On My Daughter Leaving Home: A Mindful Parenting Reflection
Hunter Clarke-Fields
In this solo episode, Hunter Clarke-Fields reflects on her daughter leaving home for college and the profound shifts that come with it. With honesty and compassion, she explores the bittersweet mix of pride, grief, and possibility—and how mindfulness can help us meet these transitions with steadiness.
Maggie Leaving Home [BONUS EP]
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*This is an auto-generated transcript*
Hunter (00:00)
You're listening to a special Mindful Mama bonus episode, which is about my daughter leaving home. And it's just gonna be me talking to you.
Hey, welcome back to the mindful mama podcast. I'm so glad you're here. I am recording this just a few days before I take my daughter to college. And this is episode is going to be about my daughter leaving home. And it feels like a big bookmark to me because you know, all the work they did in the Mindful Parenting course, “Raising Good Humans”, started with all the challenges I had with Maggie when she was little and now she's going to college. And it's crazy she's leaving home, so you're also going to hear about some challenges, you know, about this time of life and everything that's happening- and I'll update you. I wrote something about this a few weeks ago- I'm going to share that with you and then I'm gonna update you on what's happening now.
So I know that right now, you may be in the thick of the parenting stress, right? You may have toddlers or preschoolers, you may have elementary school age kids, teens that are taking up all your energy and driving you a little crazy on a daily basis, especially if you have those little kids. You may be striving to be grounded enough to meet the challenges of these intense times with some steadiness and with equanimity, right? You want to model healthy emotional regulation. And if you're not that rare unicorn of a naturally peaceful, chill person, takes for most of us, it takes enormous amounts of dedication and focus to create these, the habits of calm and steadiness. And of course we don't always get it right. So I just want to acknowledge that right now, you might be in this place where your kids are little and the idea of your kids leaving home sounds like it's going to be decades away. It sounds like it's never going to happen. It feels like you're in you are now maybe it's taken a few years for your matresence- or patronsence, maybe- to really get into that role of parent, but now it is it takes up most of your life, right? It's a huge, huge part of your life. And it's kind of impossible to imagine that it's going to change, right? And so you might be in the thick of it. You're working, you listen to this podcast because you want to yell less, to use those mindfulness tools, to hear about other communication, other things that are happening to help you be a better parent. You're using this great resource of your time to be that present parent, right? To model steadiness and to model calm. And you're really maybe trying to do that.
And what happens when you do it- if you can do it- maybe you get to do it more of the time through using the tools from the podcast, right? Maybe you would sometimes are achieving the goal of more groundedness, right? So what happens when that happens? And for me, it was the thing I have been most grateful for in my life. I didn't mess up my kids. I do have a good relationship with both of them. I'm so proud of my own changes and how it affected my family for good. I mean, that's like the biggest thing in my life. It mattered so much that I wrote a course and a book about it. And it’s like, my heart kind of aches like thinking about it: it's the thing I'm most proud of. We have great relationships. And now my oldest daughter, Maggie, is 18 and going to college. My youngest daughter is 15. She had her first day of school today. She's off to high school. And this phase of my life, right, which was the phase of my life of motherhood, which is never going to- and of course I'll always be a mother, but this intensive time of like rearing children, which was all encompassing and required such massive change for me. This person who had a temper and is not that organized and things like that. So now this massive phase of my life is shifting into something else and it may be the biggest change I've experienced yet.
And it's really hard to describe this because it does feel like a change, just like moving into parenthood or moving into motherhood was like a big change, such a big change, right? That, you know, we had the episode with Jessie Harrold where we talked about using the name “Matrescence” to describe the sort of years-long change process. And it feels like that now on the other side. There are some days, I'm thrilled that she's going to college. I'm so happy. I'm honestly so happy for her to start this new, exciting phase of her life. And at the same time, I know I'll miss her so much and it's going to be really hard. And yeah, it's really an interesting time because while everyone is focused on her change, which is as it should be, right? This is a huge change in her life. It's the beginning of so much. It's exciting. She's leaving home. It's such a huge, huge change. And it's also a big change in my life. You know, becoming a mother was so all consuming. It was so transformative.
And we've talked about that here, right? We've talked about that matresence. Why is it people want to acknowledge how transformative it is to become a mother? But this new change, I mean, for me, I guess, especially because I have Sora, who's 15, it feels like a years long process to, you know, Sora has my youngest daughter has three years left of high school. And this is how I felt when I wrote this out the other last week that I felt like a bit like I'm molting, right? Like I'm starting to shed layers of myself to make space for something new- tthat I would really thinking about the enduring truth of impermanence, meaning that nothing lasts and everything changes. That's the only truth we have is that nothing lasts and everything changes. And how it's really, really on display. We worked so hard at rising to the demanding roles of parenthood, and I'm not the same as I was before having kids. Not the same person. My husband isn't the same. Our thoughts and feelings are not the same. Our bodies are not the same. Our minds are not the same. The world around us is so different, right? The world around us is definitely not the same.
