Hi, Meagan! It’s so great to find you here. We first “met” way back when, during our days with FLX/Freelance Success. I’ve enjoyed following your work over the years, especially since we have kids similar ages, both wrote about parenting for many years, and like you I also got into podcasting. I’m also in Michigan. :)
I’m so excited to hear about your latest book and can’t wait to read it! Parenting adult kids/going through the transition of an almost empty nest/forging relationships with grown kids is exactly what I am experiencing right now. It’s a focus of my newsletter here and what I have found is it’s just not something that’s talked about enough--so much of parenting is focused on the early years or school-age years. I wrote a piece recently about this very thing, and how being a mom of kids ages 18, 21, 23 has been more interesting and sometimes more challenging than I expected. https://movingthrough.substack.com/p/messy-love
Looking forward to reading your newsletter. I’m right there with you on this particular stage of the parenting journey!
Hello Heather! So great to catch up with you here - it really seems like all the best people are on Substack :) Can't wait to check out your writing about this stage of life. It really is so much more complicated than I expected!
I love the way you’re processing this, Meagan. Even though the writing feels hard right now, as a mom in a similar stage of life, I think you hit the nail on the head with this part: “It could be years before I know whether today’s dinner-table conversations have any impact at all. I may never know. And when I do, it may not be the impact I was hoping for.” I couldn’t agree more. And it’s so different from when they’re younger and so poignant as you look to the grown-up people they’re becoming. It might take a bit, but it sounds to me like you’re on the right track. I look forward to seeing this book evolve!
I wonder if "saying goodbye to my identity as a mother" might be kind of an intense and even dramatic way to frame this. You mention elsewhere in the essay about motherhood dissolving, etc. and you're really still in the middle of this, I think. It might be tempting to see motherhood as "beginning, middle, end" like the essays you wrote/write. However, I wonder if that might be putting too much pressure, even too much definition, on this emerging phase of motherhood. I turned 50 this month and my 75 year old mother is still an active part of my life. She doesn't "mother" me in the way that she did, but she is still "mothering" me in some very real sense. She still worries about me. I still look to her for nurturing, even as our roles begin to change. I think that being our mother is still a huge part of her identity, even if she isn't actually interacting with us every day or "parenting" us in the way that she did when we were her dependents. I think about the way you'd write this book in 10 or 20 years, as a grandmother. You might look back on these years with teenagers and "emerging adults" as a pretty meaningful chunk of your mothering - for many of the reasons you describe in this essay. While it is certainly bittersweet to lose some of the dailiness of it, some of the immediacy, being the sun in their universe (I'll find this great essay for you on this) - mothering might be a big part of how you remember this phase of life ...
Funny, I've also used the sun/planet metaphor in my writing about my older kids! I will definitely check that out.
And, thank you for your thoughts. I don't actually think I'm saying goodbye to motherhood, full-stop. Though I did use the phrase "saying goodbye", I see that more of a closing-one-chapter-opening-another thing. Of course I will always be my kids' mother! But, my current identity as a mother IS changing...reforming dramatically, and and it's still in the process of that reforming, which makes it hard to write about in the succinct and confident manner I now talk/write about earlier motherhood.
It doesn't feel overly-dramatic to recognize that the shift I'm going through is big. Maybe I'm sensitive to that word since I tend to UNDER-dramatize things that are actually quite big and meaningful, and recognize that sometimes that allergy to "dramatizing" doesn't serve me.
I'm realizing that if I try to gloss over the transition just so I can "get to the good part" that I definitely realize is waiting for me (the relationships with our adult children, the empty nest, etc) I've missed an opportunity to sit in the messy-middle-ness of it as it's happening and really experience it and write about it.
Yes, I think you're doing such a service to reflect on this transition! It is HUGE and you're still in the midst of it. I think it's amazing you can write in-process like you do. I was just wondering if that framing was making it harder for you - but it sounds like it's actually an important part of recognizing what a big shift it is. You are certainly in a long goodbye to so many aspects of hands-on mothering. At the same time that you're actually starting a new blended family. This is so much really - so many beginnings and endings. I can't wait to read the book!
Thanks Jennifer! It's "what replaces the hands-on" part that I think can be such a mind-job, (but also is so necessary because, hello, we ARE more than what we can do for people, though that can be very difficult to remember when we spend our days, well, doing things for people!)
