Be Careful What You Wish For
“We need each other differently now. We cannot hide behind our boundaries, or hold onto the belief that we can survive alone. We need each other to test out ideas, to share what we’re learning, to help us see in new ways, to listen to our stories. We need each other to forgive us when we fail, to trust us with their dreams, to offer their hope when we’ve lost our own.
I crave companions, not competitors. I want people to sail with me through the puzzling and frightening world. I expect to fail at moments on this journey, to get lost – how could I not? And I expect that you too will fail. Even our voyage is cyclical – we can’t help but move from old to new to old. We will vacillate, one day doing something bold and different, excited over our progress, the next day, back to old behaviors, confused about how to proceed. We need to expect that we will wander off course and not make straight progress to our destination. To stay the course, we need patience, compassion, and forgiveness. We should require this of one another. It will help us be bolder explorers.”
- Excerpt from the works of Margaret J. Wheatley’s
“Leadership and the New Science”
Too many times to count, my husband and I would say this to our four boys as they were growing up:
“When you graduate from high school, you will do one of the following three things:
Get a job…and move out.
Go into the military…and move out.
Go to college…and move out.”
The core message/expectation?
Move out! Prepare for life on your own. We are here for you and part of our job is to help you to know that you are loved, no matter what, and to teach you to love and trust yourselves.
We consistently added that this would always be their home and that they were always welcome here, which was true. Hopefully for frequent short visits, or for longer periods of time, as needed, emphasizing that we felt it was our job to prepare them for the rest of life and a time when we might no longer be here.
Turning Our Message On Us
Our two youngest sons, both Doctors of Physical Therapy, work together at a place called PhysioShop, in Tucson, where we’ve lived since 2007. I’ve been going there regularly since the summer of 2023, first for prehab as I prepared for a total knee replacement surgery, then for rehab, and now, to get in shape and lose all the pounds I’d gained over the many years I lived with chronic pain and limited mobility. It’s fun seeing them do work that they love and connecting so meaningfully with their clients and colleagues. And it's fun being an active part of their worlds.
I enjoy stepping in and out of their lives and I especially enjoy those little moments of connection that happen in their space - that little glance of recognition coming from across a large room.
Recently, I overheard one of my sons telling the ‘move out’ story to a patient. Sensing me nearby, he inched closer and raised his voice so that I could hear. Eventually, he began speaking to both me and his patient, connecting us all to one another. Suddenly, I had a lump in my throat and was pushing back tears. I felt my heart beating a tiny bit faster.
As he drew us in with his warm, dimpled smile, I found myself steeped in memories, and a sudden longing to return to a time when they were little, active, super cute, intense and playful…and when their father and I were the centers of their universe. We loved raising our four boys. My husband convinced me a long time ago that I was meant to be the mother of sons.
[Of course, no longer little, I love that they are still active, ambitious, super cute, intense, and playful!]
In our threesome, a dialog ensued and I asked him if he and his brothers understood - when we chanted those mantras - that our home would always be their home and that they would always be welcome there. He responded with a kind smile and an affirming nod. I let out a sigh of relief and my heart was happy, and, if I’m honest, a little bit sad.
Grateful for all we’d shared and for the fact that our sons had all launched, arguably, successfully, I could rest in that. It’s more than enough. It is pretty amazing that they’ve all found careers they love, doing work they’re suited for and good at. Each is finding his own way forward in the world; three of the four with partners they want to build a life with; the other one surrounded by friends. Knowing this soothes my soul. I imagine this is true for any parent, especially, as we all know, that the road here was filled with inevitable bumps, crashes, disappointments and even life-threatening scares.
In this moment, I am celebrating that we got what we’d imagined was possible, with and for them. And they seem to be well on their way, as good global citizens, the kinds of people you’d want for your neighbors.
And…
I am no longer the center of their universe. I am no longer (and clearly haven’t been for a long while) the person they go to first with their worries and questions. While totally appropriate and expected, their launch was, for me, their father, and them, also a death, no matter how successful or happy we all are. There have been a lot of endings.