And I imagine it might be hard to imagine this if you have a toddler or elementary aged kid and all you want is some breathing space. But then that breathing space comes. And here you are. You're still alive, hopefully, still vibrant, still with so much life to live. So what now? What will come of this time? And as of a week ago, I was feeling really different. I wrote that I feel ready for something new and different and it's unsettling. This unknown feeling leads my mind to keep trying to project into the future. I'm trying while I'm trying and practicing to stay present, right? My head is playing imaginary videos of what the future will be like again and again, all fictional thoughts of a brain that evolved to keep me safe. And sometimes I succumb to the insistent projection and I get lost in anxiety. Better times have me interrupting the future pacing and coming back to here and now. And I wrote mindfulness meditation, as always, anchors me through this time and that's absolutely true.
And that's how I was feeling last week: and last week I wrote, “Sometimes I go for a walk in the woods with the dog and I sit on a rock by the stream and I have a good cry and it's a pressure relief. And sometimes when I'm walking and my mind is trying to figure out the future, I interrupt it with a mantra of loving kindness. This is what I say to myself: ‘may I be safe? May I be peaceful? May I be safe? May I be peaceful?’ And that can help. it's been a really unsettled time. It's been a lot of uncertainty. It feels really different. It felt really different last week, particularly. And I'm partway reassured and partway annoyed that this is kind of predictable: empty nest, perimenopause. Midlife changes are well documented, right? Still, I'm living in a place of uncertainty and it doesn't even feel clear why, right? Is my daughter, is it my daughter going to school? Do I just want change, freedom, adventure? I used to make paintings about the wild animal inside of us- you can see some of them at my website at MindfulMamaMentor.com. The paintings are about how this wild animal is inside of us. She's there, this predator actually, that's unapologetic about her natural animal nature. And all the work I've done in some ways is in some ways is so that I worked so hard to tame some of my wildness and be the kind of mother that my children needed- steady, responsive and calm. I worked really hard to domesticate myself. And now sometimes- especially last week- maybe another part of me sees its chance to come forth and live as fully as possible. Maybe that's happening. Maybe it was all hormonal because then it all changed and I felt so at home and just comfortable and not unsettled at all, completely just in the flow of my life again. So I don't know, there's a lot happening. And then Maggie's going away. I mean, I wish I were giving you some reassuring listicle with three easy steps for easing this transition but I guess I'm telling you that you know the kind of hard that you might be experiencing right now: when your kids are so intense and all you want is a break it might give way to a different kind of hard. It’s really not easy to be a human being on this earth, because the only thing we can be sure of is change and impermanence. And that can be kind of scary. I know that's, that's a lot.”
I wrote this last week and I was feeling so unsettled and then it changed. Like I said, it, then it changed and I felt very settled and comfortable again. And I've been practicing my mindfulness meditation through this practicing to interrupt the, when my thoughts racing. And I also called and asked about my hormone levels, all that stuff. I'm doing what I can to do the only thing I can with this, which is be present moment to moment, day to day. That there's not much else to do, I guess. You know, when I release this special episode, I will will be driving Maggie to college, and she'll be going to college and leaving the house and I'm doing the things I can. Even though it's summer, don't usually make like cookies in the summer because it feels like a more of a cozy fall and winter thing. But I was like, “my gosh, I'm going to make you cookies, because you need to have homemade cookies before you go!” And I made her popcorn because I'm obsessed with popcorn and I love making homemade popcorn in the pot. So I made her popcorn before she went and I'm so excited for her. This is such a huge time of life. I feel like the school she's going to is so perfect for her. I think it'll be a really supportive place for her. But then it'll be big change for the rest of us. And I guess I'll weather it how I weather it. And yet even in the midst of all this uncertainty, there's a kind of beauty.
And when I'm present, I'm seeing it, right? I'm seeing it: looking at her beautiful face and knowing I don't have a lot of time to see it. And I look back and I see that every phase has asked something new of me and every phase has given me something unexpected in return and this season is no different. My daughter is stepping into her own independence and I'm kind of inching into mine again. And maybe this is the invitation, right? To trust that I can continue to grow and evolve and to trust that impermanence and to trust that change, just as she's going to be growing and evolving.
So if you're in the weeds of parenting right now, or if you're looking at the horizon, maybe you're like me, you're looking at your own big transition. I just want you to know that you're not alone. It's not. easy to be a human being on this earth and we're all navigating these shifts one moment at a time: sometimes skillfully, sometimes not. And if you're feeling unsettled, if you're going in the woods and having a cry, if you're having moments of doubt, they don't mean that you're feeling- I don't believe they mean that I'm failing. It just means I'm human, right? And if you're having those, too, they mean that you're alive, too. You're responding to that truth of impermanence that touches us all.
And in the end, maybe that's it. That's the only thing we can do, right? That's the real practice is to stay present as best we can for it, to not rush ahead, to not cling too tightly, but to step into the next hour of your life, the next 10 minutes of your life, whatever comes next. And that's what I'm going to be practicing right now. And maybe you can, too. So let's take a breath. I put my hand to my heart. Maybe we can find some steadiness, find some compassion for ourselves, and maybe even some joy in the midst of all this change.
Well, thank you for being with me here today. It's meaningful for me to share this with you, and I'll be back with some occasional solo episodes on Thursdays, so stay tuned for those and until then, take care of yourself. Keep practicing to give yourself grace because it's not easy being a human here on earth. And I will be here for you as always with all these podcast episodes to connect and to offer you things to help you on your journey. So thank you so much for listening.
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