Goodbye Motherhood, Hello Me!: New Mission for Moms with Grown-Up Kids

By Melanie Hope

A mom is always a mom, whether she has an infant, a teen, or a middle-aged son or daughter. From the moment her kids are born, she will always be concerned about their well-being. She will perform the mother's role forever, always worrying about them, no matter their age. Even though my kids are adults now, I still keep my cell phone on the bedside table when I sleep at night, just in case they need me. It's an old habit, but I can't help it. There is no proven need for that, and I shouldn't be their emergency response in the middle of the night, but still…I am a mom to the core.
Even though every mom wants her kids to mature, grow up, and find their path in life, it's not easy to embrace their independence. They will choose to do things their own way, which in her eyes might seem reckless, dubious, or risky, in other words, built on sand. As a result, she scrambles to find peace of mind over their choices in life. But she can still have a quality life and enjoy happiness, no matter what is going on in her kids' lives. She simply needs to pick a different tactic.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Jun 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9798765237540

Book preview

cover.jpg

Goodbye Motherhood,

Hello Me!

NEW MISSION FOR MOMS

WITH GROWN-UP KIDS

Melanie Hope

Copyright © 2023 Melanie Hope.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means,

graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by

any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author

except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Balboa Press

A Division of Hay House

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.balboapress.com

844-682-1282

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in

this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views

expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the

views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use

of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical

problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The

intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you

in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any

of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right,

the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are

models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 979-8-7652-3753-3 (sc)

ISBN: 979-8-7652-3755-7 (hc)

ISBN: 979-8-7652-3754-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023909552

Balboa Press rev. date:   06/13/2023

The purpose of our lives is to be happy.

—Dalai Lama

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1     Before I Knew It, They Had Grown Up

Chapter 2     Do My Kids Still Love Me?

Chapter 3     When Will I Stop Worrying About My Kids?

Chapter 4     Am I A Pest To My Kids By Constantly Trying To Fix Their Problems?

Chapter 5     Am I Allowed To Be Angry At My Kid?

Chapter 6     I Know I Wasn’t A Perfect Parent, But I Did My Best

Chapter 7     How To Be Happy Even With A Problematic Child

Chapter 8     My Mission As A Parent Is Accomplished. What Comes Next?

Afterword

INTRODUCTION

Once a woman conceives a baby, her life changes for good. Her whole existence fuses with her child for eternity. Even when the child is no longer part of her flesh, the human she has produced remains a permanent resident of her mind, heart, and soul. It doesn’t matter to a mom whether her child is still a baby, toddler, preteen, teen, or already an adult—she lives and breathes thinking about her child. The moment a woman becomes a mother, she will perform this role for the rest of her life, no matter the kid’s age, location, occupation, or relationship with her.

Her children become the meaning of her life. She allows her life to revolve around her kids’ lives so much that she sometimes forgets that she has her own desires and needs. That is the curse of being a mother. She never seems able to let go of the urge to make the kids her priority. In other words, her job as a mom does not have an expiration date.

In spite of my children being in their twenties now and me staying busy to the brim every single day, there isn’t a day in my life or a few hours in a day that I don’t think about my son and daughter. No matter how my occupation has changed over the years, from primarily caring for my children at home to combining this duty with a professional career, I am always a mom. Even when I wake up at night, my first thoughts are I hope my son is well and I wonder how my daughter is doing. My children live separately so I can partially ascribe this thought process to the fact that I don’t see them every day. But I am confident I would think of something related to them even if we shared the same living space.

Now that my kids are grown-ups, I feel like I have entered my third life. The first one was my birth through the age of twenty, then motherhood, when I was raising my children from the age of twenty-one until forty, and now I am experiencing a back to myself stage of life. Though my freedom returned to me in that I no longer must calculate each step in my day around my kids’ activities, their presence in my mind is constant.