Each New Beginning Is Also An Ending - Birth and Death Are Struck Together
In that little exchange between a mother and her young adult son, with a witness, I felt deeply into a reality I had not fully appreciated until that moment…that I’d had a white-knuckled grip on my identity as the active, engaged, and involved parent of school-aged sons (who were no longer school aged)! I will never be that again. The proverbial ship has sailed. For me, as welcomed and anticipated as those transitions were, they were also endings and here I was, feeling the loss again.
While I wouldn’t want to “go back” necessarily, in that moment, as I have in many moments, I felt the impact of the changes. I missed those years. As chaotic and full as every day was, I understood my roles, options and limitations clearly. Navigating full-time work in a corporate setting with a spouse doing the same and au pairs for childcare support required a lot of all of us…and, over time, we got very good at it. People would often ask us how we did it. How do you manage to raise four, active children, while working full time, and still having time for yourselves and your life?
The only answer I ever had for them was, “Because we want to.”
Everything Changes When You Know Who You Are, What You Want (and Need), Choose to Show Up As That, and Organize Your Life Around It
I have learned over the years, that to be fully present, to be here, right now, with who and what is right in front of me, I have to name, celebrate and grieve the endings. This is a powerful way to loosen those grips and release our attachments to the past. Still, I brace myself for these moments, willing to move on and challenged to feel it all, a key ingredient in the letting go process.
Those ‘move out’ mantras mattered as they communicated a lot of things: our values, our intentions, our goals, expectations, and aspirations, as a family. How they would play out for each of our sons would be their own unique and autonomous journey. That they would play out was the only “certainty,” if one could call it that.
Having children and taking responsibility for raising and launching them is full of uncertainties, which creates lots of opportunity to practice and builds some very important muscles, including learning how to flow, set boundaries, be flexible, get curious, hold the tension, and ask for what you really need or want. Navigating life as a parent teaches us that there is a difference between change and transitions. Change is what’s going on outside of us. Transitions are internal. It helps when these are in sync, which requires regular attention and is harder to do while maintaining our attachments.
In fact, our boys didn’t all move out at 18, nor did they go their separate ways, scatter into the world, and never return. During the pandemic, not only were they back, they came with partners (only one is with the same partner now). All eight of us ‘adults,’ and Rosie, our 11-pound poochon, navigated the better parts of a year together under one roof. That gave us a lot of opportunity to practice changing and transitioning too. I’m sure we were not alone.
And there were other returns, for other reasons, all simultaneously filled with blessings and challenges, fits and starts.
We got to practice being “empty nesters” numerous times. First we were, then we weren’t, then we were again, and…you get the idea!
Satisfyingly, the core messages underlying those ‘move out’ mantras were strong and clear, and taken in as intended, inspiring a commitment in each of them to:
Personal sovereignty and authentic expression
Inner authority and outer agency
Lifelong curiosity, learning, growth, and evolution
Own their own growth and development journeys and begin adulting
Continue to have fun while working, playing, and nurturing relationships, personally and professionally
At the center of this journey together and all along the way, we were learning how to build, nurture and sustain healthy relationships, which requires building the capacity to be with conflicts that inevitably arose, what I like to call building a conflict competency. We had to learn what works and what doesn’t and realize that these are different things for different people, true in our homes and in our work places. I remember how surprised my kids were when they started to realize we were actually quite different from one another, and how useful that was to know.
I have always been one of those people who would poke the bear, play devil’s advocate, say what everyone in the room was thinking but was afraid to say, and challenge assumptions or ask an extra few questions. Perhaps because disagreement and friction don’t bother me that much or maybe it’s just how I’m wired, and always have been, this came naturally and was part of my contribution to our household. Each of us has unique gifts, strategies and preferences for how to engage with other people, born out of those times.
My strengths and tendencies were not very appreciated when I was a child, but served me very well in my work (especially in certain roles) and as a parent. If anything, asking questions, deep listening, and learning how to handle friction well can be amazingly useful tools; key ingredients for growing and strengthening relationships.
Like the sand in the oyster that creates the pearl, friction is inevitable. How we engage with it is the tricky part. We had a lot of practice with this in a family of six plus an au pair, especially as they came back into our home now and again, as adults, carrying all of their baggage, literal and psychological, worries and woes with them.
