How To Prepare For And Thrive In Your Empty Nest With Bobbi Chegwyn

Raising Daughters | Bobbi` Chegwyn | Empty Nest

 

Dr. Tim Jordan interviews Bobbi Chegwyn, author of The Post Nest Book, about the process of preparing yourself for the empty nest. They discuss coping with all of the emotions of this stage of life as well as finding your purpose and significance outside of being a parent.

Links: 

Contact author Bobbi Chegwyn at www.inspiredemptynest.com 

Bobbi Chegwyn’s podcast: www.flymomfly.com

For some great information and insights on important insights and wisdom young adults need to flourish, read Dr. Jordan’s book, Letters from My Grandfather: Timeless Wisdom for a Life Worth Living.

Listen to the podcast here

 

How to Prepare For And Thrive In Your Empty Nest With Bobbi Chegwyn

I picked a topic that I hadn’t talked about before. I’ve done 268, according to my records. It’s an important topic. We’re going to be approaching the end of the school year before long. For some parents, it ends up being a time when they’re going to be sending off their last kid out into the universe, going to college, or wherever they go. They end up becoming empty nesters.

I thought it’d be an important topic to talk about as we approach the end of the school year because a lot of parents suffer through this process. Instead of me yapping about this, I decided to have an author come on. Her name is Bobbi Chegwyn, and she is from Australia. She now has a website and a book all about supporting parents who are approaching and going through the empty nest. Thank you so much for being on the show.

It’s a topic that I love talking about. Thank you so much for having me.

Tell us quickly about your background and how you got to doing what you’re doing now.

I became a qualified practitioner of life coaching back in 2008. For a long time, I was helping women in transition. In 2021, the youngest of our daughters, who were living over here with us, returned to Australia to start her life. I flew back from settling her into Sydney, and everything hit me. It was unexpected. I knew it would be bumpy, but I didn’t realize how bad it would be. Several months later, when I still couldn’t get myself out of bed, thinking, “What am I going to do? My life is over as I know it,” I realized that I needed to define my niche in the women I helped. I wanted to help empty nest mothers because that’s the way I helped myself by taking other women along for the ride.

 

Raising Daughters | Bobbi` Chegwyn | Empty Nest

 

My last year of fellowship training was in Boston with a pediatrician. His name is Dr. T Barry Brazelton. You might be too young to know who he was. One of the things that he introduced to us and wrote a couple of books about was he talked about touch points. In his framework, there are lots of predictable times in our lives when we’re about to go through a big leap in development, a transition.

For kids, 2 and 3-year-olds, the terrible twos, 5 and 6-year-olds growing up, and middle school girls, it is a huge touch point. High school seniors are a touch point. College seniors are a touch point. You’re going off into the world after you’re done. The weeks and months before you get married, if you get married, have a kid, or an empty nest.

What his model said was that as we approach those touch points or transitions, we tend to fall apart. There’s a whole bunch of people who are out of sorts and crabby and moody. There’s all this stuff that happens as we’re gathering the energy to take the leap in development. That would be important for us and you to talk about. What are some of the emotions that people go through as they approach that stage? You’ve been through it.

After speaking to women on a daily basis for the last couple of years about this topic, there is a loss of purpose like, “What do we do now?” A loss of identity. We knew who we were. We sometimes lose certain connections with the other moms whom we used to hang out with at practice or other extracurricular activities. We lose significance and variety as we knew it. Our role changes within the home.

One topic that comes up is, “I don’t know how to cook for less people.” That’s a big thing. Even though we have never thought about that, that’s a thing that comes up time and time again. Family dynamics change. A lot of women are like, “My husband was dad. Now, he’s my husband.” It’s us speaking with each other again. The emotions are a process of grief and loss. It’s one we have to work through.

What I find, especially in the second semester and senior year of high school, I start seeing a lot of girls and their moms in major power struggles. They’re fighting more. They’re arguing. There are meltdowns. There are a lot of normal feelings like you’re describing going on, but people don’t express the grief and the sadness. It gets shoved underground and comes out as anger. The grieving part is huge. I don’t think people think about that as a loss, but it is.