A mother can never expect a total separation from her kids, nor can she ever enjoy complete peace. In the back of her mind, there are always her children. I was reading Ken Follett’s book World without End, about life in England in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and it struck me how similar people have remained. Mothers always worried about their young grown-up kids. If their children left home, they worried about their safety. Or they felt concerned over what would become of them in terms of achieving success in life. Sometimes this loving care and concern for the kids can be overpowering, eclipsing everything else in the woman’s life no matter whether we refer to an ancient or contemporary society. That’s a struggle I had had for a long time before I came to certain realizations and learned to tame this concerned mother beast in me.

As I am writing these lines, I am sitting in my comfortable home office, listening to soothing music on the music channel Soundscapes, sipping my freshly made steaming chamomile tea with a usual side of my sweet snack. My life seems ordinary and peaceful right now, and I feel fulfilled and content. But it wasn’t the case for quite some time in the past. While my kids were growing up, I faced the hardship of raising them as a single mom and lived through the darkest times of my son’s misbehavior. My circumstances were different, but most importantly, my mindset was not the same. I was overly susceptible to external aspects of my life, especially negative ones. I could wake up happy, but my day could turn out bad if I found out or realized something adverse regarding my kids. That discovery or realization could define the course of my day, leaving me feeling depressed and anxious. It was like living in captivity—my state of mind depended on what was going on in my kids’ lives.

The bottom line is my attitude toward negativity has changed. I am finally in control of my life, no longer fretting over my kids’ issues every waking hour. But I had to make a conscious decision not to succumb to perpetual worrying about my kids and feel satisfied no matter what was going on in their lives. Nowadays, my kids may still disappoint me, my husband may occasionally drive me crazy, and life’s other daily issues may cause me anxiety, but now I feel superior to those irritants. I no longer let them affect my well-being. They don’t overshadow my joy. They don’t determine whether I can be happy or not at any given moment. I do. Of course, life tries to shake me up from time to time. But I have found a personal magic key to sanity and inner peace despite what’s happening in the outer world. Now I am relaxed and can channel my energy into a multitude of uplifting activities. But not that long ago, my life was entirely different.

Here is an excerpt of how my life transpired several years ago:

It is three in the morning, and I do not know where my teenage son is. I go on my mobile phone app to track his whereabouts. Luckily, it’s showing some signs of activity. The dot on the screen indicates that his car is very far away from home, but at least I feel comforted by having this electronic thread that connects me to him. He must be OK if his car is moving, so he is simply driving. Now I will try to go back to sleep. Hopefully, I’ll see him tomorrow.

I wake up the following day and need to go to work. As usual, my coworkers ask me how I am, and I tell them I am good. I am not, but that is my necessary daily mask to get through the day. In the middle of the day, I get a call from the high school and find out that my son has skipped classes again. I do not know what to do about that. As the day progresses, the additional bad news keeps coming in. I open my emails and see another complaint from a different teacher notifying me that my son has been flunking his tests and being disrespectful. And it goes on and on.

Though this is a snapshot of my life from what now seems like an eternity ago, when my son was around eighteen years old, I can find reasons to feel anxiety over what he is doing at his current age. Now in his midtwenties, he is not a typical young man who has freshly graduated from college, has a girlfriend, and likes to spend time with his friends. He leads the life of a recluse, having isolated himself from civilization almost all the way. The only people he communicates with are those who work with him, which is not a high number, and his immediate family, including me, his sister, my husband, and a few others. I can lament that he has not earned a higher education diploma like most of his peers or dwell on how limited my interactions with him are. Still, I choose to see what is good in his life.

Indeed, I can view this situation as a grim reality and start every day with bleak thoughts, worrying about my son’s present and future. Or I can practice gratitude and note that Jason has improved tremendously from the old days of crazy behavior. It all boils down to how we perceive things. As Wayne Dyer wisely remarked, Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change. I can ignore what does not seem ideal and paint a different picture of him to myself and others. I can acknowledge that he owns three real estate properties free and clear, though not quite habitable at the moment, yet relieving him from having to pay any rent like many individuals his age must typically live. I am proud he pulled off such an accomplishment without formal education beyond high school. Last but not least, I appreciate that he does not do drugs, drive drunk, or do any other dangerous activities. It is up to me whether I focus on the bright or gloomy sides.

