What My Own Empty Nest Is Teaching Me
I’ve walked a lot of clients through this chapter. It’s different when it’s your own front door.
Both of my boys are in college now, and lately one of them is pulling away a little. The calls are shorter. He’s building a life full of people and plans I mostly hear about secondhand.
Two feelings at once
This is exactly what I hoped for him. You spend eighteen years helping a kid become someone who can stand on his own, and then he does.
It still makes me sad.
I used to think one of those feelings had to win. Now I think they just sit side by side for a while, and that’s okay. Being proud of him and missing him aren’t opposites.
How it changed the way I listen
I hear this mix all the time from clients whose kids have left. Someone mentions the house feels too quiet. Someone else says they keep walking past a bedroom they don’t need anymore. A couple tells me one of them is ready to move and the other can’t imagine it.
Before, I might have heard those as real estate questions. Now I hear people working through something bigger, and the house is just where it shows up.
Don’t decide from the sad part
The advice I give clients, and I’m trying to take it myself, is to give it time. The first year after kids leave can feel disorienting. Some people rush to sell so they don’t have to feel the quiet. Others freeze and stay longer than they want to because leaving feels like closing a door.
Neither is a decision. They’re reactions.
When the quiet starts to feel familiar, the real question gets easier to hear: what kind of home fits the life you have now? For some people that’s rightsizing into a rowhouse in Petworth or a condo near Logan Circle where they can walk to dinner. For others it’s staying and turning the empty bedroom into an office, a studio, or a guest room that’s ready when the kids come home. Both are good answers when they come from the right place.
Where I am
I’m staying in my home on the Hill. It still fits the life we have, and I love this neighborhood too much to leave it. For now I’m letting myself be a little sad, and slowly figuring out what the boys’ rooms become when they aren’t home.
That’s rightsizing too. Sometimes the right home is the one you already have, used a little differently.
If you’re in this chapter too, I’d love to hear how it’s going for you. No agenda and no pressure, just a conversation. Reach out anytime.
