Her Next Chapters

34. After Graduation: Reframing Your Identity as the Kids Leave the Nest

• Christina Kohl

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After years of spending weekends at baseball games, gymnastics and scouting events and being completely involved in my children's lives, a major life change has arrived—our youngest child has graduated high school. The transition to an empty nest brings a mix of emotions, and it's something I deeply relate to as a mom. This episode reveals my personal journey through this emotional milestone, sharing how our roles as moms shift from being "cheerleader moms" to finding new passions and redefining who we are. Join me as we navigate this poignant transition together, finding new hobbies like kayaking and personal fitness, and embracing the opportunity to rediscover ourselves.

As we close this heartfelt discussion, I want to extend my immense gratitude for your continued support and listenership. I hope you found the insights meaningful and reflective of your own experiences. Let's continue this conversation on LinkedIn, where we can connect more personally, and I can express my thanks for tuning in. Wishing you a wonderful week ahead, and I'm excited for our next chat!

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Christina Kohl:

Hi and welcome to Her Next Chapter's podcast. I'm your host, Christina Kohl. I'm a mom of three and soon to be an empty nester. I'm also a certified HR pro who restarted my career after being a stay-at-home mom for over a decade. I created this podcast to connect with moms who have an empty nest on the horizon and are wanting to redefine their identity outside of motherhood, which might include a job search. On this show, we'll have raw conversations about our ever-changing roles as moms. We'll hear from women who restarted their careers and share tips for a job search after a career break. So if that's you, you're in the right place. Friend, let's get started.

Christina Kohl:

Hi, everyone, and welcome to this week's episode of Her Next Chapters. If you've been listening the past few weeks and months, even, you'll know that I am the mother of a recent high school graduate. My son, alex, just graduated from high school a couple weeks ago actually and we had a celebration party and got the whole graduation much different than my daughter's graduation in 2020. So I'm grateful for that and I just kind of wanted to acknowledge the bittersweet emotions of graduation for both parents and children. So, whether you yourself are the parent of a graduate, or maybe that's on the horizon in the next few years. I'm sure you can relate that it's an exciting time, but also I don't know. There's like the looking back on what's you know, did I do everything right? Is there anything that I missed? And I miss my kid. I miss my little guy who's all grown up and now he's this big, deep voice and he's taller than me and he's so independent, which is all things that we want, right? We want our kids to become independent adults and that's the goal. But it's still bittersweet because I miss the little boy that he was. And it's just important to acknowledge that it's a transition for both parents and kids going through this big life event of graduation, closing one chapter and beginning another one. And really this part of what I want to talk about today is not so much our kids' identities but our identities, just reframing our identity as our children begin to leave the nest. So I don't know about you, but I think it's pretty common to be kind of the cheerleader mom dedicated to supporting your children's activities and milestones. So whether that was like starting kindergarten and graduating kindergarten and then going into sports and different activities, being on the sidelines, I mean, I even I think I wrote that in my graduation card to Alex that we're still going to be on the sidelines cheering him on. But the sidelines have maybe moved a few hundred miles as he goes off to college, but we're still going to be cheering him on and that identity of a cheerleader mom can be so very central. And I know.

Christina Kohl:

For me my identity absolutely revolved around my children's lives and through volunteering and attending events, and especially when I was a stay-at-home mom. But even as a working parent, people would ask me how I am and the answer that they get, even today, is well, adam, is this Abby? Is that Alex is doing these am? And the answer that they get even today is well, adam, is this Abby, is that Alex is doing these things? And the question is how are you Right? So my identity, I fully acknowledge, revolved around my children's lives and I love that. I always wanted to be a mom and I got to be a mom and I embraced that identity. I was a baseball mom, I was a scout mom, I was a gymnastics mom, I was a PTA mom, all of those things and I.

