Grow When They Go
Does the military life prep you for the empty nest?
by Andrea Downing Peck
Marine Corps spouse Carrie Costantini was too busy getting her twin daughters ready for college to think about coming back to a kid-free house.
Then she was confronted with the grocery list.
“The cupboards were bare in the house, and I had to go grocery shopping,” Costantini said. “It was the saddest little list I have ever made in my life – two potatoes, one steak, one pint of milk, six eggs. Reality set in. It really is just the two of us.”
After centering their lives on their children’s activities, dreams and desires, many parents feel a sense of emptiness once their children are out of the home. Others experience a touch of delight at off-loading day-to-day parenting responsibilities. For all families, coping with an empty nest requires redefining “normal.”
Constantini, whose husband travels two weeks a month, now faced a double-dose of silence.
“For the first month, the house was very quiet,” she said. “My nest was so empty, I think it echoed.”
SENSE OF PURPOSE
Costantini quickly replaced empty-nest silence with a new sense of purpose. She began volunteering with the Injured Marine Semper Fi Fund, and then joined with two other Marine wives and a Soldiers’ Angels volunteer to establish a non-profit charity called Honor Their Service (Honortheirserviceinc.org).
The organization, which received IRS tax-exempt status this spring, supports wounded service members and their families at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland and Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. Injured service members are provided assistance and comfort, supported in their efforts to lead independent and productive lives, and receive ongoing assurance that their sacrifices are not forgotten.
PUT YOURSELF FIRST
Jody Johnston Pawel, an Ohio-based social worker and parenting expert, said seizing the opportunity to fulfill a dream is the perfect way to fill an empty nest.
“We need to be looking at what is the next phase of our lives, getting involved in something other than our kids,” she said. “It is a transition time for us also because we can get a chance to do some things that perhaps didn’t get done when we were putting family first.”