September 2026

Listening to the radio this morning it is hard to escape the ‘empty nest’ chatter, the cheery tales of parents loading up cars and driving their young people to all parts of the country in the pursuit of higher education and lower immune systems, cheap lager and expensive trainers. 

‘She’s leaving home’ plays from the radio - emotions pour out of me.

My own two little chicks flew the nest a couple of years ago. One at a time, mind, a pause which gave me a bit of space to try and find my footing. 

The first daughter finished school and embarked on a ski season, leaving for the French Alps in the second wave of Covid, shortly before Macron closed the borders. I bravely waved her off at the airport, glad of the enforced mask wearing that allowed me to mask my real feelings.

‘Have an amazing time’ I gushed; ‘Don’t die alone on a snowy mountain’ my amygdala screamed. ‘Shush’, I said to my brain, ‘don't be so silly; she will be fine’.

After three days of total silence and a phone signal which seemed to have died at the side of an icy lake, I was ready to call the gendarmes. She finally surfaced with a message: ‘Gutted. I left my £10 voddie on the transfer bus’. 

And so began the fraught passage of the empty nest years. 

We laugh and minimise our feelings, we cry alone and tell ourselves that we are being silly. But what I have found in the last few years is that empty nest ‘syndrome’ is a very real feeling. A loss and a kind of grief that is valid and sharp and painful, a change in identity that deserves its own time and space. 

We are encouraged to keep ourselves busy and find new ways to distract and to fill the empty space. And if this works for you, then that’s great. But often burying our feelings just forces them out elsewhere in unexpected ways. 

Loss and grief are painful to navigate, and I have experienced those ‘shoulds’ and rules around what I can and can’t feel - rules set by me, and to a certain extent, by society. ‘Give them roots and wings’ is often trotted out, glibly. If only feelings were that simple. 

In the weeks and days before my daughter left home for France my feelings were complicated. Of course I was delighted by her courage to set out on her own, but I was also crippled with the sadness that our family life, our home, would not be the same ever again. 

I struggled to allow myself to feel this sadness. I qualified and diminished my feelings into a kind of hierarchy of grief. I told myself more than once to be grateful for what I have. To be grateful that I had children to wave off, I couldn’t allow myself the validity of being sad because in my mind, there were people with bigger problems than mine and so many very sad parents in the world for so many reasons way more tragic than mine.

The reality is that feelings don’t work this way. I felt how I felt, and no amount of telling myself that I ‘shouldn’t’ feel this way was stopping that. 

I had previously experienced this ‘heirarchy of grief’ feeling. A few years ago when my very good friend died I was weighed down with sadness, but I found myself masking my grief because I didn't feel entitled to feel so deeply. She had a husband, and children - their grief outweighed mine. Who did I think I was being so sad, feeling so deeply?

When I realised that I was overwhelmed and struggling to function, I sought help. I met a very good grief therapist who helped me navigate my feelings, encouraged me to open up and explore.  Most importantly she gave me the space to give myself permission to really feel what I was feeling, without restriction, without rules and without judgement. 

I started to find strategies to cope, to soothe myself and not be knocked sideways by grief. I was still incredibly sad, and I still am sad - I miss my friend and I grieve her loss - my loss. The difference is I let myself feel my feelings and I work through them, I let them out in a safe way which feels manageable to me. Importantly I allow myself to accept that my grief is valid.

So all the current empty nest talk, as parents wave their children off to Uni and college, driving their precious babies off to all ends of the country, brings up many feelings for me too. 

Joy, excitement, fear and some sadness. An activation of grief. My brain reacts - I let myself feel, and I soothe myself in the ways that I have learned work for me. 

I laugh with my children as they play ‘slipping through my fingers’ to try and make me cry (mean!) and I allow myself a little wallow when I wave daughter number two off for her final year at Uni. I speak about my feelings and I give myself permission to be sad. I find pleasure in filling my own time mindfully and give myself space for this new identity. 

I hear the message that if you have done your job as a parent then setting your children free and hoping they will want to come home to your loving arms is the ‘right’ way to navigate this period. 

But I also give myself permission to be sad, to own my feelings and validate my grief. To feel the poignancy of more than one emotion at the same time - joy and excitement in their courage to fly, and sadness in watching them go. By allowing myself the space to feel and process, I can negotiate my emotions and responses in a way that works for me. Roots and wings indeed.

I have found ways to fill my nest whilst still giving space to my feelings too.

Sending my girls photos of the dogs every day or so is still the most effective way to tempt responses, and the lure of a roast dinner more of a pull than the roots of a loving home. And when the chicks return - from snowy mountains or Yorkshire hills - I feel joy and excitement - and a little sadness in knowing that they will inevitably leave again. But that's okay. I am okay. 

Sending love and strength to any of you with whom this resonates.