What is most alive for me in my parenting journey right now is that our firstborn will be flying the nest soon - in about three and a half weeks. Her departure date is coming forward to meet me at full speed, whether I like it or not.

Whether I like it or not… I must admit that I have a lot of feelings around her leaving and that I cycle through an assortment of them with regularity.

First and foremost, I feel great joy for her. I’m celebrating that she is a confident and capable young woman, who feels excited about stepping out of life in our small town in Aotearoa New Zealand into the great wide world. She is going off to a 10-month program in Sweden called YIP (International Youth Initiative Program), where she will live and learn with 40 other young people from all over the world, exploring topics ranging from the macrocosm of global awareness to the microcosm of personal consciousness. For some of the program, they will be immersed in a different weekly topic guided by a contributor who comes to work with them, followed by a month-long internship somewhere in the world at a project that inspires them, culminating in a self-designed curriculum project and presentation of a personal inquiry of their choosing. What an environment for growth and stretching one’s wings! I am so proud that she is choosing this for herself. Not only that, there is a sweetness about her returning to and connecting with our ancestral homelands in Scandinavia.

And despite my excitement for her adventures, I wear a heavy cloak of sadness. Sadness because our relationship as it has been will soon be altering drastically. For nineteen years (minus the four months she lived overseas in Norway on a high school exchange), we have lived together under the same roof, in this family configuration of mother-father-sister-brother. I love her and I like her, and I will miss the day-to-dayness of our encounters and the space for spontaneous conversations and connections with each other. And I am grieving the change in my role as mother. Luckily we still have our teenage son at home for a couple more years, yet I can feel, with our daughter leaving home, that shift is gradually happening in my identity. These years of active mothering have been some of the most precious of my life, and I feel deep sadness about that changing.

And fear… yes, I sit with a strong dose of fear too around my daughter leaving home - with a one-way ticket to Sweden. I have a very vivid imagination, and unfortunately, sometimes it gets the better of me, leading into quite dark scenarios. I have fear that when we say goodbye at the airport it may be the last time I ever see her. Visions of airplane disasters or of the Ukraine war spreading seem to be some of the more frequent visitors to my imagination, or of lockdowns and not being able to get to each other if we need to. And there’s another level of fear too. There’s the fear that I haven’t taught her everything that I wished to as a parent. Fear that this time of living together is quickly narrowing, and that I may be missing opportunities to be together. Fear of stepping into the unknown - I don’t know yet what it means to us with our daughter no longer living here.

And what I am declaring for myself is a space of trust. Trust that all is unfolding as it should. Trust that my daughter can now take care of herself and will figure out what she needs to figure out - that this is her time to make her way into the world. Trust that what I am learning from this experience will be useful when it’s time for our son, the youngest, to leave the nest. Trust that I have done what I needed to in mothering my daughter, because now she is doing what she is meant to do developmentally - stepping into independence as an adult.

I imagine this will be a big adjustment for us all as a family, one that will need time to navigate, and will need support from friends and loved ones. My intention is to step into this shift with consciousness and openness to seeing what unfolds.

Over the course of my parenting, it’s become clear that the values I hold most dear are family, connection, creativity and transformation, and I will continue to channel my energy into holding space for other families who are interested in a similar path. Currently, I’m in the process of developing a painting class called ‘The Muse of The Empty Nest’ for mothers who want to find clarity about what they want to cause and create for themselves in the space of an empty nest. It will be a deep dive into the self through the vehicle of Intentional Creativity.

And, as always, I am available to work one-on-one with you parents who wish to bring more consciousness and connection into your relationship with your children. Knowing that children grow up all too quickly, the time to infuse your parenting with these qualities is now! You can find more details on my website: www.heartconnectionparenting.com.

ps- Quinne has working as a nanny and been raising funds so she can attend YIP. If you feel inspired to support her, here is a Give-A-Little link where you can contribute to her cause - she would be most grateful. https://givealittle.co.nz/cause/support-quinne-to-go-to-yip?fbclid=IwAR1Pj4dWG38yohFEIs6IUf5pa-69tsRdjbGvKwYLPndUxuUDFL-C5Z0hNxs