Is there a better name for "the empty nest?"
I wish there were different shorthand for this stage.
I’m aiming my linguistic ire at the phrase “empty nest.”
From the footnotes of my previous post, Solvitur Ambulando:
The metaphor has always rubbed me the wrong way, but moreso now that I’m in the “nest” that’s supposedly “empty.”
The avian imagery is useful…
…but the message is off. Years of life-altering work and growth and transformation — theirs and ours! — and we describe this pivotal moment as…a vacant bundle of twigs?
It just seems wrong. And patronizing, as if our lives are husks, devoid of energy or purpose. I detect a whiff of patriarchy.
We raise children to grow up, so there’s going to be loss. Grief comes with the job and we should acknowledge this more often. But as I navigate this transition, a nuanced “fullness” is emerging. (Both/and.)
“Empty nesting” isn’t only about our kids flying away, it’s about our journeys as well: as parents, partners, selves. It feels less like an inert location and more like a layover on the way to a new country.
I like the way Steve said it in last week’s comments:
The nest is not empty but rather reconfigured and renovated.
Part of the struggle of talking about the experience is that it’s so different for each of us, sometimes in ways we can’t immediately perceive. Hearing other peoples’ stories usually fills me up, but I’ve also felt like the odd one out, and I can’t always make out those potholes until I’ve fallen into one.
But for the most part, my slant on empty is spacious. And I’ve wanted more space for years.
I ask myself: should I fill this new space with something external, like a new hobby or project? Or does occupying this space require internal growth? Maybe I should chuck the self-improvement and just stretch out and relax for a while. Perhaps all of the above.
Then there’s the fact that one’s nest may not empty on the timeline one expects. Or one’s nest empties temporarily and then one’s adult kid returns home.
Our families are unique. The farther we are from the cultural norm, the lonelier it feels. The “empty nest” metaphor fails parents whose kids follow an unconventional path toward adulthood.
Thinking out loud hasn’t changed my irritation with the phrase “empty nest,” but it leads me to conclude that this parenting moment is too wide-ranging and complex to be summed up by any one phrase. Imperfect language is better than none if it gives us a foothold and a way to find each other.
What do you think about the phrase “empty nest?” It would be pretty cool if we could coin a new term.
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Is there a better name for "the empty nest?"
It's interesting. My mom has two "adult children" (descendants? creations? idk 😅) but she never got an empty nest, as she moved with me to another country with me when my sister chose to stay behind with our grandparents (she was 17 so was awarded a choice). And after I moved out of my stepdad's house that marriage ended, too, so she moved yet again. I'm sure the feeling of loss was still there but she never got to reclaim her space, because she never had any. Instead she had to move into a tiny rental that never quite became a home. Ah 😕
I wrote the following a couple of years ago, the day after my oldest graduated high school. Sorry it's a little long, but perhaps it offers some language?
"I have said before and I will say again that if I had known what being a mother would require of me I wouldn't have done it. I wouldn't have believed myself capable.
My chest aches this morning. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say it echoes, like a vast, empty space in which the slightest footstep reverberates.
When my children were inside me I was a closed vessel. The Mystery of them was entirely contained within me, but it still felt like the task was just to put one foot in front of the other. Carefully, mind you, like someone in a race with a raw egg on a spoon. But still-- feet, ground, one foot, another.
Birthing them did not put them on the "outside" as much as it made of me an open boat, which is an infinitely more vulnerable vessel. A boat literally carved out of my body, heart a rudder, working constantly to keep us all safe and steady and on course with no definitive map or training.
As we have all grown together I have had to carve an ever wider and deeper space, had to expand myself more than I ever imagined possible, to hold us well enough to survive this journey.
We do not honor properly the Divine Feminine as Great Mother, the Soul and Spirit labor required to literally fashion of yourself a vessel to contain and carry the vulnerable and cherished. If we give it any attention we focus on the physical work of mothering, maybe we acknowledge the emotional labor of it all. But we rarely, if ever, name the enormity of the task to birth and carry Life, to make of yourself the sacred vessel that holds and nurtures all the potentials and actualities of an entire family. The vastness of Soul required to be a strong, loving, safe container not just for forty weeks, but for years and years.
This morning I am feeling the enormity of the space in me that had until recently been almost entirely filled up getting Otto out of high school alive and emotionally well, daily nurturing a family of six, carrying all of us safe and protected within the vessel of me. I feel hollowed out. There's a weird, echoey amount of space in here.
It feels both empty and holy, like a cathedral without congregants."