No Children, No Carbohydrates, Not Retired

    Many people call this the empty nest syndrome and it can hit a person at many different stages in life.  In some ways, it may be more difficult for the individual who had their children later in life.  This is very common among professional women.  You may have spent your twenties and early thirties developing your career and then you decided to have children.  Now you are in your fifties and your last child is leaving for college and you have to decide what to do with the rest of your life.  Unlike your younger counterpart, you do not have twenty to thirty working years ahead of you, but maybe only ten or fifteen.  Have you stayed in your career all along and do you want to ramp it up or slow it down?  Did you stop working and now feel you need a sense of productivity and meaning in your life and if so, how and where to start?  There really are no right or wrong answers.  Everyone has to find the answer that works best for them.  Whatever direction you go, realize that life is not over.  Your children still need you, just in a different way.  You need to play with ideas of what you might want to do.  The career you had before children may no longer seem attractive to you or you may need to be retrained and just not feel that is what you want to do. Do you want a career or a fun job?  If you really want a career, begin to do your research and weigh all your options.  I have met people who have gone to graduate school after children have left and I have met people who left careers and taken on part time, low stress jobs that they loved. 

I have also met people that enjoyed volunteering and people who embraced an early retirement.  Just don’t sit home and wallow.  Think about the things you did not have time to do while raising children.  Get healthy, eat better, find exercise you actually like, and take a class or pursue a hobby.  Your post children life can go in so many different directions.  If you don’t like the one you are in, pursue another one.  Life is not over.  You are at the beginning of   a new chapter.

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