Modern Empty Nesting and the Revolving Door with Kari Cardinale
Show Snapshot:
Empty nesting isn't what it used to be—kids boomerang, transitions can stretch a decade (wait, what?!?) , and parents need new tools. Kari Cardinale, Chief Content Officer at Modern Elder Academy and empty nest expert, reframes this messy middle with her "revolving decade" approach. Why do launches take so long now? How do you build your "transitional quotient" (TQ) for these uncertain years? What's the trick for shifting from manager to consultant parent? Kari shares the three developmental stages of young adulthood (18-28) and reveals how to embrace this chrysalis moment—messy middle and all—while giving your kids room to grow. Time to reimagine this chapter, beauties.
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Learn more about the Modern Elder Academy (MEA)
Related Episodes:
Reinvent Your Empty Nest with Ideas from Author Melissa Shultz
Chip Conley of MEA on the Upside of Aging and Learning to Love Midlife
Quotable:
According to Pew Research, 52% of young adults between the ages of 18 and 29 are currently living with their parents. That's a big number. That doesn't mean all these parents have failed to launch their kids, right? That's economics, pure and simple.
Transcript:
Katie Fogarty 0:00
Welcome to A Certain Age, a show for women who are unafraid to age out loud. I'm your host, Katie Fogarty. Beauties, if you've been listening to the show for any length of time, you might have picked up on the fact that I have three kids. Recently, you might have heard me say that I am now an empty nester, and I say it with a little glee, a little sadness, but also with a question mark. Am I truly an empty nester? Yeah, all three of my kids are out of the house right now at this exact moment in time, but life has already taught me that it doesn't always stay that way. My 25-year-old daughter boomeranged home for about a year and a half after college. She was saving up money for a move to Brooklyn, and my 22-year-old son is now backpacking through Europe. I have a very strong hunch that when he returns, he'll be making a pit stop back in our family apartment to figure out what's what and next steps. Sure, my youngest just ordered an Ikea sofa to his freshman year dorm, so that kind of sounds like he's sorted and staying. But in four years, then what? When we hear the phrase empty nest, we think the kids are gone, the house is echoing and empty, and parents are learning to cope with absence. But empty nesting looks a lot different from when our parents were doing it. Data shows kids are taking longer to get out of the nest for a variety of reasons: expensive housing, the job market, and more. Kids boomerang. The nest expands and contracts and expands and contracts. Today, we have a fabulous guest who's going to help us reframe and better understand the modern empty nest. Kari Cardinale is Chief Content Officer and a partner at the Modern Elder Academy, the world's first midlife wisdom school. Kari is a trailblazer in the longevity and transformational learning space. She is here to help us take a fresh look at empty nesting, how we can thrive, and how we can support our kids as they adult. If you just said goodbye to somebody this summer, this September, and you're finally having some breathing room to take a moment, sort through your feelings, sort through what's next, or if you are looking ahead to the spring when you will be launching somebody, this conversation, this show, is for you. Welcome to A Certain Age podcast, Kari.
Kari Cardinale 2:33
It's my pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
Katie Fogarty 2:36
I am really thrilled. This topic is something that I'm so immersed in right now, and I am so grateful that when I reached out to you, when I noticed that MEA was launching this new sort of four-week immersive class in empty nesting, it caught my eye, because you're featuring some really big names like Gretchen Rubin, one of my former guests, The New York Times bestselling author Julie Lythcott-Haims, who wrote How to Raise an Adult. But the reason why I went ahead and sent off that email is when I got into your materials and I read it, and I heard you talking about the empty nest years, you were saying that this is a revolving decade. It can take up to 10 years, and that empty nesting can kind of run from our kids are 18 to 28, and I thought, I need to have Kari on the show. I want to ask her about that. Walk us through this reframe. What is the revolving decade?
Kari Cardinale 3:30
Well, just like you, Katie, I am an empty nester. I have four kids, so my oldest just turned 30. I have a daughter who's 27. I have boy-girl twins who are 22. And honestly, I've been kind of befuddled as I've been walking through this decade with them, thinking this is not how it was when I was their age. I was like, out of there. I was out of the house at 18, gone. Couldn't wait to leave, never looked back, as did all my friends. And so just like you, I've had kids boomerang in, boomerang out, stops and starts, not having this sort of hockey stick launch that I fantasized having as a parent or some of my friends had. Not happening for me. It was not a hockey stick. It was a big squiggly line of mess, and they're doing fine. But as I've been working at MEA, world's first midlife wisdom school, I've been teaching classes on transitions, and I realized, God, transitions in general do take a lot longer than we think. And this whole idea of empty nesting? A, is debunked. We could talk about that. The term is actually absolutely unhelpful. And when we were parents, as you know, our first kid, we probably all bought the book What to Expect When You're Expecting. I told my Bible, my Bible, right? Like I needed to know what is happening every year. And for the most part, as parents, we had that structure that we knew what to expect with toddlers and preschool and kindergarten, elementary and junior high and high school, and we all were going through a stage that had some similarities, and we could talk about our 14-year-olds very different than our five-year-olds. But now you launch these kids at 18, and they are not baked. Okay? They're not ready. Most of them. But we don't have a book. We don't have What to Expect with Your 18-Year-Old. Oh, what to expect with your 24-year-old. Oh, what to expect with your 27-year-old. So I developed this material to examine this decade that, worse, most of us are still fairly involved in our young adults' lives during this period of time, financially, emotionally. So I thought it was really an important topic to explore, and I hadn't seen much on it out there.