Christina Kohl:

It can be a little bit of a sense of loss when those identities fall away right as the children become more independent. When the kids were elementary and onward that's, my social circle expanded because I was always at all these events with other parents and we're setting up carpools and snack schedules and sitting next to each other cheering on the team and cheering on our kids. And as they got older and are driving themselves and they've, you know, graduated high school and they're not around anymore, they've gone off to college or they're, you know, living independently, my social circle shrunk and there's just kind of a loss of you know, what are we going to do today on the weekends? When my son stopped playing baseball, he was a sophomore in high school and he had played baseball from like t-ball little kid, like four-year-old all the way on up.

Christina Kohl:

My husband and I started kayaking on the weekends because we had the time and as we're kayaking and enjoying this new activity and I'm not talking like whitewater kayaking like the, really like rough stuff, where you like go in the water upside down and spin, and all that going down a whitewater river, I'm talking a nice smooth glass water in the morning on a reservoir and it's just so peaceful. So anyway, kayaking is one of my newfound things and I realized after, you know our third or fourth weekend of kayaking. I'm like, oh, we didn't do this before because we were at baseball. We were always at baseball every weekend for years and now we have this opportunity, this space in our calendars and schedules to do something new, and it's a great thing that my husband and I enjoy doing together.

Christina Kohl:

But there's definitely a sense of loss. As I drive by the baseball fields of the high school, which I do on a regular basis, there's a sense of loss, even before he graduated, just because he had taken a break from baseball and like, oh, I see that you know, the parents are there, they're watching, they're cheering on the kids and on one hand it's like, oh, but I don't have to be there. On the other hand, it's like, oh, I don't get to be there. So it's kind of that duality. So I think that's very normal for a lot of people and maybe for you. If your kids were involved in lacrosse or soccer, you have that same kind of community, or maybe swim team. You develop a community around your kids' activities.

Christina Kohl:

This is the stage of time as our kids are approaching graduation. Maybe they've already graduated and are living away at college or living on their own. It's time for us, as moms, to switch from that cheerleader role to CEO of your own life, and let me tell you what I mean by that. It's really the opportunity to reframe your identity and focus on yourself as you enter this new chapter, just like you did for your kids, at least. I feel like I'm such a strong advocate for them and making sure they're involved in different activities and connecting and having strong social connections and meeting their goals and helping them come up with what their goals are. It's time now to do that for us as individuals, and so it's really reframing your identity away from cheerleader mom who's all in and fully supporting the kids, because you're always going to be mom, right, but that role is shifting and now it's time to start focusing more on yourself as you enter this new chapter and know that you are in charge of crafting your own course, making decisions that fulfill you. So it's just a great opportunity to explore the possibilities that come with this newfound freedom.

Christina Kohl:

Is it career options? Maybe you're already working, and you've been working all along, but with your kids being more independent, whether it's your graduation or they're driving for the first time, or maybe they're away at college or beyond, maybe it's time to up-level your career. If you've been so engrossed in parenting and now you've got this freedom of time and energy and kind of mental capacity to do more, maybe it's time to up-level. Or maybe it's the opposite. Maybe you've got more freedom to go explore other hobbies and you want to downshift your career. It's an opportunity to decide what's right for you next. Maybe you want to even start a business, become an entrepreneur, and try that out and do that alongside your career.

Christina Kohl:

Maybe it's like me, like pursuing hobbies the kayaking I mentioned. I also went back to riding horses. I found a horse to ride. I grew up riding for years. That was my passion and what my mom was my cheerleader on for years and years, taking me to horse shows and lessons and getting ready for the horse show and all the things with my horse, and I really miss it. So I found a horse to ride this year. It's amazing to be able to go ride. I just love reconnecting with that part of myself and with nature and with the horse. It's awesome.

Christina Kohl:

The other thing as far as possibilities is volunteering. The other thing as far as possibilities is volunteering. And if you are a long time, stay at home, mom, I will tell you volunteering is an incredible way to reconnect to your professional self, and not just. You know, you can volunteer just for fun. A friend of mine, melissa she volunteers with the puppies like they're going to be trained to be service dogs. But when they're little little puppies like I'm talking three, four weeks old that is her volunteering time she gets to hang out sitting on the floor with puppies crawling all over her and just playing with them to help socialize them. What a fun thing to do. And if you are looking for something fun, that's a great idea. But if you're looking to reenter the workforce after being a long time stay-at-home mom, strategic volunteering is a great way to tap into your interest, use your skills and maybe, if you're not quite sure what you want to do, you can explore different things in a volunteer capacity and be gaining experience and knowledge about yourself too, and also gives you references, all the things. Volunteering is something to fill your time, expand your social network, get current experience and perhaps help you land your next job.