What I know for sure is that, if you begin in love and make relationships and keeping the lines of communication open the most important things (beginning with the relationship with ourselves), and if you get good at anticipating, welcoming and navigating friction, there is love, joy, and ecstasy - real harmony - on the other side of the discomfort and disruptions. There are kind smiles on dimpled cheeks taking time to include you in their adult conversations as they, too, recollect and share meaningful moments from their past and make them their own.
Those ‘move out’ mantras were not just little quips trying to be funny or invulnerable to the pain of the inevitable separations that would come, nor were they just nice ideas or directives. They were provocations, meant to create discomfort; encouragement, inviting them to imagine what is possible; sparks, getting them to awaken and begin noticing what makes their socks roll up and down. Just as real as getting a job, joining the military or going to college.
Those ‘move out’ mantras were all about nuanced relationship building, beginning, once again and especially, with their relationships with themselves.
Now, It’s Our Turn
Pausing that day in PhysioShop took me on a journey into my past and pointed me to an attachment I thought I’d let go of. That became my work for a short while…to remember, to celebrate and savor, and to let go of and grieve what is no more. The upside? By loosening my grip further, I would be making room for more of what I want and need, and for more joy, in ways yet to be discovered and explored.
So here I am, at 65, feeling like I’m starting over.
[Spoiler Alert - If you’ve never seen The Truman Show and plan to, you might want to skip this next paragraph]
Like Truman at the end of The Truman Show movie, at the top of the staircase realizing what his life had actually been and that he had a choice to make - to re-enter the movie and someone else’s script for him, or step into the unknown and begin again - I found myself at the threshold of an open door, facing an unknown future, neither knowing what I might be stepping into next nor clear about what I want and need now. I’ve never had this much spaciousness in my life, or uncertainty, resource, or capacity, which is uncomfortable and awesome, and unsettling and filled with creative possibility.
All I know is that, as I no longer need to reiterate those mom and dad mantras, and the kids are all doing their own lives now, relatively set and settling, I get to be the center of my own universe and live, love, and lead from there.
For this next season of my life and the foreseeable future, I get to shift my attention, whole-heartedly, and with the same intention and focus I brought to motherhood, to my own life (and my life with Michael). While my primary vehicle of expressions for sharing my gifts and work in the world were through my corporate life, marriage, motherhood, and coaching/healing work, and a couple of those are still valid, I am in sitting in the heart of new questions now.
Resist Going to Strategy Too Soon
There is a beautiful saying that I’ve loved for a long time:
There are the plans we have for life and there are the plans life has for us.
I have a sense, perhaps now more than ever, that I need to embrace that mantra fully. Instead of picking something to do or saying yes to every invitation, it feels like time to slow down, say no a lot, and wait - for the clear YESES, to ripen, and to just be. What I can do is listen, on many levels, waiting for life to give me clues about what it wants from and for me now. I am preparing myself for this by making stillness dates, taking contemplative time to meditate and journal, and by practicing listening deeply, with all of my senses.
Whatever comes, I will continue doing the consciousness work I love, for myself and with others, through coaching, teaching, and facilitating teams, families and work groups. Helping people to navigate relationship, work team and family conflicts in order to thrive more in their lives and relationships brings me immense joy and satisfaction. It feels good to be trusted and to work with people willing to be vulnerable, wanting to learn and grow, and committed to implementing what they are learning in daily life.
That has always been a passion for me…to learn how to build, honor, nurture and sustain healthy relationships, even when it's hard or inconvenient, no matter what else life brings.
For me, an essential part of this work is that capacity to anticipate, prepare for, and handle friction. Relationship rupture is inevitable. Knowing how to navigate relationship rupture and repair is magical and, I would assert, essential. Certainly, it is doable, most of the time…if all parties to it are willing. It takes courage. It takes at least two of us. And it's worth it.
All of this begins at home, and within, at that new threshold when the work is no longer “out there.” Rather, it is internal.
There’s A Time to ‘Move Out’ and A Time to ‘Move In’
Perhaps the mantra for me, my husband, and many of us standing at this threshold - well into or beyond midlife - is not ‘move out,’ but rather, ‘move in?”