I believe the game changer for me was realizing that my priority is not how well everything goes in the outside world, including my kids, but that I am happy. Thus, in this pursuit of enlightenment regarding how to be a happier mom and a happier person in general on a regular basis and at every moment, I feel like Buddha, who searched for the meaning of life and ways to free the world from suffering. Through my own soul-searching journey that ranged from learning from my own experience by trial and error to reading the most insightful books on human nature and relationships and observing other happy and unhappy people, I understood that I simply had to change my reactions to things. I needed to stop wanting to control outcomes beyond my sphere of influence. Epictetus, a Greek Stoic philosopher, said, There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.

Every mom can be happy. And my primary purpose in writing this book is to show all the loving and caring moms out there how to liberate themselves from the burden of putting their needs behind everyone else’s. Even though they can’t change the fact that they will always feel compelled to act like moms, they must also remember to focus on themselves. As the kids grow up, develop, and change, all these transformations are part of the natural cycle of life. Yet at the same time, their transition into adulthood feels like a loss. This enormous change in the life of a mother is scary but normal. Though her logical reasoning rejoices over this evidence of her kids’ growth and progress, she may suffer emotionally as a side effect of the transformation.

But dear moms, let’s do something about this dilemma. Let’s unite with each other in sharing this bittersweet sentiment and turn it into a means of finding a solution, a key to unlocking the door to our own happiness. Let’s learn to feel joy and live to the fullest despite the sabotaging sadness that we sometimes experience when we think of our older kids. I truly believe that with time and practice, we can learn to watch their progress, which is not always smooth and straightforward, without compromising our happiness. We must learn to separate our lives from theirs, no matter how hard it is. But as we practice this intention, we will become better at it. We will develop a sort of muscle memory for it to such an extent that prioritizing ourselves will become our habit.

We have given our babies life and put them on their feet. And as those little feet were changing in size, we provided them with stable footing so they could become independent individuals one day. That means our mission is now accomplished or is in the process of completion for moms with younger kids; in other words, we have successfully fulfilled our motherly duty. Let’s take a moment and acknowledge that monumental task, whether we have finished caring for our kids or are still raising them. Now our new mission should be our own happiness.

Another challenge for us moms is that the final stages of our separation from our kids coincide with the times when we ourselves undergo tangible changes, which sometimes aggravate what we feel regarding our older kids. While we feel like our kids are turning their backs on us, we experience a difference in our own adulthood. I am talking about the so-called midlife crisis when changes on a physical level amplify our psychological imbalance and worry. The biggest problem is that too many changes are happening at once. We may feel as if our world were crumbling, leaving us insecure about our prospects. But it is within our power to modify our shaky outlook.

Through this book, I invite all moms on an eye-opening journey to a destination of peace and contentment. We will not be able to change our circumstances per se, but we can definitely change how we feel. As William Bard said, If you can imagine it, you can achieve it; if you can dream it, you become it.

But you may ask me, Who are you to give us advice? Trust me: I do not intend to lecture anyone, but I believe that every mother has her own story that can teach other moms to cope with life better. I am just sharing my personal story. If it can empower someone, I will be pleased. If some other women out there can feel understood, supported, and not alone as a result, I will be thrilled. Helping other moms find their happiness is the intended purpose of this book. I felt the urge to write this book because I have personally lived through a significant transformation in my life—from perceiving myself as a victim to regarding myself as a winner.

I don’t know if my evolution has anything to do with the circumstances of the coronavirus. But when the pandemic kicked in, that is when my inner shift happened. I now have a wholly renewed perception of life, myself, and motherhood. Maybe all these years I was paving my way to this point, which coincidentally culminated during this unprecedented time. Hopefully, other women will not have to wait decades to understand something straightforward but effective that can help them be happier. As I move through space and time, I still have to revise my actions here and there and apply an effort to stay the course that keeps me happy. But in writing this book, I want others to discover what I know now—that there is a conscious way to find enjoyment in life and maintain control of personal happiness.

Happiness is a choice. It is not that I invented this truth. Still, I can swear by this fact after all these years of experiencing multiple dramatic events, going through numerous ups and downs, reading self-help literature, and analyzing personal matters. Now I can look at the sources of my frustration and reconstruct my attitude to feel calm and even happy. So dear mothers, make a pact with yourselves. Treat yourselves like you are your own child. Love it, cherish it, and take care of it. Invest in yourselves and your own well-being, and you will appreciate the dividends.

