EP110: Reinvention After the Empty Nest: Who the F*ck Am I Now?

So the house is quiet. The washing basket isn’t overflowing. There’s no one asking what’s for tea, or if you can drop them off in 10 minutes.

And while part of you kinda loves the calm... There’s another part whispering, “Now what?”

This week on The Reinvention Era podcast, we’re going all in on the identity drop nobody warns you about…. The second goodbye.

The grief that comes when the kids leave… not just the house, but your orbit.

And the strange, silent space left behind that has your nervous system on high alert… with no one to check on.

Inside this raw, rebellious, and gently profane episode, I share,

🔹 The real reason you still check your phone at night (even though no one needs you)
🔹 Why empty nest syndrome isn’t “dramatic”, it’s a full-blown identity unraveling
🔹 How to start reclaiming your rhythm, your space, and your damn self
🔹 Tangible ideas for what to actually do now (beyond yoga retreats and ‘finding your purpose’)
🔹 A love note to the version of you who’s still in there, under the science projects, the Sambuca vom nights, and the Year 9 trauma

Because reinvention doesn’t mean reinventing everything.

It means you finally start choosing like you again.

Not “mum-you”
Not default-you.

But the woman who’s quietly rising beneath the noise.

📲 If this episode hits home, please share it with a friend, post it to your stories, or leave a review. It helps more women hear the message that reinvention isn’t selfish, it’s sovereign.

Love,

Sarah x

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Transcript

Hola and welcome back to the reinvention era podcast, the place where we ditch the hashtag shoulds, rewrite the rules and figure out who the fuck we are now. So whether you're navigating the mess, the magic, or just the midlife fucking plot twist. You're in good company here. Love and speaking of plot twists this week, we're talking about one that can kind of hit you sideways, the kind you don't expect to feel so damn physical, almost, the infamous empty nest, not in the picture perfect Off they go to uni tear in your eye kind of way. I mean the real empty nest, that moment where your job as a day to day mum feels like it's freaking expired and you can't ever remember actually giving notice, and then you find yourself staring at their room, thinking, Who Am I now? And I've had a few close friends whose kids have gone off to uni the last couple of weeks. So I figured it was quite fitting timing, because this is hard you know. So before we get into it, quick, heads up inside the badass AF badass as fuck book book club this month, we're reading girl Stop apologising by the fabulous Rachel Hollis. And honestly, if ever there was a time ever to stop apologising for wanting more after years and years and years of putting everyone else first, it's now love. So if the house feels a bit too quiet, and your sense of self feels even freaking quieter. Come join us everything you need in the show notes. Love. But back to the main theme of today, and the thing I think nobody really tells you, your children actually leave kind of twice, yeah, twice. First, when they actually physically walk out the front door with a bag and a smile like a grown up version of the first day at school. But then again, when you realise that they're just not yours in the same way anymore. I remember when my eldest son left home, he was 16, he's in professional sports, so he lived with the kind of equivalent of sport foster carers during the week, and he'd come home at weekends and off season. Then when he was 18, he eventually got his own flat, though, did still come home at weekends to go out with his mates, not to see me, as I liked to tell myself. But anyway, that first night, the ex and I left him, we were driving back, and there was this horrendous, I mean, horrendous accident on the motorway that closed both sides. You know, one of those that closes both sides, the air ambulance landed the lot, and we were just sat there, so the ex He had a bloody nap, as you do, and I just sat there bawling my fucking eyes out at my little boy going off into the big, bad world without me. Yes, he's six foot seven, but he'll always be my little boy, you know. And I suppose, as I say, because he came home at weekends and we spoke all the time. We kind of got used to it, I guess. And maybe we sort of had to, because we still had my six foot five baby boy wanting feeding, you know. And look, I don't know, it all sounds a bit sort of tidy, doesn't it nice and tidy, all sort of sorted when I say it like that. But it wasn't fucking tidy at all. It was emotional fucking chaos on the inside, because during the week, I felt like I'd lost the part of me. Then at weekends, when he was home, I'd be lying awake waiting to hear the front door go or texting his mates at four in the morning because he wasn't home and I'd convince myself that he was going to choke on his own vomit after Sambuca shots. I wasn't wrong on that, by the way, one night, he was really, really fucking ill, and the ex husband and I had to sit up all night taking turns to make sure he was still bloody breathing. Anyway, that's what motherhood is, right? Yeah, it's not always that visible, obvious stuff. It's not always the Instagram worthy pics. It's deeply, wildly physical, and your body is on alert for years, and then one day they're just fucking gone, gone, and the house is really bloody quiet, and that hyper vigilance doesn't actually know where to go, like your brain keeps checking for signs. Is he home? Is she okay? Are they eating properly? Are they driving safely? Are they breathing, you know, but there were no more signals. There's no more signs, and that silence, I think that's where the real unravelling almost happens. And you're not being dramatic, you know. You're just not used to hearing your own thoughts without someone going mum over the top of it, you know. And so, of course, it feels foreign, like you've been multitasking for so fucking long. Your brain thinks stillness is suspicious. It's dodgy. Don't trust that stillness, you know. And because I also think you unravel at that point, because that's when you start to really realise that your identity wasn't just built around loving them, it was built around being needed. You knew your role as mum, right? You showed up for it. You fucking made your whole life. It bent your life around it. You made the lunches, you played the taxi, you watched all the clubs. You spent long weekends on either the side of a muddy, fucking cold football pitch or hours at some random picturesque cricket ground. You know. You did the science projects, all of it. You scheduled your work and weekends and emotions around them. You had the tissues ready for the first breakup. Hell, you managed to keep a tiny human alive and survive the hell of year nine. That's some fucking stint love. And then suddenly there's no schedule, no routine, no one's asking what's for dinner, no half damp towels left on the floor, no muddy football kits or grass stained cricket whites, no front door slamming at midnight, just Silence, which can feel so fucking awkward at first, bit like first date with yourself, but the kind where you don't have to shave your legs. And it does get less weird, I promise you, I promise you, it does. It's just that somewhere between the packed lunches and the late night vom watch you became the logistics manager of your entire looking family, your crew, and now the team's moved on, and you're still wandering around like some retired Formula One pit crew mechanic just waiting for someone to crash again. Come on. You need me. But the thing is, when that engine is quiet, you finally notice your own and all you've got left is space and questions and fucking grief. And look, maybe it's not all total sadness, you know, maybe there's actually a bit of you that does sort of secretly love the peace. Maybe part of you was desperate for that next chapter. Be willing for it since the dirty nappy stage, but even when it's wanted, the reinvention of yourself doesn't quite come so easy. There's some kind of weird guilt in the freedom, and there's often a bizarre feeling of joy in the grief as well, because they're doing something that they want to do, like you've done your job properly, you know? But overall, there's just this ache that comes with being air quotes off duty. But you're still mum. You're still wired to care, so you still check your phone at night. You're still scanning the headlines for car crashes. You still remember the smell of their hair after nursery the way they used to sing in the bath. You still know that they're your babies, even when they've got beards and bank accounts and bad hangovers of their own, fucking hell, even when they've got babies of their own, when they're parents themselves, as I've now got. But you know what I've learned solely over the years and now watching my grandkids grow up as well, you don't ever stop being their mum. Ever it never stops. But it is