Perhaps this empty nest period is not only an opportunity to honor, celebrate and grieve the end of a long arc, but also an opportunity to sit in the neutral zone for a while - that space in between who we were and who we are becoming - and feel the discomfort, uncertainty and fertility that exists here, in this space…a place where creativity has a place and room to be?
Yes, like mama bears in hibernation giving birth and attending to their cubs, there is still movement, life is still happening, but there is also space, stillness, a commitment to pausing, being still, noticing, and feeling what wants to be felt.
Perhaps this is a time to play and wonder and begin the journey back home to our true selves, to a right relationship between our egoic and soul selves?
Perhaps this is a time to resist that dreaded victim’s triangle and getting caught in reactions? Instead, and in order to avoid any number of classic mid-life crises, we might practice shifting out of fear, doubt and concern and into empowerment, choice and love. From there, we have the capacity to choose our response. This is so much easier to do when we’re focused on what we need and want, now and in the future.
Perhaps, by acknowledging reality and loosening those white-knuckled grips on old roles, beliefs and ways of being, those of us in midlife can make space to reimagine what’s possible now, appreciate that we still have much to give, and consider how we might serve in this season of our lives?
Perhaps this is not a crisis; rather, it is an awakening, a mid-life awakening?
Years after we chanted those mantras, our kids turned the tides and chanted them back at us. It was our turn to move out of their lives and shed the old roles and assumptions. They wanted freedom as much as we did. They needed space to become, just as we do now.
Our roles have reversed. We would give them kind smiles of encouragement, little nudges, and big, long hugs, while saying ‘move out.’ Now, they are doing that for us…offering their versions of grace, like my son’s kind smile and invitation to join that conversation that day in his home away from home.
It is my turn to move out of their lives and into my own, turning even more deeply inward, and outward, rebirthing my own soul and embracing my capacity for self-leadership, remembering what I have to contribute to the larger world, and deciding if, when and how I might do that, resting on the communities, family and found family I’ve spent a lifetime nurturing and calling into my life. This doesn’t mean I’m doing and going all the time, although I am a Generator (my Human Design type), so it might look like that from the outside in!
There will be more down time, stillness, even play.
Still, as anyone who has ever moved in or out, literally or spiritually, knows, doing so can be very hard. It’s a bumpy and sometimes lonely ride. We don’t always get it that we are still attached to things and when we figure that out, it can be unsettling. In these times of significant internal and external transition, it helps to remember both that we know people who’ve done this before us - successfully - and that we have navigated changes and internal transitions too. We’ve fallen and risen before. We’ve transitioned from one stage of life to another. We can do this. And we don’t have to do it alone.
Perhaps, as Margaret Wheatley so eloquently said, with each other by our sides, we can be bolder explorers as we navigate this new world and our new seasons, together?
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As we enter 2026 and experience a world in massive transition, it is more important than ever to know who we are, what we value, and how we can best contribute to others at this time. This rests on being able to ground, stabilize and center ourselves in a few core, healthy relationships, beginning with the one with ourselves. This was our focus as parents and it served us (and our sons) well. This is our focus now, with each other, and those who are most important to us, as we navigate all the changes - physical, emotional, spiritual - happening within and around us.
Making relationships (and our relationships with ourselves and Source) the most important thing in our lives is the essence of my five core relationship principles, which I will expand on in subsequent blogs.
So please stay tuned and, if you are willing, let me know what resonates and what is bubbling up for you!
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While 2026 may be a bumpy ride, being on the journey together can make it easier, more fun, and memorable. Find your people and make it so. Your life and relationships matter and want your attention now.
Are you ready to receive what you’ve wished for?
Parting note - If you’d like professional coaching and companionship for your journey through these times and transitions, and on your journey to wholeness, which is calling each of us forth in the second half of life, trust your impulse and give me a call. Let’s talk. Together we can explore if and how working with me might serve you as you anticipate change, come home to yourself, and seek to be reinspired by your life. Even during tough times like these, we can turn toward what’s possible and make room for more joy. Be careful what you wish for…make it all about what matters to you!