Rather, it contemplates a near future in which children don’t rule, the restaurant doesn’t serve chicken fingers, and the movie might even be in black and white.
The Bucket List might also include something more ambitious, like a new career. When their youngest left home, music teacher Sue Briss decided to rearrange her life, and, after talking it over with her husband Pete, decided to go to culinary school. She graduated and started Simply Sue Catering. “I love working with clients,” said, Briss, 56, of DeKalb County.
On a smaller scale, David and Casie Hughes have begun enjoying the thrill of not planning everything. “We’ve taken little spontaneous trips to places where you can drive, like New Orleans and Savannah,” said David, an attorney in Decatur.
Life, since they sent the youngest of their three children off to college in 2014, has been a little more flexible, and has included off-the-cuff bike rides, excursions on the Beltline and weekday trips out of town.
Their bucket list will include even more kid-unfriendly activities in the future, like one of those learning expeditions in which a college professor accompanies a tour group and offers daily lectures.
The Mom Who? blog offers 30 suggestions for those looking to bolster their Empty Nest Bucket List. Here is a reduced version:
1. Deep-clean and organize your home once and for all.
2. Resume date night with your husband or significant other.
3. Pick up an unexpected hobby. Try something out of your comfort zone such as acting, calligraphy, latte art, Frisbee golf.
4. Start exercising. If you already make fitness a priority, try changing up your routine with a whole new activity like rock climbing, dancing, or martial arts.
5. Volunteer. Soup kitchens, hospitals, adult literacy programs, and hospices are always looking for help.
6. Introduce yourself to a neighbor you haven’t met yet. Bake cookies or a casserole and attach your contact information.
7. Locate an old friend you haven’t seen or heard from in years. Go to lunch if they live locally or try Skyping if they’re farther away.
8. Write your kids a letter explaining how being their mom has impacted your life.
9. Visit all of your local museums.
10. Organize all of your old, loose photographs into albums and/or scrapbooks.
11. Host a progressive dinner party. These are a fun way to bring people together, show off your decorating, and have a party with a fraction of the work you’d normally have to invest.
12. Learn to fire a gun.
13. Take a self-defense class.
14. Take yourself on a date. Go to lunch, a movie, manicure … learn to be comfortable all by yourself.
15. Write a letter to your future self (and don’t open it until the date you designate).
16. Create a reading nook in your home. Make it your sanctuary.
17. Start a new tradition with your adult kids. Sunday dinners, family game night, once-monthly movie night, annual family cabin trip.
18. Start a journal. The best really is yet to come.
A few years ago Janet Taylor, 54, ushered the youngest of her four children out of the house, and shed no tears. “Absolutely not,” she said. “I was ready for that. Because I knew that I had raised them … I was happy for them and for myself.”
Taylor lives by the watchwords, “ancora imparo,” allegedly uttered by an octogenarian Michaelangelo, and loosely translated as “yet, I am still learning.”
Pay no attention, she said, to that “inner dialogue” that says you can’t do it, you’re too old, what will people think?
Instead, she said, “it’s a time to dream about what you can do, and find a way to make those dreams happen.”
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