Sarah Elizabeth  09:56

totally okay to start being. You again and all to make that shift from the constant caregiver to a conscious creator of your life, to realise that you're still allowed to want things, to build something, to take up some space in the world, because the empty nest isn't really empty, it's just there waiting for you. So what now? Well, I've put down a few ideas for the early, early days of the emptiness. So first off, allow yourself to really feel it fully. Let yourself grieve. This isn't about being dramatic. It's about being human. There's no gold star for skipping over it. It's still a loss, right, even if it's also, like I say, a sign that you've done your job properly and created actual humans who have grown up. So feel into it. It's normal. It's okay. And secondly, talk about it. Speak it out loud. Find someone who gets it, not someone who rushes to cheer you up, but someone who can just hold it for you in this in between, because it is freaking hard. And then find your new rituals as well, not the old ones, not the ones around the kids, the new ones. Maybe it's a walk every day, or a journal every day, joining a book club, you know, making one plan a day a week that's just for you. And once that starts to feel like the new normal, that's when the real reinvention can start because, yes, you've spent the last 18 plus years being their compass, but now it's your turn to look up and go. Where am I actually going? Need to programme in the sat nav for you, not them. And it feels weird I get it, because for the first time in literally, probably decades, there's no one else dictating the room. You don't have to build your day around fucking football practice or juggle meetings with school pickups. No one's asking why the milk's gone or where their other sock is. And it sounds dreamy in theory when you're in the trenches of motherhood, but in practice, it feels so disorientated flat, a bit like standing in the middle of your life holding a map with no fucking X to head towards. So let's find your X, and let's start with question, if you weren't being a mum, 24/7, who else might you be not in a reinvent your career overnight way, because it's not always about the job role, but in the small, steady identity first way that quietly, slowly compound effect changes everything. Because reinvention really doesn't mean that you chuck your old self out the window. It means you find the parts of her that got silenced. You find her again. You reclaim because she got packed away somewhere with the fucking after birth, pushed down for later. Remember her? Do you remember her so like, what about the version of you who used to read actual books, not bedtime fucking stories, or the one who loved, loved, loved a slow morning and had huge ideas in the bath? When was the last time you had a daytime buffet, where's that woman who used to dance in the kitchen or wear red lipstick or book city breaks on a whim? Where has she gone? The one who wanted to start a business or launch a thing or beat more than just a mum, the one who didn't second guess herself, didn't second guess her ambition, the one who believed she could be magnetic and maternal at the same poxy time, she's still in there. She's still in you. She just needs some space to be let out, released on the world. So how do you start reinvention for real? Well, I wanted to make this practical. So first off, make it measurable. Make reinvention measurable but emotional. Find your reason. So don't write a to do list. Write a who I want to become List. Who is she? How does she start a day? What does she wear? How does she carry herself? What does she believe about herself? What are her boundaries? What no longer fits in her world? And then, once you've worked that bit out, build an actual identity anchor, almost right? Pick one thing this month in October, pick one thing that connects you to that future version of you. Maybe it's joining the book club. Maybe it's going to the gym on your own for the first time in years, and it's wearing clothes that you like, not the comfy ones that blend in on the school run. Just start taking some small steps towards that version of you, and then rewire your routine, not in a productivity hack kind of way, but in a I fucking matter again kind of way, even if it's something small, like just waking up 10 minutes earlier, eating lunch, sitting down instead of on the go, putting your phone away when you drink your coffee. It only needs to be tiny changes to get the brain rewiring. You don't need a whole new life. You just need almost new rhythms to it. And because we know I love, love, love, love and alter ego, why not actually name your next level identity chapter, literally name it could be the quiet glow up. Could be I don't need fucking permission. Era could be the year of May, the soft power season, whatever the fuck you like, write it on your mirror, if you have to, because reinvention doesn't come from doing more. It comes from finally seeing yourself as someone worth becoming again, the next chapter of you, your next era is not waiting in your kid's next visit home, it's waiting in what you