In this episode:

This week, I talk with Jill Savage, where we discuss how to prepare for and experience joy in the empty nest phase of life. Learn what to let go of and then what we need to grab hold of as we transition from raising children to releasing them from the nest.  

(Article contains affililate links. This means that when you click a link and make a purchase, I might receive a small comission from that purchase.) Inspired Life This week, I’m happy to share a recent interview with Jill Savage, where we talked about how to experience joy in the empty nest phase of life. As someone who married at the young age of twenty and had my children within five years from that, I was an empty nester in my late forties. Jill Savage talks about what we need to let go of and then what we need to grab hold of as we transition from raising children to releasing them from the nest. Jill is an empty nest mom of five children. Her mission is to help moms and marriages. In her writing and speaking, she shares very honestly and openly about her own experiences, and I appreciate that Jill doesn’t sugar coat her story. In our interview, we talked about some of the content of her book Empty Nest, Full Life: Discovering God's Best for Your Next, but there was so much more great stuff that we couldn't cover in 30 minutes! We talked about letting go of opinions and expectations, and your child’s problems. But the one that was most challenging for Jill to let go of has been expectations. She said, “Our human nature sits in these places of expectation.” She said, maybe we talked to our mom every day when we left home, or maybe it was once a week. “But then you’re going to impose that expectation on your own children.” We have to let go of those and let them be who they are. We discussed holiday expectations too. Having in-laws join the family becomes an opportunity to let go of expectations and establish new traditions. Jill addresses letting go of traditions in the book too. We discussed how might need to be flexible with traditions or let them go altogether. If we don’t let go of these expectations, it can put pressure on our children. “We’re giving them the gift of freedom and of being themselves,” Jill said. In our chat, she mentioned a popular blog post that she wrote about giving adult child the gift of holiday freedom. See the full article titled “Give The Gift of Holiday Freedom” https://www.jillsavage.org/give-gift-holiday-freedom/ Jill talked about priorities and how they change after our kids leave home and get married. When here kids are small, a mom’s first priority is God, then her marriage, and then her kids. And in a child’s life, you want their priorities to be God, then parents and family, and other, she said. But, “The minute they get married, you move from spot number four, and then when they have kids, you move even more,” she said. We need to prepare our hearts for the reality of that. Their priority is to make their new family number one. It should never be to make us happy. You can be preparing now in the teen years if your kids haven’t yet home yet. In the teen years, we can back off on telling them what to do and asking more questions. Jill shared examples from how she and her husband guided their kids to make dicisions by asking, “What do you think you should do? What decision do you thinks is the right one to make?” Even if we know what decision we want them to make, we need to help them learn how to make it. Jill also said, we can always play the parent card if their decision isn’t the right one. This is exercising their decision-making muscle. The last letting go area that we discussed was that of releasing our kids’ problems. Jill said this chapter was a hard one to write in the book. One of their sons has had a lot of challenges (Jill talked specifically about them in this episode), and she had a friend that challenged her to lovingly detach from her son’s problems. We want to rescue,