In the book The Post Nest Plan, the first part is divided into three parts. The first part is acceptance. It’s about inviting all these emotions because if we try to suppress them, they’ll always be there. If we try to run from them, they’re going to follow. We need to feel those emotions, sit with them, invite them in, see if they have something to teach us, and allow them to help us understand ourselves better. I find that once we invite those emotions in, for me anyway, because I do it all the time when I’m going through a certain crisis, I’ll sit with it for a couple of days. More often than not, it’s moved through me. The energy of the emotions has gone, and I’m able to take the next step.

First, we have to normalize it because some people think, “Why am I feeling this way? I shouldn’t feel this way. I should be happy for my son or my daughter.” When we dropped our daughter off, she was the first, not the last, but we dropped her off at college, and my wife Ann is more emotional than I am outwardly. She and my daughter were crying. We said goodbye. We drove home for two hours. It hadn’t hit me until I walked upstairs and I walked by her room. That’s when it hit me, and I closed the door. My wife said, “What are you doing?” I said, “I don’t know. It’s like a reminder.”

Thank you for bringing up the importance of expressing our emotions. On a lot of community forums, it’s divided into two groups. It’s the women who hope to find a safe space for expressing their emotions. You’ve done your job. Stop hanging on your children. You’re not doing them any favors. Get on with it. Suck it up.

That is detrimental because with empty nesting and with these moms who are vulnerable and expressing their emotions, it’s important for us to meet a mom where she is at the moment. If we’re way up here and the mom’s way down there, even if we think we’re stretching out our hand for some guidance, that mother is not going to be able to metaphorically reach or connect with us. It’s important to connect and engage with a mom who is going through this grief and loss where they are. Do not assume that a mother is where you are at the moment if you are further down the track.

At the same time, their son or daughter who has left the nest and may be in the military or might have moved to college is going through an emotional upheaval. They’re going through their loss. Parents end up trying to take care of their kids. They don’t allow themselves yet to handle their stuff. Their stuff is pushed aside because they’re trying to support their son or daughter.

As moms, we’re used to giving to our children. It is a natural state. Sometimes, we forget that it’s okay to help ourselves as well.

Raising Daughters | Bobbi` Chegwyn | Empty Nest
Empty Nest: For guest photo: Mothers are so used to giving to their children. It is their natural state that sometimes, they forget that it is actually okay to help ourselves as well.

 

I’ve been counseling girls for many years. I’ve noticed that often, parents have spent energy and focus on their kids for 18 years or 25 years, depending upon how many kids they have. When that kid goes off, and they have their empty nest, the parents look at each other like, “Who are you?” They’ve lost their connection too.

Our roles changed. From focusing on everyone in the family now, we now have just our partner. It’s a learning curve because part of empty nesting is getting to know who we are now as a 40, 50, or 60-something person. We also have to get to know not only who our partner is but who we are together.

We’re talking with Bobbi Chegwyn. She is a woman who supports parents all over the world, helping them through their empty nest. She also has a book which I’ll have her talk about towards the end. It’s a workbook for helping parents to work through the process of what’s next for me. One of the things you wrote in your book early on in the process, besides expressing their emotions, is the concept of decluttering. Talk about that for a moment. I thought that was important.

Decluttering is quite magical. If you look at it from the concept of feng shui and allowing the energy to flow in our house, it helps to get rid of the old to create a fresh foundation. It was something that I did. I became quite manic about it because A) I needed a job, and B), to be able to clear my mind and focus on what I needed to do next, I needed to have an unencumbered space to work from. That space was my home.

I went through every cupboard and drawer in every room. Purging our physical items helps in a way to have that feeling of release, and we are creating a new foundation for starting again in a way that’s going to suit us as the only occupant in the home or us and our spouse. It doesn’t mean that we get rid of everything that our children have, but we make the home our own rather than a reflection of what the children need to have at that point in time. For me, it was something exciting. I felt like I was indulging myself because I was creating my new space. I brought in some new furnishings. I got rid of old things I no longer needed, which helped with that transition.

