The Real Mothers of the Empty Nest: Cindy's Story

Bobbi: 0:37

Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of Fly Mom Fly. Today we're doing another real mothers of the empty nest and I warmly welcome this beautiful lady. Sitting next to me is Cindy and she is here today to share her empty nest story. Hello Cindy.

Cindy: 0:57

Hello, how are you Good good.

Bobbi: 1:00

Look, we've been chatting a little bit on Facebook, but this is the first time I've actually gotten the chance to have a conversation with you and dive deeper into your story. I want to thank you for jumping on board because I feel that with women sharing their stories, their triumphs and challenges with empty nesting and how they navigated their way through that, they will resonate with other moms. So I really appreciate you jumping on board.

Cindy: 1:34

Yeah, of course. So thank you for having me. It's such a personal journey for me I mean, everybody's journey is personal and it's near and dear to my heart because my family is so special to me, I think that's the thing.

Bobbi: 1:48

You've hit the nail on the head there, because people will say, oh, do this and do that, and in time you'll feel better. Yes, we do move forward in life, but for so many of us that family unit is our heart and we don't necessarily want that changed or altered. We want to keep that same heart full of love with us as much as possible, but reality states that we can't for most of us. The kids will leave our home, they'll fly off, and it's not unusual for them to fly far away. So tell me about your family unit and who's in it.

Cindy: 2:31

So my husband Todd and I. We've been married 31 years and we raised four children. Our oldest is now 29. He's married to a wonderful young woman and they have our first grandson. That's very exciting. Our second oldest is 26 and our third is 25 and our youngest is 22.

Bobbi: 2:54

Right, so you had them all within a decade. That must have been full on focus in those first years.

Cindy: 3:03

It was a couple of years, though we were just in sweatpants on the floor for a couple of years there.

Bobbi: 3:10

Because you can't have to, you can't. Well, from remembering the days for me I was kind of in a daze just working through it and so focused on what they needed that you are just going through the motions until one day things seem to be at a new level of normal and it's like oh okay, yeah, this is pretty good, I know what I'm doing now. I've had a year or so of practice. I think I can. I think I can follow through with this gig. You raised four children, so tell me about life with the kids growing up in your family. What does that look like?

Cindy: 3:48

So I was a teacher prior to having the kids, but once our oldest was born I became a stay-at-home mom. So I was home with them. They became my primary focus and when we had so we had all four in six and a half years. So it was like where was I going to work anyway for that kind of childcare? So that was great. We go through the school years, kind of the golden years. They're self-sufficient. Maybe I've got some time to myself now and I started working. I did a company called Creative Memories and it was like scrapbooking, teaching other women how to preserve their memories, and I was a leader in that for 11 years. I loved it. I loved having that outlet, that I could work on my own time and the kids were busy, right, and when you have four you can't. We had kind of a rule we want you to be in something, but maybe pick one thing at a time so that everybody has a chance to do something. So we went through various sports. The boys pretty much primarily did baseball, the girls did some gymnastics and then they all got into music. So our oldest did the worship band scene. He was self-taught basically every instrument in the band, so I was running around different places, different churches in town, helping him get to there. And then he got a driver's license at afar and so he was able to take care of that. And then the younger three did show choir. So we had three kids in show choir for eight years during high school and between the baseball families and then the show choir families we just had this super tight knit unit, a community that we shared with the other families who were involved in that and became friends for life with a lot of them still, even though we don't live there anymore, that they're still really special to us and those memories are very special. So our oldest went to we lived in Omaha, nebraska, and our oldest went to Creighton University in downtown Omaha, so he was like 30 minutes away. It was good. It was a weird you know that first one that goes away is weird weird transition for everybody but it was okay because he was only 30 minutes away. Like. Next one went to a performing arts college in Southern California, so that if we drive it is a 27 hour drive. So it was really far from home and it felt like the other side of the planet because at the time we didn't really have the finances to just be able to jump on the plane and go see her if there was an emergency or bring her home, like it would have been a real burden. So it felt like 27 hours away and the thing that made it okay is that she was so happy, she was going and thriving and doing what she loved, and so that did make it okay. But that was huge transition. Number three she went to a small Christian college in Northwest Iowa. She was only two and a half hours from home, which felt like nothing by comparison. I was so happy to have her within my arms, reach for those unknown, whatever that would happen. It was good and she also thrived and loved where she was. So that made it easy. Then came our fourth and a life change for our family. My husband decided to well, together we decided that he would take his career to a new state after graduation, but then it kind of creeped into before. So for our Tyler's junior and senior year my husband was commuting nine hours from Colorado Springs back to Omaha all the time. He never missed a competition, he never missed a performance, anything big that was going on in his life he was able to be home for, but it cost us a lot of time and energy. Well, him especially. And then, knowing that upon his graduation we would, I would be we sold the house and I would be moving to Colorado, and so we sold their childhood home. We left where they had grown up and knew, but he also followed his sister to the Performing Arts College in Southern California. So now we've got kids in three different places and we were in a fourth place. And it was just that time, that summer, the year before and the summer and the year after. It was just wild.

