by Lisa Haller-White

Created on: November 14, 2009   Last Updated: November 16, 2009

From Nesting to Nurturing

Empty nest syndrome is something almost every mother in the world will experience in some varying degree throughout their life as a mother. This syndrome does not discriminate between those mothers that have only girls, or only boys, or those of us who are blessed to have had both.

It is heart achingly gut wrenching for some, and a simple shed of tears for others. One thing it definitely is though is real.

The question is not how to prevent it, rather how to deal with it.

Many people have found different ways to work their way through this difficult period, but always there will be mothers asking for an answer to help cope with the emptiness they are now feeling.

One answer is gardening.

Now at first one may think such a suggestion is mad. After all, how can something as simple as gardening, something that is viewed by many as no more than 'work', cope with a situation such as this?

When I saw it working before my very eyes, I was more han amazed. I was given hope.

The woman I witness watched three of her children marry and leave home in three consecutive years. She wanted to fall apart, but her pride would not allow her to.

Her interest in gardening had always been mild, mainly reserved to her love of pretty flowers, but rarely did it develop beyond this point. Struggling to cope with the present situation put before her, she started to construct gardens on her almost two-acre block. At first she wanted to just keep busy, but then she found the more she did the more tired she was at the end of the day. This tiredness allowed her mind to finally rest away from her suddenly empty house. When her first plant flowered though, she found something she needed far more.

Somehow watching these plants grow and multiply and then flower gave her a sense of watching yet another creation grow and blossom before her eyes just like her children had.

In a sense her garden became her children. It helped with the loneliness, and even the emptiness. Mostly it gave her a new interest that quickly grew and has continued into her old age.

This is not some medically proven remedy by any means, but for those mothers out there who struggle each day to let their children grow up and leave home it is a way out of the darkness and loneliness.

In the end, isn't that what all we mothers need?

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