Words of Wellness with Shelly

Embracing the Empty Nest: An Update on Shelly's Journey through Change and Emotional Growth

Shelly Jefferis Season 1 Episode 46

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What happens when your home suddenly feels a lot emptier? This week on Words of Wellness, Shelly shares her personal journey through the emotional rollercoaster of becoming an empty nester. After saying their goodbyes and dropping their youngest off at college, Shelly and her husband have been adjusting to this new chapter in their lives, filled with a mix of sadness and pride. Tune in as she recounts the past week, reflecting on the initial difficulty of letting go, and the bittersweet joy of watching our children grow and thrive in their own paths.

Navigating through these changes hasn't been easy, but there is solace to be found in embracing every emotion and moment. Shelly opens up about her unexpected realization that the earlier goodbyes when her son was away at summer ball, was actually harder, perhaps a preparation for things to come. It seems life has a way of preparing us for these significant transitions. We  invite fellow empty nesters to join the conversation, share their stories, and support one another through this transformative phase. Together, we can find comfort and encouragement, and ultimately, celebrate the beautiful journey of parenthood.

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Thank you for listening to the Words of Wellness podcast with Shelly Jefferis. I am honored and so grateful to have you here and it would mean the world to me if you could take a minute to follow, leave a 5-star review and share the podcast with anyone you love and anyone you feel could benefit from the message.

Thank you and God Bless!
And remember to do something for yourself, for your wellness on this day!

In Health,
Shelly Jefferis

Speaker 1:

exercises you should be doing, what foods you should or should not be eating. How to improve your overall emotional and mental well-being. Hello everyone, I am so excited to welcome you to Words of Wellness. My name is Shelly Jeffries and I will be your host. My goal is to answer these questions and so much more to share tips, education and inspiration around all of the components of wellness through solo and guest episodes. With 35 plus years as a health and wellness professional, a retired college professor, a speaker and a multi-passionate entrepreneur, I certainly have lots to share. However, my biggest goal and inspiration in doing this podcast is to share the wellness stories of others with you, to bring in guests who can share their journeys so that we can all learn together while making an impact on the health, the wellness and lives of all of you, our listeners. The ultimate hope is that you leave today with even just one nugget that can enhance the quality of your life, and that you will. We all will, now and into the future, live our best quality of lives, full of energy, happiness and joy. Now let's dive into our message for today. Hello everyone, and welcome back to Words of wellness.

Speaker 1:

I wanted to jump in today and do a little bit of a follow-up episode, I guess, if you will, a follow-up to the episode I did recently on becoming an empty nester, and I thought I would just jump in and give a little update. And I want to preface this by saying any of you moms or dads who have gone through this, who might be going through this, if you would want to share your experience with our listeners, I want to encourage you to reach out to me. I'm very open to having, and so I really believe that when we share our stories, it can encourage others and be a source of comfort and encouragement and encouragement, especially around a topic like this of becoming an empty nester. And you know, I think I said before, it's going to be different, a different experience for all of us, and I have spoken with a few of you. You've shared your experiences with me and it just is such an inspiration to me to hear other stories and the journeys of all of you. It also uplifts me and inspires me of an update.

Speaker 1:

It has been now a full week since my husband and I returned home from dropping our youngest off to college and each experience has been challenging. It is sad, no way around it, but what my encouragement has been and was in my previous episode is to always kind of embrace the moments, embrace the emotions and experience them and go through them and just know that it does get easier to some degree. The goodbyes don't get easier, but our life experiences, I think, make up for it, because there's so much goodness on the other side when we see our children thriving and growing and doing things that they love. It just of course makes our mama hearts and our dad hearts happy, right. So I just thought I would share and give a little bit of a brief overview of kind of what the experience has been for us these last few days, and I am really actually pleased to say that it has been easier than I thought, been easier than I thought, and I think part of that is the fact that our youngest, brayden, went away to college college ball over the summer, which happened with both of our other kids. They went away over the summer as well and those were difficult moments.

