What to Expect When You’re Expecting Your Adult Child To Move Home
They believed you when you said, “I’ll always be there for you.”
I left home at 16 to tour with a musical show, (took high school on the road), returned when I was 18 to graduate, then left again at 19, never returning to the nest again.
That’s the way I thought it would be with my own children. Once they graduated and went on to college, I could enjoy their visits and watch them become the people I always dreamed they would be.
I passionately loved being a mother, but having spread my four children so far apart, I was still changing diapers and reading bedtime stories to my baby when my oldest was 16. I added another to the family when my youngest son’s best friend came to live with us. Unexpectedly, I became a single mom for a huge portion of my children’s lives.
In 2010, when I dropped my last child off at Long Beach State, I celebrated. I had done it. I’d delivered all of my kids to the land of adulthood.
I had moments of “empty nest blues,” but mostly I welcomed this new chapter of life by reclaiming the focus on my life. I worked on building my business, began writing again, and discovered the bliss of long baths with a glass of red wine.