Bobbi: 8:20

So moving house and becoming an empty nester, they're two really big defining moments in life, and not only are your kids finding themselves in new places, you are as well. When you're youngest, left home and you had moved to Colorado, what was your emotional state at the time? Tell us about any grief or loss that surfaced for you, for sure.

Cindy: 8:47

It was a mix of joy that they were happy, but the grief was very real. It was heavy in my heart. My mom job felt like it was over. It's not really, but it. It felt like a very final chapter and a chapter had closed. But it I'm still. I'm still mom, like I didn't realize that it would still be so needed. So that was kind of nice for that part. But the grief of the childhood ending was really deep and really heavy. I was sad a lot and a lot to work through.

Bobbi: 9:25

What sort of things did you find that you were experiencing? Because there are things that do pop up that seem quite normal for an empty nest mom. It's. You did mention the loss of identity, because your mom job had changed to remote parenting. Now we're always going to be the mom, but we're now remote mom. There is loss of, as I said, loss of identity, loss of purpose. What on earth am I going to do now? You're a stay at home mom for so many years. Connection also is a big one, and you had just left that great group of people that you had been associated with with the school choir and the band, so you've left your circle of friends. Describe what things really stood out for you during that time.

Cindy: 10:13

I remember not like not knowing, the anxiety of not knowing what was next or how the next chapter would feel or play out or who would even be in it with me. It was kind of a lot. It was a lot to navigate. I'm pleased to report that, due to modern technology, we're able to stay in touch with people better and easier than ever. So I've kept a lot of my really good friends close on a daily contact kind of basis, so that was important. They helped me through that and they were one year away from we all had kids that graduated one year earlier, but they all have younger kids. So like I kind of went through empty nest first but they were supportive, and then the next one went through it and then I helped her and others were supportive and now the other one. There's three of us and now we're all empty nesters and so we've kind of been fun and helpful to walk through it together, but individually if that makes sense.

Bobbi: 11:23

It does, and you are so lucky that you can help and support each other, because a lot of women find that well. My friends who still have kids at home. I feel they don't get me anymore and I feel like I'm alienated from them. I'm so glad, even at a distance, you were all sticking together. A question I would like to ask did anyone ever prepare you for empty nesting, or did you have any inkling as to what it would be like when you were so busy raising your children?

Cindy: 11:56

So I think we all kind of probably know somebody, but it is one of those things that you just don't exactly know what it's going to be like until it's you right Like you don't know what it's like to become a mother until it's you. You don't know what it's like until they leave, until it's you. I had family members, aunts and a few friends, of course, but you just have to focus on maybe the things that they did that were great and helpful for them and see what of that can be helpful for you, and is that something you did?

Bobbi: 12:33

What did you choose to do to help yourself in this grief and loss, and what was taken from what you had seen other people do?

Cindy: 12:42

So I four kids in six years. I always felt like, oh, but there's this other thing I wish I could do, or what about this? I wish I had? I always wish I had more time, so, and I'm also one who like braces for things, so I could see this coming. And one day I just opened up my phone and started a note and it was just a brain dump over like two years of you know, I really wish I would. I had time to binge this TV series. I really wish I had time to, you know, watch this movie. I really wish I had time to learn this hobby. Or then I started well, I already have this hobby. I've. Scrapbooking is my, probably what I would say my main hobby is, and all of these things I never had time to finish. Oh, I'm going to put that on here. And then there's this album I wanted to do so I just started building this to do list of things to look forward to you, and I didn't let myself creep in and do any of it. It was a very special list for things to look forward to. I needed things to look forward to you. There was some travel on there, things that places we wanted to go and to grow my business over the course of time. After the scrapbooking thing, I actually opened a travel agency, became an agency owner. So I also had business goals that I wrote on that list. For now that I'm not going to be in the chaos of senior year and I can focus more on this of the business, I was able to put those things on the list as well and having that confidence sort of trembling confidence as you go forward at least I had some things I felt like I still had purpose. Just a shift in what it was.

Bobbi: 14:33

That's probably one of the best things I have ever heard in relation for planning for this phase. Tell me, did you find that your relationship with your husband changed, or did your perception of it changed? Did you think, oh hang on, you're actually just a man in your own right, it's not dad, dad anymore. Tell me how the relationship altered, or not, once the kids left home.