Speaker 1:

But I think what happened and in talking with my husband we both kind of felt like initially, when we took our son up to summer ball, it was the first time that he was going to be away from home for an extended period of time and that experience so far was actually harder. And it's really ironic because when we first came home from dropping our son off up north, I had a really hard time. I cried every night for just about a week, just about a week, and I realized that, you know, that might've been kind of the preparation for for what was to come, because during that time I remember thinking to myself oh my gosh, this is really hard. What is it going to be like when he's like thousands of miles away? Going to be like when he's like thousands of miles away? And I could get emotional now thinking about it. But in all honesty, thus far that was harder and I'm almost feeling like it might have been just a way of God preparing us for now. And what I will say is so far I mean it's only been a week, but the week has gone well. My husband and I have gotten a lot of things done around the house. We've had a couple of date nights and you know, and just kind of talking about it and talking about our kids and just talking about the experiences, and then, of course, as we always do, is talking to our kids FaceTiming. All of that definitely helps, and you know, I think all of you who are going through this or even if you're not an empty nester but you have your children away at school or maybe they're far away, they move to a different area, or you've moved to a different area, I have to say you know, having FaceTime definitely helps. That's something that you know we did not have decades ago, but that's one positive to the technology right Is being able to connect and see your loved ones through FaceTime is actually a bonus for sure, and so I just wanted to hop on here and just give all of you encouragement.

Speaker 1:

And I do want to share something that happened yesterday at church, and you know I respect whatever your belief might be. I do make a point to attend church on a weekly basis and have a strong faith, and I just want to share something that happened yesterday because I really truly believe there are no accidents or coincidences in certain experiences that we have, and I'm just going to finish with this story. The first Sunday of every month at our church, they now offer prayer stations. So after the service, there are a couple of stations up front where someone can go up to them and share with them something you'd like to pray about and they'll pray for you. And so yesterday I went up to she's just a beautiful member from our church and I shared with her about taking our youngest to college and I said I just want a prayer, for I feel emotional now. His health, his success, health, his success, um. And she was so kind and she started to get emotional herself because she's been through it herself with three children and it was so special because it was so heartfelt and the emotions came up for both of us and I have to be honest with everyone, I haven't shed a lot of tears since we've been home. I thought there would be a lot of tears shed, but there really hasn't. But yesterday was so touching and it just meant so much.

Speaker 1:

And the other part of it was that she finished with a Bible verse and the crazy thing is that this Bible verse is actually one of my very, very favorites about trusting in the Lord and not leaning on your own understanding. And I almost couldn't talk. I was feeling so emotional because one she shared that verse after she prayed. It's my favorite verse. It's a verse that was my daughter's confirmation verse and it's one that I come across regularly, and it's also a verse that my mom wrote to me in a Bible that she shared with me many, many, many, many years ago. That was a gift from her when I was a younger girl, so that just was so special and I just felt like I wanted to share the experience with all of you, the experience with all of you, and and just I hope and I pray that all is going well for any of you who might be going through the same experiences and, like I said before, I'm here for you If you want to reach out, if you need some encouraging words, if you just want to talk.

Speaker 1:

I am always here for any of you moms out there who want to connect, or for those of you who I already know or friends of mine listening to this episode. If you want to reach out, you know where to find me and for anyone and everyone else. Please know that I'm always open to talk and chat and just be a a listening ear. If you need, feel free to message me and again, just to to reiterate, if any of you feel like you would like to jump on and perhaps share your experiences with my listeners, I'm happy to have you on and I just wanted to give a little bit of a quick update, and so I hope you find this encouraging and somewhat of a comfort, and I'm just wishing you all a beautiful, blessed week as we head into a new month.

Speaker 1:

When you listen to this, I think it will be the first week of September and it's kind of a. You know, it's an exciting time of year, I think, also because I feel like the fall kind of brings some newness to it, a fresh start to the year, the school year, and I'm looking forward to some good times ahead. And I will also finish by saying I did plan a trip very soon to go visit my Brayden, so that certainly helps. So that's something that I have to look forward to. So that's something that I can share with you all is when you have those weekends or dates planned that you know you're going to have a visit with your son or daughter. It really makes so much difference and it gives you that something to look forward to and to be excited about and know that you're going to get to be together. So I hope again that you find value in this and, as always, do something for you and your own personal wellness and until next time.

Speaker 1:

Have a beautiful, blessed week and I will see you next time on Words of Wellness, so that more can hear this message. I love and appreciate you all. Thank you for listening and if you have any questions or topics you would like me to share in future episodes, please don't hesitate to reach out to me through my contact information that is shared in the show notes below. Again, thank you for tuning in to Words of Wellness. My name is Shelly Jeffries and I encourage you to do something for you, for your wellness, on this day. Until next time, I hope you all have a healthy, happy and blessed week. Thank you.