A couple of years after our youngest son left for college, my wife and I, on New Year’s Eve, were with some couples of our dearest friends. One of them was moving. They were all excited about their move. I had been complaining I needed a bigger office at home because I was doing things like this and more writing. I realized I’d been whining about it and complaining. I turned to my wife and said, “Why are we not moving? Why don’t we get our space?”

That was New Year’s Eve. We moved into the house we’re in several months later. We went down to the basement of our house, and we went through every box. Some of those things we hadn’t even seen for twenty years. I gave away many books to Goodwill. I’m a reader. I was like, “Am I going to read this again?” No. I put it in the bag. It was freeing to let go of that and decide what we wanted in our space.

I learned that clutter creates anxiety. Our cortisol level rises. It does become more of a state of being more relaxed and more at peace when you let go. It’s quite an empowering thing to let go of things that no longer serve you.

Clutter creates anxiety and leads to high cortisol levels. You become more relaxed and peaceful the more you let go. Share on X

You declutter after your kid goes and leaves the nest. You also talk a lot in your book. The book is called The Post Nest Plan book. You also talk a lot about reflecting on “Who am I? Who do I want to become?” Talk about that for a moment. We could talk for a long time about that, but talk about the importance of figuring out what’s my purpose now.

We’re vastly different people than when we were single, newly married, and before we had kids, even when the kids were younger. A lot of us will focus so much on our family unit for eighteen years at least. It’s quite eye-opening and sometimes a shock when you don’t know who you are because we are no longer in-person parenting.

We’ve got this opportunity to flourish and bloom with the person we are now. For a lot of us, it’s like, “I have no idea who I am. What do I like doing? What are my passions? What do I value? How do I define those values?” In order to successfully create a post-nest plan, it’s important to take a self-inventory and find out who you are right now, not who you think you were, because you might get a surprise and see that you have changed. Your needs, your values, what you hope for, and what you’d like to do have changed. It may be a surprise.

Raising Daughters | Bobbi` Chegwyn | Empty Nest
For ‘The Post Nest Plan’ book cover: The Post Nest Plan: For Empty Nest Moms Wondering What’s Next?

I read a book called The Defining Decade by Meg Jay. It’s a great book. It’s about your twenties. She describes how important the twenties are. One of the things that she talks about in her book is and she got this title from somewhere else, but she called it identity capital. For a mom or a dad who sent the last kid out and they have an empty nest, they’re like, “What have I learned? Not who am I, but what am I good at, and what have I learned about myself for the last 25 years in raising kids? What’s my identity? What experiences have I had?” If I can start putting those down, I can look at the whole and say, “What might that mean about me? What’s next?”

One thing that we focus on in the taking action stage, which is the last part of The Post Nest Plan, is looking at soft skills that moms will have developed over 18 or 20 years of parenting because a lot of moms will say, “I don’t know how to do anything except to be a mom. How would I go in the workplace, join a community group, or start my own venture?”

When you consider soft skills, they can be easily transferred into another arena. If you look at those, which might be problem-solving, communication, teamwork, leadership, creativity, and time management, moms, unbeknownst to them, perhaps have been doing that for 18 to 20 years. In the book, there’s this story because I would talk to my husband about soft skills, and he gave me an interesting story. Twenty years ago, he was a senior corporate job in Dallas. He needed to hire a new executive assistant. In his words, “I got all these stale corporate types coming in, and everything looked good on paper.”

He said, “In walked this woman. We sat down and had a chat. She was a mom of three now teenage children. Her husband had left her. She had been on her own for a number of years. She had taken a part-time job waitressing. She was a taxi driver, cook, social manager, diary manager, and coordinator.” My husband ended up not only hiring her because of all those experiences, but he did say that she was the best hire he’d ever made.

When my dad passed away, my mom had never worked outside the home. I had seven siblings. There were eight of us. She had a full-time job. The job that she got after my dad passed away was in a hardware store, which she was like, “What’s the fit there?” They put her in the nuts and bolts section because she had that thing organized. Every screw was in the exact right place. She cleaned it, and they loved her because nobody had ever done that.