Katie Fogarty 6:02
Yeah, there's a sort of a big, wide space of lack of information around this, which is why I'm so excited for this conversation. And let's talk a little—I love the word that you used, the word debunk. Let's debunk, first of all, the myth of the empty nest as a starting point, and then talk a little bit about how MEA helps people move through this space. What do you think is the biggest outstanding myth around empty nesting?
Kari Cardinale 6:28
The term was coined in 1914.
Katie Fogarty 6:31
Okay, so very dated.
Kari Cardinale 6:33
Very dated. We're using the language like before women could vote, before there's antibiotics, before most of the modern world existed, certainly not describing a modern parent experience. And if you think of the term emptiness syndrome, which is this idea of a depressed mother who can't function because her child left home, sort of a pathologized or medicalized concept, which certainly has been debunked in the medical community, but it just kind of stuck. And so when someone says, I'm an empty nester, there's all this weird emotional perception of what that means. But most parents today have some feeling of freedom and relief along with sadness, like you described in the introduction. That's kind of more common. And in the modern day, there's a lot of dads who are like, hey, raising their hand. What about me? Like, I packed the sandwiches. I took them to school every day. I was their soccer coach. I'm having an experience here that my kids are leaving, and what's there for me? So it feels like it's time to update the realities of what we are experiencing in midlife as adults with our careers, our aging parents, and our young adult kids who are having a very different entry into the world than we did when we were their age.
Katie Fogarty 8:05
Yeah, I mean, you mentioned 1914. I think people need to also remember that the lifespan in 1914 was very, very different. We are living a lot longer and healthier now, and this idea that when our children leave, we're at the end, that it's a sort of end stage, we have decades ahead. And the idea that we don't have a lot of productive, generative, purpose-driven years ahead is just one of those assumptions that sort of baked into that old term. So yeah, I love that you're sort of reframing it for us. And I do think one of the gifts of this time is people are looking at midlife differently now. So we have come to understand that middle age can be some of your best years. You know, there was some research from Gallup that actually spoke to the ages 50 to 69 where you're happier at 50 than at 18. And I think that that's one of the things for me, the messaging that I feel is baked into A Certain Age.
Kari Cardinale 9:07
I love that. I love that. And you're right. I mean, so we were probably the first generation of women who went to college and got a career first before we got married and had kids, and then we were the first generation of parents who were going to be equal partners raising the kids with our husbands. We were going to do everything. I remember I co-captained a soccer team. I was like, I'm going to be the co-ed soccer captain, right? So we had all these plans, and now what is available to us is the idea that when we turn 40 or 50, we kind of cross into this modern elderhood period, and now there is a lot of research that shows that if you work and do activities that are meaningful and useful to other people, that really does impact health, happiness, and life. And that's kind of the idea of a modern elder, which is somebody who utilizes their learned experience, their wisdom, to help other people. And this is Chip's kind of primary work now after being in the hotel business for 25 years. He said that was his earned success. And now his role as working with modern elders is really about producing legacy and significance.
Katie Fogarty 10:31
Yeah, and Chip Conley is somebody who's been on the show, just a phenomenal human, and the whole concept of him being a modern elder, him identifying as such. I think so many people really resonated with the idea that it's okay to both be young and old at the same time. I loved that concept when I spoke with him. But I do think that if you are in this moment now, and you're listening, and you said goodbye to your child, and you thought hockey stick launch was going to happen, and then they bounced back, that can be a little disorienting and frustrating. And so talk to us a little bit about your experiences with your kids and what you're learning by working with people at MEA, with people in your class. What do you understand to be some of the reasons why our kids are taking a little bit longer to get to adulthood, to go off, and to never come back?
Kari Cardinale 11:30
Yeah, I mean, I think we've read about some of this. You know, number one, the cost of living, the cost of housing is radically changed. They are struggling more than we did. The employment options have also changed a lot. This idea that you get a job and you stay there for 50 years, that is completely out the window. The idea of what jobs are and career paths are. I was just talking to somebody yesterday who was thinking of hiring my son who's 22, and she said, oh, I want somebody to be there for two years, and I'm like, no, my son's not going to be there for two years. Like, he's kind of thinking six months, and that's kind of a common thing now. So all of this is very different than what we anticipated. And they're also—this is a little bit controversial, but I also think that we were a generation of people who tried to manage to not let our kids fail. We probably did a little too much hands-on help. We tried to protect them from all sorts of challenges, and now that's kind of coming home to roost, and they don't always have the skills that we had. So they're sort of learning some of this later. And so, you know, I have a lot of compassion for myself in that I totally contributed to that in that way.