Cindy: 15:04

So this is something that we actually talked about all through the years, paying attention and being intentional about our relationship in general. And we talked about because he was in Colorado for those two years. We had to work really hard at our communication, like over the phone and over texting, because primarily that's all we had, and then he would come home and then we'd get to be in person, which was wonderful. So we just worked really hard at the same kind of intentionality of. You hear the heartbreaking stories of couples who go to the emptiness stage and then realize maybe we don't even know each other anymore. We desperately didn't want that to be us. So we worked really hard at that, especially in the years prior, you know, leading up to it. So we just intentionally worked to stay close and stay friends and talk about stuff and do stuff and keep enjoying each other's company.

Bobbi: 16:05

You are a very smart woman. Have you discovered any new hobbies that you like to do with your husband?

Cindy: 16:15

Yes, so we have been taking some wine tasting classes here, because we live in Richmond Virginia now, and there's a total of ones just about everywhere, I think, and they have these classes and we've actually gotten to be friends with the lady that teaches our class because she's so good and it's like a two hour thing and maybe we go every other month, but I'm telling you, it's really fun and we don't know anything about wine. We are like the bottom of the learning curve for sure. But we're just having fun and we go and we do that, and we hope to incorporate that into some of our trips in the future as well. So maybe we'll know a little more before we go. So yeah, we've found a few things like that.

Bobbi: 17:02

I really do like that for sure. Tell me about. You said you're now in travel, and was that something that you wrote on that list? I think you mentioned that you had written your business goals. How did travel come up?

Cindy: 17:17

So my husband grew up going to Disney World as a family and my family did not. We went to grandma's house for a vacation. So when we started our family, we got married, we started going to Disney every year and people knew that about us, and so they would ask us, what should we do? And I would give them all the tips and all the instructions and tell them where to stand and help them figure out where they'd like to stay. And everybody would say, you should figure out a way to make a living of this. And I'm like, yeah, that's a thing. And then one day I saw an ad to become a travel agent and I clicked on it and by the next day, I was somebody's agent, and that was 13 years ago and I've had a couple of different variations on it. I worked in a brick and mortar just for like some regular hours while my youngest was in high school and I learned everything about all-inclusives, guided tours to Europe, cruising, things like that and in 2018, I opened my own company. So we've been going for five and a half years eight, 13 agents across the country. Everybody's got specialties, but I couldn't do I like, opened it in 2018, but I didn't really expand until after he graduated in 2019. And then we started expanding and then COVID hit and we were shut down for 18 months. But in that time we used it to kind of grow and develop some agents on the team, and now we're off and running. So I know that's kind of how that happens.

Bobbi: 18:59

You really light up when you talk about what you're doing. What boxes does it take for you?

Cindy: 19:06

I'm just a map nerd, if that's a thing that you can think of. I really love geography, social studies, culture, history, all of that is. They were my favorite subjects in school, so it feels like play to me. When somebody wants to go on a cruise around the Mediterranean, I'm like, ooh, where? are they gonna go, they're gonna stop here. You can go to Ephesus if you stop in this place and you can go visit the ruins and I just love the constant learning that it is and then helping people do it well, I like to teach them, my clients, so that's the teacher background in me. I like make sure that they know all the things they need to know, and there's a lot. Sometimes we don't even know what we don't know and I like to be the one to kind of step in and make sure that everything goes as smoothly as can be on their trips.

Bobbi: 19:56

Did you ever have any idea that you would grow to now have 13 agents across the country?

Cindy: 20:02

Oh my gosh no, if you like. When I was a kid, I used to be a gymnast and I used to say to people don't give me a microphone, I will do bounce beam in front of 10,000 people before you get me to say one word or talk to people about stuff, and now that's all I do People all the time about stuff. So no, it's crazy that my whole path has been this kind of wild journey that evolves and I think that's true of my generational life Like we start in one thing and then it kind of goes like this and like this, and here we are standing in our groove right now.

Bobbi: 20:39

So you've made a really good point. The geography, maps and traveling was just something that you had a passion for and you were able to make a choice to look into that as a job or a career. What would you say to other women who are thinking about something that they enjoy, that they'd like to take further, but they're not aware of? Where do they go from here? What do they investigate? Do they have to take a class? Do they have to do a course? It's all too scary. Will I fail? What would you say to women in that position who have the thought in their mind something's holding them?

Cindy: 21:22

back. Yeah, there's a great quote fail at the things you never try. Give it a shot. Social media is a great. Whatever your passion is, social media is a great place to kind of scroll through and build your own algorithm around it and find experts and people who might be teachers in that and see if there might be a mentor in that vein of whatever it is, and you can learn a lot for free on social media. And then, like finding somebody trustworthy to actually step out into it with them would be. That's what I did and that's what my team members do with me. They find me and then we step out together.

Bobbi: 22:03

Fantastic. So you said you were now in Virginia. Where are the kids located these days?