I’m one of eight children.

Where are you in the line?

I’m number seven, and there are five girls and three boys.

I’m the third boy and five younger sisters. We’ll do an episode about that sometime. You mentioned a lot of important words at the beginning of this show. The words you described are things that parents need to reflect on because there’s a change in purpose, identity, connections, significance, variety, and family dynamics. That’s a lot, which brings to mind this is an important stage for us.

I tend to think that preparation is the key, as with anything major in life. As the kids over here start their college prep, I have found that the most opportune time for parents to think about empty nesting is most likely when their child is in the eleventh grade because they seem to have a license and network. They are quite independent.

You still have the opportunity to do your in-person parenting. You’re still having your needs met, but there is a space created where you are not needed. You can start to focus on yourself. Although the emotions will be there when the child leaves home, parts 2 and 3 in the book can be undertaken. You have got that self-inventory done and the awareness there. You know what action you will take once they leave home.

All that’s left when the child walks out the door is you already have an understanding of what might happen and the emotions and how great it is to sit with those emotions and understand those emotions. You’ll still feel pain, grief, and loss, but you’ll have a plan. It won’t be confronting because you will know yourself well that the fear will be taken away. Things will be on paper, black and white.

When things get scary, think of them as a spreadsheet because they are boring and unmotivating for me. It puts it in its place. It’s not big and fearful. It’s facts on a piece of paper. If moms, dads, and anyone else wants to start looking at what’s going to happen once the kids have left home, I would say maybe about 10th or 11th grade when the kids are less needy, go for it. Find out more about yourself. You’ll be less surprised, shocked, and emotional when the time comes.

When my wife and I dropped off our daughter at college, there was a half-day program for the parents. I remember being in this auditorium, and the dean of students was talking. One of the things he said struck me, not in a good way. He said, “Parents, your sons and daughters are leaving. They’re going to go down the hallway and sign up for their first semester classes. You’re going to stay here because it’s time for them to start doing things on their own. It’s time for you guys to start letting go.”

My first thought was, “If this is the first time you’re letting go, you and your kid are in big trouble.” They were because an hour later, we finished up with the dean and walked down to get our kids. These kids come out of this room crying, and parents are pounding on the door. They wanted to get in there and help their daughter. They didn’t have that two years of preparing themselves. The kids are the parents. The parents need a ramp for a year or two to prepare themselves, not just their eighteen-year-old.

The more you do prior to that place of being told to let go, the less of an emotional storm it’s going to be.

One of the ways that you talk about parents being able to find some purpose and meaning in their lives is that you spend some time later in the book talking about the value of being of service. Could you talk about that for a moment?

In the book, I mentioned that the first time I noticed this or came across this concept was when I was starting a new project. I was fearful about it. I sat down with a good friend of mine, another Australian. She said, “My pastor mentioned something about this a while back. What if you look at your fear of doing something new as being of service?” I thought, “You are right. If I don’t do this, this isn’t going to happen for these people.” I changed my perspective and came to this new thing from being of service.

I decided to bring this into the book because being of service, as I call it in the book, is the secret success statement. I believe from personal experience that being of service, especially in this phase of life, is going to help you nurture something else as we did with our children. People may think, “I don’t want to volunteer.” It doesn’t mean that the map is not the territory. Things can mean anything you want it to mean.

Being in service while having an empty nest will help parents nurture something else, just like what they did with their children. Share on X

I like to think that you can be of service in starting your own venture and going back to work in a corporate environment. You can be of service to a community group by volunteering and starting a Facebook page. Most of all, you can be of service to the world by being of service to yourself. If you want to start small, fill your happy tank up, and do things that are good for you because you are going to be in a much better position to be able to go out there and find something that suits who you are and where you can be of service. If it’s not something on a grand scale or even a local scale, you’ll be a better person within your family dynamic. You’ll be a better person for your kids and your partner who’s still at home.

