Gloriously Ordinary Sundays - 1st September 2024
1st September; last throws of summer, getting the kids ready to go back to school, launching them to Uni, or supporting them with the ‘what next?’ plans if exam results haven’t been what they’d expected. I hope you have all had some version of a lovely summer. I hope you’ve seen some sun, if sun is your thing, have had the chance to catch up with people you love, to breathe a little.
Some of you might be shouting at me already. I remember those summers - when the kids would go back to school, and everyone would be sharing stories of lovely holidays and time spent as a family - but often, I would have a slightly less Gloriously Ordinary version of summer that I wouldn’t share.
My summer has been very different to summers past in so many ways. It’s been 8 weeks now since the boy got his own place. The move meant I would no longer have (albeit adult) children living at home. The move meant a new home for me too and all that entails. I’m sure lots of you reading this will resonate/empathise with the empty nest feeling this leaves. If I’m honest I haven’t quite got my head around it yet. I was 35 the last time I lived on my own.
I’m sure that adult children leaving home causes most of us to question who we are. We never stop being a parent, but we know that role has significantly and practically changed the day our children no longer live under the same roof as us. I find myself exploring new boundaries about things like when/how often it's ok to call or visit (both me to them and them to me), about what in their lives I still have the right to comment on ...or not. About what they need me for still.
For those of us who have kids who will always need some paid support, there is an extra layer, as some of this is about helping their support teams to work through this stuff with them as they figure out their new rhythms. As a parent, I want to be available, but I also want them both to know that I absolutely trust they can figure stuff out on their own. This is also about helping them feel safe and secure, knowing that lots of the day-to-day Mum stuff I used to do is now being taken care of by their teams… but that those teams will never be their mum. It’s a weird shift for us all. The Girl struggles with this more than The Boy and I know when she is feeling less secure, I will get more phone calls.
Even given this negotiation in roles, for the first time in as long as I can remember, I have had a summer relatively free of responsibility. That meant that I could genuinely do anything I wanted. By mid-July I had just about unpacked and had the house physically looking like a home, even if it didn’t really feel it. I have always had less work over the summer period (it’s my time of catching up, thinking and planning) and I let myself flirt with ideas of trips to the coast, and visiting friends around the country whom I haven’t seen in ages. Reading those books that are staring at me from the bookshelf, transforming my little garden.
Truth? I retreated deep into a place I’d not been for some time, where the basics of getting up and doing something/anything became quite difficult and where my brain felt like mashed potato. I realised that, in all the practical planning and physical work to get The Boy moved into his own place and get me moved into my new place, I’d not done any thinking about the reality of what that meant emotionally, and it floored me.
I stayed in that uncomfortable place for a while, responded, ‘Yes great thanks’ to the lovely people who asked how I was enjoying my new home, watched rather a lot of crappy TV and ate mainly toast. Apologies to the people who tried to have meetings with me and for whom I have not delivered work.
The last couple of weeks have been better. I had some lovely scheming with Bryony Shannon, I’ve wandered around my new neighbourhood and swum in some new lakes. My house is genuinely feeling more like home. I’m now looking forward to an autumn of exciting work projects, and my beautiful children continuing to shape their own lives and gradually unravelling what that means for me.
So much of my identity has been tied up over the last nearly 20 years in being a Mum, and a Mum of two young people for whom I’ve had to fight so hard to secure their Gloriously Ordinary Lives. More on that next week. Meanwhile, may your September be the start of a wonderful new school year, kids or no kids.
Note: an excuse for some Gloriously Ordinary holiday snaps from many moons ago…
PS. Did you see? The Gloriously Ordinary Sundays Podcast episode 7 is here. I chat with Gary Bourlet, founder of the People First Movement in England and co-founder of Learning Disability England. Gary tells us all about the Good Lives framework and we discuss the links between Good Lives and Gloriously Ordinary Lives.