Christina Kohl:

And then the last thing as far as exploring possibilities is self-care, and maybe for you, maybe it is going to get a massage or getting your nails done. For me, it's going for more walks and going to the gym and working out and just taking care of my body and being strong, and that's my goal. I don't know if I've talked about this before, but my ACL is severed a couple of years back and so I had surgery and then a lot of physical therapy afterwards, so that's a form of self-care, but it got me back in the gym to be exercising and working out. That's something I didn't do before, when I was so engrossed in all the kids' things. There's a breathing room in my schedule and in my life and hopefully you're feeling that too, and that, instead of thinking of it as an empty nest, think of like. That's an opportunity to fill that nest with new things. Maybe not the nest from the home part, but that's an opportunity to fill that nest with new things. Maybe not the nest from the home part, but it's an opportunity to fill your life with new things. You were a whole person before you ever became a mom, and you've been a whole person this whole time, and now it's an opportunity to go back to finding out what you like and what you enjoy and what you want to do, and so if you're kind of not sure what that is.

Christina Kohl:

I would encourage you to journal. Just take some time even five, 10 minutes a day and journal about your values, what's important to you, what your interests are and what your dreams for the future might be. And just take some time and see what comes out in just a few minutes a day and just be thinking about what type of life you want for yourself in this stage. The other thing is to revisit your old dreams or aspirations you might have put on hold. Did you always envision being an author, or maybe even a children's book author? But you were so busy with your kids, raising them, that you just didn't have the time to write. So that could be something, and just you know it's so important to reignite your passions and explore new possibilities. This is your time. Just like you would encourage your kids to dream and go after their aspirations, it's time for you to put that focus on yourself.

Christina Kohl:

And if you're looking for inspiration from others, there's a couple of places I want to direct you to. You might have already heard of this if you're listening to this podcast, but there's the Grown and Flown on Facebook. It is a community. I think. They're certainly about graduation and going off to college. It's also, you know, teenagers to young adults and being a parent in this age and stage, it's just kind of fun to go on there. I don't really post every now and then I'll comment, but just hearing that you're not alone, other people are going through this too and it's kind of nice to connect in that way. There's also a couple of empty nest groups on Facebook. Just search for groups and I'm sure you'll find them. If you're looking for people that are more specifically going through this transition of empty nest, just to again know that you're not alone and to learn from other people and maybe make some connections. If you are searching for a career change or you're going back to work, you can join my mom's next career group on LinkedIn. There's a little over a hundred of us there and you'll get all my posts on LinkedIn, which is more focused around the moms returning to work. So that's something to look into as well.

Christina Kohl:

So, in conclusion, it's okay to feel a shift in identity as your kids leave home. Embrace this as an opportunity to rediscover yourself and pursue your own dreams, whether that's a hobby like kayaking, or going back to riding horses, like for me. Maybe for you it's writing that book, or maybe you want to create a podcast or start your own business, or you want to change jobs and do something completely different than what you're doing now. This is an opportunity for you to do that, and you're graduating from cheerleader mom to focusing on your own goals. So keep that as your focus and know that it's okay to be letting go and maybe a little sad, but also embracing all of the opportunity ahead of you. There's just such an exciting time that you have a new chapter in your life. Your kids are starting a new chapter, and so are you. Exciting possibilities are available for you.

Christina Kohl:

All right, well, that is it for this week's episode. As always, I hope it was helpful. I will talk to you next week. In the meantime, have a great week. Thank you so much for listening today. I hope this episode hit home for you and, if you haven't already, be sure to connect with me on LinkedIn and say hello so I can personally thank you for listening. Until next time, remember your story is uniquely your own and your next chapters are ready to begin.