Cindy: 22:10

So Trevor, Ariel and Baby Bennett live in. They moved back to Omaha. Taylor is she's a past member at Walt Disney World. She's actually a performer. She's friends with a famous Malci guy on top of a mountain. She does the show by your fingers Hollywood Studios, it's called. She's there. And then Tara and her husband Caleb. They live in Des Moines. And then our youngest, Tyler, is also a cast member in Florida at Walt Disney World and he's a monorail pilot.

Bobbi: 22:47

Your husband must be so proud, and the kids' grandparents, because you said your husband went to Disney for family holidays growing up. They just must be beside themselves that the kids are involved in this.

Cindy: 23:01

It's absolutely wild. Like they work in places that are in our scrapbooks, like all the way to when they were born. Like how is this how? There's a famous picture of Taylor in the audience at Phantasmic and she made friends with a little girl from Columbia when they were like five, sitting next to each other waiting for the show and I told this whole cute story. But now she's in it. What? And Tyler was obsessed with the monorails when he was not even two years old. We bought him the little remote control toy version and like that was, and now he drives it. So yeah, it's pretty wild. It's very fun, very fun. And then our daughter, Tara, is a medical laboratory scientist. Do I even know exactly what that means?

Bobbi: 23:48

That would be me. It's like it sounds really fancy, but not exactly sure what she does.

Cindy: 23:54

I know a bunch of things that she does do. It's very high tech and high pollutant and we're equally proud of her. She's just doing amazing things up there in Iowa.

Bobbi: 24:06

I love that. So how often do you all get?

Cindy: 24:07

together. So we're gonna go to see the Midwest kids for Thanksgiving It'll be our Bennett's first birthday and we're gonna see them. And then the Florida kids live near my husband's elderly parents, so we kind of have a lot of and they're half the distance so we see them a little bit more. We go take care of the parents and see those kids a little bit more frequently.

Bobbi: 24:34

Fantastic, and I wanted to ask, because you mentioned faith before, how has your faith helped you through the empty nesting phase?

Cindy: 24:44

So that has just really placed people in our lives that support us and encourage us. He sends the right song on the radio encouraged. Oh, I forgot to say. Another thing that I did not plan to do but I did do that was helpful was I think that volunteering is a really good thing to focus on in the emptiness, and one thing that I felt God asking me to do in our new church in Colorado Springs was to start a mop skirt. They did not have mops is mothers of preschoolers, so it's really birth to kindergarten age, and it's a thing that I did when my kids were that age and I loved it and it was a place of connection. And then there are mentor moms that are kind of more my age now. So I was in the mentor mom space at that point, but they didn't have anything for the young moms in our church. So I was like I mean, okay, I don't know anybody, I just got here. God, you're gonna have to bring some, a team, together. So we spent all of 2019 and 2020 school year building our leadership team and then we launched in the fall of 2020 in COVID. We launched a little bit like October and they're still going. We moved away, but those ladies are still going and I see their little friendships blossoming and their little babies are now preschoolers and they're just growing up so fast. And while I was grieving and missing those days here, I was able to pour into the moms who are in those days and it gave me such purpose outside of my own grief.

Bobbi: 26:33

Yeah, yeah, I definitely agree with you. The post-nest plan is heavily focused on being of service, and I think that's the best way to go. Cindy, can I ask you if you had one bit of advice to offer an empty nest mom, what would that be?

Cindy: 26:52

I would say make a list. Make a list of things for you, things you wanna do that you've been putting off. Put some self-care items on there Maybe you wanna be, maybe you like pedicures and you okay, now I'm gonna go do that once a month or whenever and put some things to look forward to on your calendar. Some things either you you and a friend, you and your spouse, your mate have things to look forward to and having things to treat yourself with, and just to know that it's. I think it's okay to be sad and to grieve it. Work through that, don't camp out there and stay there, and if it takes a little longer, then you think, don't be afraid to reach out for help. Help is great.

Bobbi: 27:39

Very wise words indeed. You have been so delightful to chat to. You're a lovely person, and I wanna thank you very much for joining us today. Thank you.

Cindy: 27:49

And thank you for the Facebook group and the community that you're creating there. I just love it and I'm a little. You know I'm a couple years farther down the road, but I wish I would have had that when I was walking through it. It's just such a unique time for moms. It's like a sacred thing to walk through and to do it so well. So thank you for the space here to do that for all of us.

Bobbi: 28:14

Oh look, I knew I had to help myself through it and I do better if I take other women along for the ride. So it's my mission to make sure no empty nest of momma's left behind. And you're right, we feel so isolated initially because there is so much grief. But to know that there is a community where you can have belonging and connection and find possibly some purpose, that's really what I wanna create. So thank you very much, and to all our listeners, I wanna thank you for joining us again and we'll see you next time on Fly, Mum Fly.

Cindy: 28:52

From empty nest to personal best, let's fly, let's fly, let's fly, let's fly, let's fly.