Folks, I am in the strangest season of life I’ve yet known. I miss my kids all the time, but I’m also so proud of who they are and what they’re doing I can’t stand it. I miss the things I used to hate: organizing and helping and chauffeuring. Sometimes I even miss the cooking and the laundry! I miss being needed, I miss having short conversations throughout a day and knowing what they were up to most of the time. I miss being mom.
We have always been a close-knit family, but our foursome traveled Europe for 5 months during my husband’s sabbatical only to come home and have COVID-19 hit ten weeks later, leaving us together again. We didn’t kill each other, we didn’t even come close. We enjoy our time together for the most part. I was the mom who hated for summer to end rather than counting down the days until they were back in school.
A 2014 trip out to Montana. A fox destroyed our car and we had to tow it with a moving truck. We’ve had some adventures together!
My oldest graduated from college in May and moved to Grand Rapids to live with friends, work, and attend grad school. Yes, they’re close by, but they no longer live at home. It’s kinda blowing my mind. Our youngest was gone all summer at an internship, home only 5 days before heading back to his third year at college. Gone are the idyllic summers at the beach, making dinner together, and having Friday movie nights. I know I can’t hang on to the past, but it’s hard to let it go. Our quartet is now a duo and that takes some getting used to.
This trying to figure out what I want to do for myself is for the birds. I’m not a martyr and I did and do have friends and a job and volunteering, but there’s just so much dead air now: time when I would have been doing something else, for someone else, and I’m a little lost and lonely. I find it hard to focus, on work or anything else. The figuring out what comes next is hard because this time it’s about me, not in reaction to those around me.
A friend in the same season of life recently shared a post from Whitney Fleming Writes that nailed it. She called in momancholy. After dropping off her three kids at college, Fleming says, “The next few days I felt a little numb… I hadn’t cried as much, but I felt physically exhausted, mentally drained, and emotionally spent. When I mentioned that to a friend, she responded, “Of course you feel that way. It’s called grief.” But grief feels too heavy of a word to use for this situation, one where I am also feeling pride and joy, and hope… As I discussed these feeling with others, someone told me that they knew exactly what I was experiencing, and it was called “momancholy.” It’s grief and gratitude, joy and heartbreak, love and sorrow.”
Melancholy by Albert György
Melancholy is a feeling of thoughtful sadness. Vocabulary.com says melancholy goes beyond sadness, saying it’s a word “for the gloomiest of spirits.” When I think melancholy, I think of Eeyore. But momancholoy is also combined with mom or mother. And mothering is pure hopefulness and love. Precisely because raising a child can be crazy hard and exhausting, a mom has to be filled with love and the hope that that child brings to the world.
I know I’m at a crossroads, that this too shall pass, even though this in-between is difficult. But instead of feeling like I’m stuck in limbo, I’m going to choose to see this period as a pause. As a time to slow down, notice, and take stock before continuing on the treadmill of life without thought or purpose.
I don’t want to rush myself through the remembering. I want to allow myself the time to acknowledge what a special time my season of mothering was. It was really good and I will miss it. Full stop. And a new season is coming, which is good and is starting to feel exciting, even if this transition is also a little scary and daunting. Again, I’m going to allow myself some time. It’s okay to feel these things and even give myself a self-compassion break. And then, like with mothering, I’m going to lean into the hope that comes with ushering in a new part of my life.
