The definition of grief is this: The anguish experienced after significant loss, usually the death of a beloved person. Grief often includes physiological distress, separation anxiety, confusion, yearning, obsessive dwelling on the past, and apprehension about the future.



Grief may have to do with a physical death, but it is the “anguish experienced after significant loss.” That loss could be the end of a relationship, the end of a job, a transition in life caused by change, etc. There are so many ways that we can grieve and so many different ways to grieve depending on our personalities. 

Something not quite talked about often in our culture is the drastic sense of grief that a mother experiences as she launches her 18-year-old child out from the nest. A nest that she has worked so hard to cultivate with love, protection, unity, harmony, and a deep sense of family. We nurture, teach, and direct. We love and we love fiercely. Yes, our job is to raise our kids to leave our home one day, but with that comes a sense of sadness that our home and family will never quite look the same way again. That our babies won’t necessarily be held in our arms the way they did for so many years leading up to this point. It is the realization that they won’t need us in quite the same way that they did before. 

It is during this difficult season that we drench ourselves in what God has to say about grief and lean into Him as our hearts break from the change of our motherly roles. The bible says:

Psalm 34:18: “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.”

Psalm 73:26: “My flesh and my heart fail, but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion forever.”

Matthew 5:4: “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

Never once does the Bible tell us moms will go it alone on this journey. That we have to cry in private and try to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. No, it says He is with us. He will be our strength and our comfort, and that He is there with us as we cry and yearn for the children we have loved so deeply. 

I will say that I did not handle my son’s leaving well. I was moody and agitated. If he wasn’t spending every waking moment of his free time with me, I felt shunned and disrespected. I wondered why he didn’t tell me he would miss me at all. I was sensitive and often had outbursts of either crying or lashing out because this was an entirely new experience for me and I wasn’t prepared for it. I thought I had failed as a mother because if he was wanting to leave the nest, it was because I had not provided a stable environment for him or a loving home in which he could take solace in. Had I not done enough to make this a safe space? Why would he want to leave this sacred dwelling that we had entitled Team Furtado? Until other wise women stepped in to remind me of the truth. That this is what young men are supposed to do. They are to leave and cleave and start a life of their own. They are to be spiritual leaders of their homes and men after God’s own heart. The fact that my son was ready to leave means I actually did do my job. He wasn’t running away because he hated our home or our family. He was beginning his new journey as a strong and confident man ready to face the world. My husband and I had reared him to be independent and that is exactly what he was doing – what the previous 18 years had prepared him for. So then, why was this so difficult even after that realization? 

Maybe it’s that we don’t like change after all, even if we thought we craved it. Maybe it’s that we like to be in control and their leaving is out of our grasp. Perhaps it’s our pride that gets in the way and they choose a different path than the one we thought had been laid out for them. Either way, it all comes down to GRACE. We need to give ourselves heaping amounts of grace as we maneuver these new waters. Not only to ourselves, but also to our kids who are leaving. I told my son, Nicholas, that for him to be 18 and wanting to venture out on his own is normal, but that me having a difficult time letting him go was also normal. It meant that we had to have a double dose of grace for each other during this time. He was experiencing a change and so was I. They were both okay in nature and we just had to figure out how to be a team during the process and to not lose sight of what was really at the core – love. He loved his family and his home, but he was being called to the mission field and when God calls, you go. I loved our family and wanted to keep things exactly as they were. All four of us intact, in our home, in the usual way that our family had been run for 18 + years. But, do we really ever grow in our faith when things stay the same? Or do we forge ahead knowing God has us on a new path for us to trust Him more, to go where we haven’t gone before which can actually be exciting, and to grow in ways we never thought possible? The only thing I could do was embrace this new norm and hold on like crazy to the One who knew my heart and held it tenderly, even if it felt like it was broken into a million pieces. 

So, I thought I would try to do something to get my thoughts and feelings out. I figured there were other women out there experiencing this new season as mothers and could use a friend along the way. Writing is therapeutic and if I could somehow vent what I was going through, it could help me unload. I could verbally process all of the deep emotions I was feeling and begin to heal. This blog is a way to not only help myself, but other mothers who are feeling the sense of loss after a child leaves home.  You are not alone in your hurt. You are not alone in riding this roller coaster of highs and lows, joy and pain, and the wonderment of how we can still play a vital role in our children’s lives even if they aren’t under our roofs. Let’s journey together.