Those three words have changed my life. Even this morning, I will do different things, but it fills my happy tank so much. We have a food pantry in our local town. They were in need of coats, jackets, and wooly hats. I did a shout-out to the neighborhood group. I said, “I’m going in two days. Drop whatever you have off on my front porch.” My trunk was chock a block, which means full in Australia, full of bags of warm clothing. I got there and they said, “Thanks so much. We need blankets as well.” Now, I’m going to drive for blankets.

It’s something that isn’t taking up much of my time. It’s not costing me a cent. It’s making me feel good because I have the time, availability, and network within our neighborhood to do shout-outs. It makes other people feel good about themselves because they know something is needed and they can provide it. We’re also helping the underprivileged in our town. You can be of service in such small ways. It doesn’t need to be big or grand. We don’t need to be Mother Teresa or Oprah. We can do our little bit and get the same results within.

Would that include driving a school bus?

Yes, I did that.

I read that in the book. I was like, “Good for her.” I’ve always thought it’d be fun to drive a school bus because I love kids so much.

It was the best thing. I came over here to the US, and my husband said, “Do what you want to do.” I thought, “I need to assimilate myself into this community.” I always saw those big yellow buses on TV. We don’t have them back home in Australia. Sometimes, I can be random and go after fun things without thinking about the details. I signed up. I learned how to drive on the other side of the road and a 30-foot vehicle.

It was the best couple of years because I got the route to drive the third and fourth graders in my neighborhood. Not only did I get to know the town, but I got to know all the kids, and I got to know all the parents. With the school bus, I thought, “Driving this bus is a little bit too boring. What can I bring that is part of me into this job?” I thought, “We are all privileged in this neighborhood. We are going to start the kind bus.”

We would do donation drives for the less privileged. We’d have a kind bus rider of the week. We’d have awards, and we would do all this stuff constantly. Bus 31 became the Kind Bus. That was good for me because telling jokes whilst waiting to open my doors and having a sing-along didn’t cut it. That bus needed a purpose, and it was a fantastic couple of years.

I love how excited you get even talking about what you did. There are two points that popped into my head as you were talking about what parents can start doing. I’m going to pick on women because I work with girls and women a lot. A lot of them have a hard time doing self-care because other people’s needs are more important than theirs.

This is true of men and women. Sometimes, we can get into a rut where it’s hard for us to get out of our comfort zone. A lot of things that you’re describing are going to require people to get moms and dads to get out of their comfort zones and do self-care. You’re working with a lot of moms who are approaching or going through the empty nest. How do you support them or work with them so they can move past those two potential limitations?

A good thing to do is, as I’ve gotten older and become more comfortable in who I am, assume rapport, and people are going to like me. When you do that, you walk into any space with a better energy about you, a curiosity, a smile, and a friendly nature. If that’s not possible and you still carry nerves and anxiety, as we say in Australia, if you never go, you’ll never know. Try it.

This is the thing. People make things greater and jump ahead of the path. It takes one visit and step into a different environment. It doesn’t mean signing up for six months. It doesn’t mean you’re committed for a lifetime. It doesn’t mean you have to be best friends with everyone but do it once, because sometimes we get ahead of ourselves, we feel we have to be all these things and all we need for that particular day is a little bit of courage and a prayer beforehand and go into that environment with the assumption that rapport will be built.

You will make friends with the right people. The people who speak to you are going to be your people. It’s the people that you vibe with. If everybody was our cup of tea and if we were supposed to be friends with everybody in the world, I would have 7 billion friend requests on Facebook, and I would not be able to keep up with everyone. We’re not supposed to be best friends with everybody. You will find your tribe. You’ll have people that you resonate with. Gravitate towards them and allow yourself the opportunity to know that you won’t vibe with everybody, which takes the pressure off.

 

Raising Daughters | Bobbi` Chegwyn | Empty Nest

 

I work with girls all the time in my camps, retreats, and counseling practice. Girls tend to ruminate a lot. They start with a small fear, and they think about it. All of a sudden, they’re overwhelmed by it. Sometimes, what it takes is for, at least, the girls I work with, and it’s the same for their moms, is I tell them there is fear of going off to college. I’m seeing a lot of young adults now who are approaching that and some women in college who are approaching the end of college. I say, “Fear is anxiety, and uncertainty is part of what you’re facing.”

