The first thing most women tell me about the empty house is the noise. Or the lack of it. No music through the ceiling, no shoes in the hall, nobody asking what’s for dinner at 5:45.
The second thing they tell me is that they feel guilty. Guilty for not being sadder, or guilty for being this sad. Often both, on alternating days.
Both are normal. You spent 18 or 20 years with your days built around other people’s needs. When that stops, there’s a gap, and nobody hands you instructions for it.
My youngest left for college in August 2019. By October I was sitting in my car in the driveway for 20 minutes at a time, working up to going inside. So I know this one from the inside.
Don’t decide anything big for 3 months
The quiet house makes big ideas very tempting. Sell it. Move to the coast. Go back to school full time. Some of those ideas will turn out to be right. Most of them are easier to judge in January than in September.
Give yourself one season. Write the big ideas down so you don’t lose them, then let them sit on the list.
Fill one old slot with something small
Your week still has the shape of the school years. The 3:15 pickup. Thursday practice. The Saturday morning game.
Pick one of those old slots and put something in it that’s only for you. A walk at 3:15. A Thursday pottery class. Saturday coffee with a friend you haven’t seen properly in a decade. Keep it small and keep it on the same day each week, so it turns into a habit and stops needing a decision.
Notice what you reach for
For the first few weeks, pay attention to what you do with a free hour. Skip what you think you ought to do. Watch what you actually do.
Marian, a high school librarian I coached, kept ending up at the garden center on her lunch break. She didn’t garden. She just liked being there. A year later she was volunteering at the botanic garden on Saturdays and halfway through a horticulture certificate online. It started with noticing where she went when nobody needed her.
Your version might be the library, the hardware store or the long way home past the ocean. Write it down when you catch yourself there.
Let some of the quiet stay quiet
You don’t have to fill every hour. Some of that silence is rest you haven’t had since your first child was born. It’s fine to sit on the porch with a coffee and do nothing in particular.
The quiet house is hard. It’s also the first time in decades that your time is mostly yours again. Both of those are true, and you get to take your time with the second one.
If you’d like company for this stretch, the Tuesday Circle is 8 women working out the same question, one evening a week on Zoom. Or start on paper with questions 1 to 3 of the free Crossroads Workbook.