We all have unique stories to share with others and learn from our experiences and those shared with us. I began writing this book when I still had relatively raw memories of the hardships I lived through with my teenage son. My story for you is more like an exploration of my relationship with my son, who taught me a lot by putting me through a lot. I started this exploration as a wounded soul. Yet now I am a triumphant woman who can turn around the tide of adversities and practice trust, hope, and faith against all odds. It is my personal victory, and I would love to see other moms victorious. My mission is accomplished if you find any lessons from my experiences applicable to your life. And if my story made you feel better, my mission equals a double accomplishment. So here it is.

Chapter 1

BEFORE I KNEW IT,

THEY HAD GROWN UP

Once I found out about my pregnancy, my life started a rapid 180-degree turn. Being only twenty, married for six months, in a new country, away from my hometown and parents, I had already been experiencing the novelty of so many things. Not only did I find myself on a faraway continent speaking a foreign language, clashing with a new, unfamiliar culture, running my own household, and no longer in the care of my parents, but I was also about to get into a brand-new role—that of a mother. Less than a year before, I was just a daughter to my parents, and now I was on the way to becoming a parent myself. Profound changes in my life kept piling up at a rate higher than I bargained for.

So many questions were on my mind. As any mother expecting her first child, I immediately equipped myself with an arsenal of books on pregnancy and childbearing, eager to master a mysterious new subject. It was hard to believe the miracle of birthing a child was now happening to me and not someone else. Excitement, fear, and curiosity were just some of the emotions filling my head in anticipation of motherhood. I felt thrilled yet, at the same time, overwhelmed by how many new things were bound to take place. I couldn’t wait to learn the gender and other attributes of my unborn baby. But it was strange to realize I was about to enter another foreign territory: parenthood. And of course, I was dreading labor. Would it be quick and easy or a nightmare, as I heard from other women?

During this journey, I went through everything that any expectant mother experiences: morning sickness, prenatal care visits, images of my baby’s developing body, his first heartbeat, worries about my necessary but enormous weight gain, baby shower, etc. And then the most anticipated day arrived. Some unknown sensations began piercing through my body one early morning, alerting me that the little inhabitant of my womb was ready to leave his first home I had created for him inside me. I could not wait to meet face-to-face that little stranger who was about to emerge into his new world after being my inseparable companion for nine months. Without any epidural in my system and tormented by contractions that kept increasing in frequency, I was patiently powering through the process of childbirth like a masochist who was determined to do it the right way, the natural way, even if it meant suffering. I guess the power of my culture was more potent than my pain.

The whole wait lasted from dawn until late afternoon. Then finally, my son’s teeny tiny, fragile, quivering body appeared before my eyes. Having taken his first breath, he greeted me with a shrieking scream, which lasted for several hours with unabating intensity. He seemed so upset to have exchanged a warm and protective shelter for this spacious and unfamiliar place. Perhaps, after months of the total and unequivocal security of his mom’s body, his little unaffected mind already sensed what this uncharted territory could bode. Maybe he subconsciously envisioned a complicated future path of growing up and becoming an adult. But as for me, I was savoring a feeling of enormous relief and joy. The first step was accomplished. I was a mother holding my newborn baby. But what was in store for me next?

And we all know what happens from that moment on: endless series of changing diapers, breastfeeding and pumping milk like a milking cow, sleepless nights spent trying to soothe the baby while never thinking of ourselves anymore, etc. Now everything was about the baby. But despite these usual hardships with caring for an infant, as any mother, I enjoyed having my own little bundle of joy, marveling at his tiny body and cute face, listening to his funny sounds, and appreciating like never before the rare quiet moments I could snatch for resting throughout the day. It’s interesting how our natural motherly instincts kick in when we become mothers. Without any formal education, we report for duty as if some invisible teacher has provided training for us. But just like any novice attempting to master a new skill, experience is of the essence.

In the blink of an eye, the infant phase transitions