There are other emotions that go along with that, like excitement, a sense of adventure, and a sense of newness. You’re in charge of which part you focus on. If you focus on the fear, it gets bigger, and it’s going to be hard to take that first step. You need to take that first step. That first step starts building energy, momentum, and connections.

 

Raising Daughters | Bobbi` Chegwyn | Empty Nest

 

What we tend to forget is that all people in a new environment have taken that first step. You are not unusual. You are one of a group who have all taken that first step.

You also talk in your book about the value of gratitude and appreciation and how important that is for people going through this phase of life. Can you talk about that for a moment?

That’s included in the first part of acceptance when we are dealing with our emotions because it is good to process our emotions and start to feel that glimmer of hope. What I decided to do when I was going through this stage was to notice the little things. I started to feel gratitude and appreciate a lot more. It was silly things like driving around in the early morning and seeing the sun rise over a barn because we live in quite a rural area. I thought, “God, that’s beautiful.”

I would drive past a farm with our packers who are shown. It looks like they’re wearing 1980s leg warmers. I would go, “That is the funniest thing I will see all day. I’m grateful for seeing that.” I would come home, and I’d be putting my sheets onto wash in the laundry, and it was like, “How many people in the world do not have this opportunity to do this chore as easily as I do it?”

It started small, but I found that I felt much better. Appreciation and gratitude do, from personal experience, light a spark within. Once you notice more, that spark grows. It provides emotions of peace and contentment because you start to open your eyes. Your focus is taken away from what’s not great and centered on everything good around you.

I like to talk about an analogy, where if you walk into a darkened warehouse and you have a flashlight on you. You point the flashlight into the back left-hand center of the warehouse, and you see a big pile of negativity. You take the same flashlight and point it to the right-hand side of the warehouse. You see a big pile of positivity, and you decide to turn on the main light switch. The whole warehouse is flooded with light. From that, what you come to see is that positive and negative will all coexist, but it’s where you choose to shine your light, which is what you will see and, therefore, what you think about, feel, and take action on.

We’ve talked about the emotions that come with an empty nest and how important it is for parents to normalize, express, and talk about it. We’ve talked about decluttering, taking self-inspection, spending some time, and figuring out what my purpose is now. How can I find significance? We’ve talked about gratitude, appreciation, and the value of being of service. I don’t want moms and dads to say, “That’s so much.” You don’t have to do it all now. What we mentioned earlier was it’s nice to even start this process a year or two before your kids leave the nest. It’s not like, “Now what?” It’s like I’ve been preparing myself for this.

The book started as a course. I soon realized, “I don’t want to put a timeframe on this. This needs to be a book where moms can scribble, put dog ears on it, work through it at their own pace, and go back to it.” I even go back to the lessons in this now when I’m not feeling great. I sit with that emotion and process. It’s something that can be used for any life change or when that feeling of being uncomfortable starts to present itself. It is a process that a mom can work through at her own pace and in her own time.

The thing that always fascinates me when I work with girls who are going through transitions and touchpoints like the empty nest is the parents are going through this. Their moms are going through all these things we’ve talked about, but their sons and daughters are going through a similar process. It’s similar but different.

One of the gifts that parents can give to their kids if they do all the things that you’re talking about in your book is you’re going to be giving them a role model. You’re going to be inspiring them about how you handle change, uncertainty, and transitions because kids have to find new purposes and connections.

I once watched an episode of Dr. Phil where he was talking to a mom. This hit home, and I’ve always remembered it. He said to the mom, “Would you die for your children? “The woman said, like any of us, “Yes, I would die for my children.” This was the bomb. He said, “Would you live for your children?” That’s what we need to do. We need to live for our children. You still have a part as a parent. We’re still going to teach our children regardless of what age we and they are. Why not be the best version of ourselves for them?

Before I have you give people your information about how to get ahold of you in the book, any one piece of advice after all you’ve been through with your kids? One piece of advice, the most important one for parents who are approaching or going through an empty nest.