choose to build next. And look the next chapter. The next era doesn't need to be some massive live overhaul. It doesn't need to be a fucking TED Talk. It doesn't have to be loud. It can be subtle. You might even just be I'm wearing leopard print again and not asking for permission, not that I ever have. But you know what I mean? We're not all about chucking your belongings in a van and starting a yoga retreat in Bali unless, of course, you want to. But I just wanted to give you some actual tangible ways that you could start building your next era, not just thinking about it, trying it. So maybe try one of these. Right? What about taking a solo trip, even just tonight, no itinerary, just you a book, a nice dinner and your own company. The point isn't the destination. Go to the local premier fucking inn if you need to. It's more about proving to yourself that you're allowed to take up space on your own. And like I said, it's about changing the rhythm ever so slightly. So it's maybe just giving your current rhythm a bit of an audit almost. Where are you still living in mum mode by habit. Could you change your Sunday night routine? Clang back your weekday mornings? Try a midweek matinee instead of saving all the fun for the weekends? Oh, it could be time to start a project you've never had time for before. That novel you keep saying you'll write. That Etsy shop you crave that. Course, you kept bookmarking, but never bought because you didn't have time to have time love. Well, you've got the hours now this is the space you wanted, so now use it and also reconnect with some old friendships or build new ones, you know, ones that aren't based on school gates or kids parties. Join a local women's networking circle. You know, message that one woman you always really like, but never really got around to getting to know go where the old version of you wouldn't. And also, another tangible way, I always think a bit of an interior change doesn't go amiss. You know, could you redecorate a room not for anyone else, just for you. Future, you change the art, light the candles, make it a space that doesn't scream family function, but is yours. And whilst we're on the house, a good declutter is always good. And all you know, I remember the days when you had to strategically time the pre Christmas toy declutter to avoid the kid now deciding that this is their most favourite thing ever, after ignoring it since last fucking Christmas. Do you remember those days? Well, you haven't got that now you've got free rein to chuck out all the old shit,

Sarah Elizabeth  19:57

and on the declutter it aint the house either. Get rid of the digital crap and all the toxic social follows, the WhatsApp groups that feel like shit, clear the space to hear yourself again. And we all know music can totally change the vibe as well. So what about creating a playlist called her next era, fill it with the music you forgot you loved and haven't been allowed to listen to because the kids didn't like it. The kind that makes you strut while you're loading the dishwasher, you know what I mean. Or do one thing every week that scares you a little bit, wear the dress, pitch the idea, post a reel, introduce yourself as someone new, even if your voice shakes, it's my thing at the minute, do one brave thing every day, the compound effect of that is phenomenal, let me tell you, or maybe you want to put your well earned mum skills out there by offering yourself as a volunteer or A mentor. There's a legacy in you that has nothing to do with raising kids, and it might be time to pass some of that wisdom on. You don't need to do all of them, or even most of them, but I promise you this, you will never feel like you again until you start choosing like you again, not mum. You not default you next fucking level you. And she's not a fantasy. She's already here. She's just waiting for the Andover. So if you're walking around your kitchen wondering what the fuck you're supposed to do now, just know this. You're not alone. You're not broken, and this era doesn't have to feel like an ending. It might just be your first chapter as you and if you do want to gently reintroduce yourself to your own wants without feeling like a selfish chaos for having them start by joining us in the bad ass AF book club. Like I said at the start this month, we're reading girls stop apologising, and it's not about being louder. It's about being truer. It's about owning the fact that maybe you're not just a mum, just a mum anymore, that maybe, just maybe, you're also a woman with untapped ambition, with unseen capacity, with a version of herself that's ready to fucking rise again. So just try one brave thing this week, every day, if you can, every day, if not just once a week, just one brave thing. So that's it for this week. Thank you, as always, for listening. It really does mean freaking well to me, and if you can also share the episode with others who may get some benefit from it, I'll send you my under and laugh. Girl. More could you want? So I will see you again next week, when, as always, I will be back in your beauts, badass earbuds, loads of love. Until then, bye.