Hi, Meagan! It’s so great to find you here. We first “met” way back when, during our days with FLX/Freelance Success. I’ve enjoyed following your work over the years, especially since we have kids similar ages, both wrote about parenting for many years, and like you I also got into podcasting. I’m also in Michigan. :)
I’m so excited to hear about your latest book and can’t wait to read it! Parenting adult kids/going through the transition of an almost empty nest/forging relationships with grown kids is exactly what I am experiencing right now. It’s a focus of my newsletter here and what I have found is it’s just not something that’s talked about enough--so much of parenting is focused on the early years or school-age years. I wrote a piece recently about this very thing, and how being a mom of kids ages 18, 21, 23 has been more interesting and sometimes more challenging than I expected. https://movingthrough.substack.com/p/messy-love
Looking forward to reading your newsletter. I’m right there with you on this particular stage of the parenting journey!
Hello Heather! So great to catch up with you here - it really seems like all the best people are on Substack :) Can't wait to check out your writing about this stage of life. It really is so much more complicated than I expected!
I love the way you’re processing this, Meagan. Even though the writing feels hard right now, as a mom in a similar stage of life, I think you hit the nail on the head with this part: “It could be years before I know whether today’s dinner-table conversations have any impact at all. I may never know. And when I do, it may not be the impact I was hoping for.” I couldn’t agree more. And it’s so different from when they’re younger and so poignant as you look to the grown-up people they’re becoming. It might take a bit, but it sounds to me like you’re on the right track. I look forward to seeing this book evolve!
I wonder if "saying goodbye to my identity as a mother" might be kind of an intense and even dramatic way to frame this. You mention elsewhere in the essay about motherhood dissolving, etc. and you're really still in the middle of this, I think. It might be tempting to see motherhood as "beginning, middle, end" like the essays you wrote/write. However, I wonder if that might be putting too much pressure, even too much definition, on this emerging phase of motherhood. I turned 50 this month and my 75 year old mother is still an active part of my life. She doesn't "mother" me in the way that she did, but she is still "mothering" me in some very real sense. She still worries about me. I still look to her for nurturing, even as our roles begin to change. I think that being our mother is still a huge part of her identity, even if she isn't actually interacting with us every day or "parenting" us in the way that she did when we were her dependents. I think about the way you'd write this book in 10 or 20 years, as a grandmother. You might look back on these years with teenagers and "emerging adults" as a pretty meaningful chunk of your mothering - for many of the reasons you describe in this essay. While it is certainly bittersweet to lose some of the dailiness of it, some of the immediacy, being the sun in their universe (I'll find this great essay for you on this) - mothering might be a big part of how you remember this phase of life ...
Here is the essay: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/08/05/metro/i-was-sun-kids-were-my-planets/
BTW, she still writes about her kids, and her grandkids. They are still a huge part of each other's lives, just differently.
Funny, I've also used the sun/planet metaphor in my writing about my older kids! I will definitely check that out.
And, thank you for your thoughts. I don't actually think I'm saying goodbye to motherhood, full-stop. Though I did use the phrase "saying goodbye", I see that more of a closing-one-chapter-opening-another thing. Of course I will always be my kids' mother! But, my current identity as a mother IS changing...reforming dramatically, and and it's still in the process of that reforming, which makes it hard to write about in the succinct and confident manner I now talk/write about earlier motherhood.
It doesn't feel overly-dramatic to recognize that the shift I'm going through is big. Maybe I'm sensitive to that word since I tend to UNDER-dramatize things that are actually quite big and meaningful, and recognize that sometimes that allergy to "dramatizing" doesn't serve me.
I'm realizing that if I try to gloss over the transition just so I can "get to the good part" that I definitely realize is waiting for me (the relationships with our adult children, the empty nest, etc) I've missed an opportunity to sit in the messy-middle-ness of it as it's happening and really experience it and write about it.
Yes, I think you're doing such a service to reflect on this transition! It is HUGE and you're still in the midst of it. I think it's amazing you can write in-process like you do. I was just wondering if that framing was making it harder for you - but it sounds like it's actually an important part of recognizing what a big shift it is. You are certainly in a long goodbye to so many aspects of hands-on mothering. At the same time that you're actually starting a new blended family. This is so much really - so many beginnings and endings. I can't wait to read the book!
Thanks Jennifer! It's "what replaces the hands-on" part that I think can be such a mind-job, (but also is so necessary because, hello, we ARE more than what we can do for people, though that can be very difficult to remember when we spend our days, well, doing things for people!)