You're Allowed to Miss Them and Be Relieved in the Same Week

Why you might feel relieved after the goodbye — and the five things that come next, in the order they actually arrive.

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The day after I dropped my youngest at college, I slept better than I had all summer.

I thought, "that's weird... this moment I've been dreading has come and gone and I feel a sense of... relief."

Anyone else? If so, we're not cold or broken. The grief and the relief do not take turns. They overlap.

This isn't only about a kid going to college

It's the last one starting senior year. The job that ended. The parent who moved in, or moved on. The divorce that finished. The company that reorganized around you.

Any season where the thing that used to structure your whole day stopped needing you, and nobody handed you a manual for the silence that followed.

And they arrive on a schedule nobody ever describes. It looks something like this:

Why Relief?

Because it was a lot, and it is over, and your body knows both things before your mind agrees to them.

The relief is not evidence against you. You were tired because it was enormous. It was enormous because you did it well.

In the case of the kid going away: somebody ordered the extra-long sheets, found the health form, made the appointments, drove the car. Your nervous system has been running a project for a year, and the project just closed.

Nobody tells you the two feelings don't take turns. You can miss her at 4 p.m. and be glad the kitchen is clean at 4:15, and neither one cancels the other out.

What makes people feel like something is wrong with them is not the relief. It's the calendar. You brace for one day. You get through it. Then the wave arrives somewhere you never would have put on the list — and by then you have already told everyone you're fine.

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What happens when one woman says it out loud

I run small coaching groups for women over Zoom , and in early August I hosted a live event at my home-- fifteen women, most of them meeting for the first time in my living room, coming together and being honest.

The pattern is the same every time. Somebody says the acceptable half — I miss them, the house is so quiet. Everyone nods. Then one woman says the other half, fast and a little apologetically, and the room changes. Shoulders drop. There's some laughter and more than two more women think "oh thank God" someone said that out loud and it's not just me.

Nobody arrives planning to say it. Somebody has to go first.

So for this, I'll do it:

I prayed for the day they'd be launched — through every missing assignment, every "did you turn it in," every nine p.m. poster board. My prayers were answered. I got home to a clean house and I want to be honest about how good that felt. And I would still give anything for one more kid crisis that seemed so big at the time-- just to have them little again-- just to be needed in that way. (See: The Joy and Ache of Not Being Needed.)

It doesn't resolve neatly. Some women feel the relief and never feel much grief at all, and spend the season waiting to be sad and feeling like a monster because they aren't.

You are allowed to miss them and be relieved in the same week. Nobody says the second half out loud, so consider it said.

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If the question is starting to surface

If step five is where you are — if the thing that organized your days has stopped needing you and the question underneath is getting loud — that is what my Manifestation + Momentum groups are for. Six sessions over Zoom with a small group of women asking the same question, which is a great deal easier than asking it alone in a kitchen. Note: this group includes women of all ages- not just empty nesters and not just moms.

Two groups start this fall: Wednesdays at noon from September 16, and Tuesday evenings from September 22. 

Learn more here