My husband and I just got back from four nights in Denver. No kids. No “Mom, where are my sneakers” No 6 a.m. wake-up that I did not agree to. (Ok let’s be honest…I can’t sleep in if I wanted to.) Just the two of us, some ridiculously good food, a few even better drinks, a little shopping, a lot of walking around a city that was not our own, and two concerts I will be thinking about for the rest of my life.
And somewhere between the green chili and the second show, it hit me. This reconnecting before the empty nest thing that everyone keeps mentioning like it is optional? It is not optional. It is the whole assignment, and we are very much behind on it.
So let’s talk about it. Mom to mom. Because I have a feeling I am not the only one.
The thing nobody really warns you about
We spend eighteen years pouring everything into these kids. The lunches, the practices, the college tours, the essays, the “are we doing enough” spiral at midnight. And that is right and good and I would not trade it.
But here is the quiet math I did on a hotel balcony in Denver. Jake is at UNC. Josh is a rising senior. Which means in about a year, it is just going to be Jeff and me. The dog, Winnie, will still be here judging us, but the boys will be gone. The house will be quieter than it has been in two decades.
And I realized I have spent so long planning my kids’ next chapter that I have barely thought about ours.
Ed Sheeran, Red Rocks, and a UNC-sized lump in my throat
First up, Ed Sheeran at Mile High Stadium. Fifty thousand people singing, and I looked over at my husband and thought, I know this person, but I am not sure I have really looked at him in a while. Not looked looked. We have been co-managing a household, not exactly gazing across candlelight. That was the moment. Not the music. The looking.
Then a couple of nights later, Eric Church at Red Rocks. Bucket list, fully checked. And here is the part that got me. Eric Church is an avid UNC fan and a fellow North Carolinian, and there he was up on that stage with a UNC guitar strap. Our oldest is a Tar Heel now. My husband and I met and fell in love at UNC. We even got engaged at the Old Well. So watching this guy we have loved for years rep the exact school our kid just walked into and where our love story began, on a stage carved out of the mountains, well. I may have cried. Jeff may have pretended not to notice. It was a whole thing.
Real talk: we have not been great at this
I am going to be honest, because that is the only way I know how to do this.
Let me say this part first, loud and clear. I love this man. There is no one on this planet I respect more. That has never been the question, not for one second. The question is whether we have been making time for that love or just trusting it to wait patiently in the corner while we ran the household. And if I am honest, it has been doing a lot of patient corner-sitting.
Jeff and I have not prioritized us. Not on purpose. It just slowly happened, the way it happens to a lot of good marriages with busy kids. We got efficient. We got logistical. We became excellent teammates and slightly forgetful sweethearts. Somewhere in the shuffle of raising two boys, “what do YOU want” stopped being a question we asked each other and became a thing we asked the kids about college.
And here is another honest layer. For the last couple of years, I have been building The College Counseling Mom on the side while working full-time as a school counselor. I wanted a life where my schedule was finally mine, where I got to call the shots and design my days around what actually matters. I am proud of that, and I would do it again in a heartbeat. But building the very thing that was supposed to give me more freedom quietly ate the hours that connection needs. Turns out you cannot answer emails at 10 p.m. and also really be with the person sitting next to you on the couch. I kept telling myself it was temporary. Two years later, temporary was starting to look a lot like a lifestyle.
And if you just felt a little pang reading that, come sit by me. You are in good company.
What we are actually doing about it
Denver was not a magic fix. Four nights does not undo years of autopilot. But it cracked something open, and we came home actually talking. Here is what that looks like for us right now, in case any of it is useful to you.
We started asking the bigger questions. Not “who is picking up Josh,” but “what do we want the next ten years to feel like.” Where do we want to travel. What do we want to do more of. Who do we want to be when the daily parenting slows down. Turns out we had different answers, and it was really good to find that out now instead of the week Josh leaves.
We put something on the calendar. One thing. On purpose. Because I have learned the hard way that if it is not on the calendar in this family, it does not exist. A weekend, just us, before the school year swallows us whole.
We are letting it be a little awkward. Reconnecting after years of logistics mode feels weird at first. We are doing it anyway.
If you want more of this kind of honest, mom-to-mom talk in your inbox (the college stuff AND the real-life stuff), come hang out with me here: https://freebie.thecollegecounselingmom.com/newsletter-sign-up. It is free, it is low-key, and I promise not to clog up your inbox.
If your kid launches soon, this one is for you too
Here is where I put my counselor hat back on for a second, because this is the part I actually want you to hear.
We are all so focused on getting our kids ready to leave that we forget to get ourselves ready for what is left when they do. We prep them for the dorm and the roommate and the meal plan, and then commit day comes and a lot of parents look at each other and go, oh. Oh no. What now.
You do not have to have it all figured out. But you also do not have to wait until the nest is empty to start. You can begin reconnecting before the empty nest, quietly, this summer, in the middle of the chaos. It does not take a trip to Denver. It can be a walk after dinner where you talk about something other than the kids. A standing coffee. One honest question.
Start small. Start now. Future you, the one standing in a suddenly quiet kitchen next fall, will be so glad you did.
And if you want to be around other moms in this exact season, the ones raising almost-launched kids and quietly wondering what comes next for themselves too, that is a big part of what my Parent Collective is for. No pressure. Just good company for the road.
We are not behind. We are just finally paying attention. And honestly? It feels like the beginning of something good.