When it comes to communicating with them, don’t try to solve their problems unless they ask you to solve their problems. It’s a task, but we have to get into the habit of being there to listen, not necessarily to respond to solve. I have learned it with my two girls. They want to tell me what’s going wrong, but they also want to process that and sort out their own problem.

When communicating with your children, parents must not try and solve their problems unless they ask. Get into the habit of being there to listen, not necessarily to respond and solve. Share on X

In that way, I can allow them to learn how to sort their own problems out. Step back a bit. It can be hard, especially because I love solving other people’s problems. I have learned that they don’t necessarily want you to solve it for them but to sit back and wait until they ask for help. Otherwise, they mostly want to vent like any of us.

That advice can be applicable starting when your kids are toddlers. It becomes the way you do “business” with your kids. How can people get ahold of you if they’re looking for some counseling, support, or your book?

They can go to InspiredEmptyNest.com.

In what ways do you support moms?

We’ve got a newbie, which is fantastic. The site has been made into an empty nest moms directory. We have a feature where moms can type in their zip code, town, state, and country anywhere in the world, and they can find an empty nest mom local to them. From talking to moms for the last couple of years, the connection was key, and moms always want to know, “Are there other moms that I can perhaps get in touch with or form friendships with nearby?”

Apart from the directory, we have books, free resources, and a podcast called Fly Mom Fly. We have lessons that are called SISter School Lessons. It’s a blog, and the SIS in SISter stands for Self Inventory for the Soul. We’ve got SISter Coaching Sessions for moms who need that one-on-one talk through any challenge they are going through. We’ve got a whole lot of stuff in one spot. That’s InspiredEmptyNest.com. The company is called The Inspired Empty Nest, but the website is purely InspiredEmptyNest.com.

When the episode comes out, go to my website. You can find the links to this and also to the book. You can also get your book on the website.

Click on the website or go to Amazon. It’s there or at your favorite bookseller.

Thank you so much for your time and for what you’re doing. This is something we don’t talk about enough, and parents need support. I have never seen anything like this before. It’s a solid way to support parents going through the empty nest, and all parents go through the empty nest at some point. Thank you so much for what you’re doing.

I appreciate being able to come on and talk to you. As big as the challenge might be, my motto is, “No empty nest mom shall be left behind.” I appreciate being able to chat with more moms.

I’ll put all your information on the website. Thanks so much for being with us here on the show.

Thanks, Dr. Tim.

That was great glad she came on because it’s such an important topic that we don’t give parents enough support around and not support when they’re falling apart when their kid’s in college, but also learning how to support moms and dads early on. When your daughters and sons are preparing for college, when they’re starting to make applications, when they’re starting to think about that process, and when they’re junior and senior in high school, that’s the time when parents can do the same thing for themselves.

I will put some links to Bobbi Chegwyn’s website and how to get ahold of her book. If you know a parent who has a son or a daughter who is a junior-senior in high school, this would be a great show to pass on to them to help them get some support. I will, as always, be back here with their brand-new episode. Thanks always so much for stopping by. I’ll see you then.

 

Important Links

 

About Bobbi` Chegwyn

Raising Daughters | Bobbi` Chegwyn | Empty Nest

Since becoming an Advanced Practitioner of Life Coaching and Practitioner of Neuro Linguistic Programming with The Coaching Institute in Melbourne, Australia in 2008, Bobbi has helped hundreds of women breakthrough challenging life transitions.

 
She is the author of The Post Nest Plan, 10 Reasons You May Not Be Happy & 10 Remedies So You Can Be, 12 Steps to Self-Empowerment, creator of the Self Inventory for the Savvy Sisterhood workshop, has contributed to self-help features for Cleo & Cosmopolitan magazines in Australia, wrote the weekly Life Matters column for an Australian newspaper, and penned the viral quote “Your perception of me is a reflection of you; my reaction to you is an awareness of me.” in June 2012
 
She knows her purpose and it’s this: “You matter in this world. If I’m going to help myself, I’ll help you, too.”

 

 

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