Empty nest

As parenthood takes on a new guise, open yourself up to change and let your grief give way to opportunity, writes Yasmina Floyer

- Yasmina Floyer

When I was sixteen, the swell of my life beginning to expand was palpable, the world opening up like a treasure trove. I was enamoured by books and American campus-based dramas, each one set to the backdrop of russet and gold leaves, so that I believed university took place in a state of perpetual autumn - a place I couldn't wait to get to. There was a readiness within me to be the main character of my own life. I assumed a reciprocating process would take place once I was a parent; that as my children grew up, the cloying love, the choking worry that grips you when they are babies, would ease into a mutual readiness for them to move out. But with my own child approaching this stage, I've discovered that there isn't a mutual process taking place for me, that my feelings are far more complicated...

My eldest will sit GCSEs this year, so the reality that she will be leaving home in the not-too-distant future has started to bleed into my consciousness like a dark stain, filling me with a sense of anticipatory grief. From the moment our children are born, we mark key moments of their lives with rituals that help them to metabolise the transition from one life stage to the next: the tooth fairy when their baby teeth fall out, birthday parties, graduation ceremonies, not to mention the support that goes into preparing teens to become independent enough to leave home. But what of parents and caregivers? How do we navigate this transition?