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“The best way to keep children at home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant, and let the air out of the tires.”
― Dorothy Parker

“To come to the door and know that she would find no one: to see a house completely empty. It was like coming to her tomb while she was still alive.”
― Iain Crichton Smith, Consider the Lilies

“The gangs filled a void in society, and the void was the absence of family life. The gang became a family. For some of those guys in the gang that was the only family they knew, because when their mothers had them they were too busy having children for other men. Some of them never knew their daddies. Their daddies never look back after they got their mothers pregnant, and those guys just grew up and they couldn’t relate to nobody.
When they had their problems, who could they have talked to? Nobody would listen, so they gravitated together and form a gang. George Mackey, the former representative for the historic Fox Hill community in The Bahamas.”
― Drexel Deal, The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father

“I was learning to map my own course and determine my own destination now that my children were no longer a home. A fire burned within my soul, igniting possibilities I previously only dreamed for myself. I was choosing to feather my empty nest with leather and chrome, not a second-hand lover.”
― Debi Tolbert Duggar, Riding Soul-O

“To be the mother of a grown-up child means that you don’t have a child anymore, and that is sad. When the grown-up child leaves home, that is sadder.”
― Wendell Berry, Hannah Coulter

“They had reached the top of a hill. Drogo turned back to look at the city against the light. Plumes of smoke were rising from roofs. He saw his own house in the distance. He identified the window of his room. It was probably open; the women were tidying up. They would strip the bed, put things away in the closet, then bolt the shutters. For months and months no one would enter, except for the patient dust and on sunny days faint streaks of light. There, shut up in darkness, would lie the little world of his boyhood. His mother would preserve it so that on his return he would find everything the same, enabling him to remain a boy in that room, even after his long absence. She was no doubt deluding herself; she believed she could preserve intact a happiness that had vanished forever, holding back the flight of time, so that when doors and windows were reopened at her son's return, things would revert to the way they were before.”
― Dino Buzzati, Il deserto dei Tartari

“I realized today that a daughter is born twice. For nine months, a mother carries and nourishes her daughter in her stomach, then gives birth to her. It's a happy occasion, but the mother is left feeling sadly empty inside...But I realized today that, after raising her within my love and embrace and sending her off in marriage, this day is just as sad and leaves me just as empty as the one when I first gave birth to her.

Picture Man: Only after a parent has let go of their child will the parent truly be an adult. Living creatures leave their nest when ready. But the ones sending them off still anxiously and unnecessarily spread out their hands to catch them.”
― Kim Dong Hwa

“How strange is the force of imagination! it represents things as if they were actually present to us; we consider them so, and to a heart like mine, this is death. I know not where to hide myself from you.”
― Marie Rabutin-Chantal De Sevigne, The Letters of Madame De Sevigne to Her Daughter and Friends

“Think,—but no; think of nothing, leave the business of thought to me, in my long shady alleys, whose dreary melancholy will add to mine; I shall walk there long enough before I shall find the treasure I had with me the last time I was in them.”
― Marie Rabutin-Chantal De Sevigne, The Letters of Madame De Sevigne to Her Daughter and Friends

“A sacred wandering is a wilderness journey. You can find yourself in the midst of life transitions. Major upheavals. A career change. Soul searching. Infertility. Relocation. Illness. Depression. Divorce. Loss of a loved one. Unemployment. Returning to school. The empty nest.”
― Dana Arcuri, Sacred Wandering: Growing Your Faith In The Dark

“The empty nest can be one of the toughest parts of parenting. It’s a holy, hard giving-back, a sacred release of our children into God’s care and their next chapter. But you, too, have a new chapter, and you can find peace as you transition from mom to empty nest mom and rediscover that mom is not your only name.
There is a second act, a future with your name on it, different from your children’s but filled with hope and surprises you cannot begin to imagine…if you plan for it, believe in it, and, with the Lord’s help, walk fearlessly into it.

You are cordially invited to the After Party…because Mom is not your only name.”
― Kate Battistelli, The After Party of the Empty Nest: Mom is Not Your Only Name

“Motherhood is both a beautiful dance and a brutally gut-wrenching exercise in self-
control. As much as we want to jump in and solve every one of our children’s problems, we must
now sit on the sidelines, letting them learn to live without us. And as they begin to learn, we learn
something too. We learn to pray without ceasing. And we learn God has an Act II just for us.
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Raising children to be capable adults is one of the most amazing, agonizing, beautiful,
and painful things we will ever do. We celebrate our children’s independence while mourning
their departure. In fact, if we grieve their going, we most likely did it right.
I had no idea of the surprises God had in store for me, and He has them for you, too.”
― Kate Battistelli, The After Party of the Empty Nest: Mom is Not Your Only Name