Katie Fogarty 13:07
I think we need to be a little gentle on ourselves because all of these decisions that were made, they came from a place of incredible love and caring. And one of the books I read from one of the guests on your show, actually Julie Lythcott-Haims, her book How to Raise an Adult, really, really opened my mind up quite a bit. And I read that during the pandemic when I was home with my college kids. I had two of them and a high school kid at home, and I thought, okay, really, I need to helicopter less here, and I need to think about how can I help them be equipped for the world, which is exactly what you're saying. So one of the big concepts that you bring into your class, in your thinking, in your writing, is this idea of transitional intelligence. And in fact, you frame these 18 to 28, these 10 years, as a decade of transitions. And so walk us through that. How should we be thinking about the transitions that we're experiencing as well as the transitions that they're experiencing?
Kari Cardinale 14:11
Yeah, I mean, this is really the heart of the work that I do at MEA is helping people understand how to have more grace and fluidity as they're going through transitions. And there is research on what it takes to build transition skills. I want to normalize this and say that transitions can take between six months and two years if you're not really paying attention, and they can still take six months to a year even if you are paying attention and being very committed. Part of the challenge of a transition is that it is a little bit of a liminal space. You're in between two places. And how I describe it is, you know, let's say you've got a job and you like your job, and you got promoted, and it's been great, and there's a new opportunity. You're going to go and work for a new company and have a bigger title and a new opportunity. So you make that decision, and then you're kind of all excited, and you have this energy, and you go and you close that door behind you. And then you're in this hallway that you're kind of waiting for that new opportunity to start, and you have all these feelings going on. And before that door opens, and you go into that new room with the new career, that room is empty, and you don't exactly know what's going to be in there until that door opens. And so there's this kind of emotional and psychological challenge with it. And I've deconstructed the seven steps of what you need to be aware of during the transition period and what skills help you get through it faster. So that's a lot of the work that I've been doing.
Katie Fogarty 16:06
So walk me through the seven steps. Let's break it down for people.
Kari Cardinale 16:10
Okay, so it starts with kind of separating from something that was, whatever that is. You're closing a door on your past. And then it moves into, okay, well, what are you feeling about that? Naming some of those emotions, sitting in them a little bit, moving through them. And step three is really figuring out what about your identity needs to shift. I was a stay-at-home mom, or I was a working mom, or I was the soccer coach, but my kid doesn't play soccer anymore. So what about my identity is shifting here? And I need to embrace a new one. And what is that one? Step four becomes a little bit more of a problem-solving thing. Like, we got to get a little practical and like, do something, right? So this is like, how do I want to spend my new time? How do I want to invest my new energy? And then kind of starting to play with that, like trying a hobby, trying a new thing. Step five is really starting to have the commitment to like, go with it, like, try it out, see if it resonates, and then six is really leaning into it and like moving through and getting to the other side. So it's kind of a linear model, but you can also ping around in all seven.
Katie Fogarty 17:48
And what about step seven?
Kari Cardinale 17:50
Oh, step seven. Sorry. Step seven is kind of the idea that we never stop having transitions. And so you might, you know, come through this transition and then all of a sudden, there's another one, right? So, like, this is kind of a continual process. So the more you get comfortable with it, the more that you're, you're better prepared to handle it again. So there will be a transition again, right? We're not done. Welcome to life, right?
Katie Fogarty 18:21
Yeah, I mean, that last point, seven, is such a strong point because we're sort of conditioned to think when you navigate something difficult, well, now it's over. I'm done with that difficult thing. Okay, and that next tricky thing doesn't happen for a long time. I think that there is a relentlessness to change, to disruption in midlife, and that sometimes it feels unrelenting. So the idea that we can become better equipped and skilled at it, that we can normalize it as an experience, and we can give ourselves grace and space to move through those transitions, that's empowering, and I think that that's a really valuable skill. And so as you're developing these skills in yourself, can you think of any way that your children have benefited from you exploring these ideas and working on your own transitional intelligence?
Kari Cardinale 19:17
Oh, I love this question. Yes. Yes, they have. So I have been much more in this idea of letting them try and fail. I'm not so worried about are they going to be okay. I'm much more willing to let them have an experience. And just because it's not going the way that I would do it doesn't necessarily mean that they can't learn something. So I actually feel like I have quite a lot of detachment, which gives me freedom, which gives them freedom. And so I'm not calling them all the time being like, what are you doing? Where are you? What's going on? I'm like, hey, how are you? Are you good? Okay, great. Let me know if you need something. And that has given me a lot of peace and them a lot of space.
Katie Fogarty 20:13
Yeah, I mean, the space piece of it, the ability to give them space is so empowering for them, and I think that that's one of the hard things sometimes that parents struggle with, is stepping back. We want to be supportive. We want to be helpful. But you're exactly right. Sometimes it can feel intrusive and sometimes space is the best gift. So when you think about sort of what you're encouraging people in your class at MEA to think about, are there certain skills, activities, practices that you think can help boost transitional intelligence? Like, how do you get better at this?
Kari Cardinale 20:57
Yeah, so, you know, the whole piece that I teach is trying to reduce these kind of feelings around grief and loss that kind of emerge. And really, there are a lot of identity losses that happen here. We might lose identity as a parent, you might lose friends because you're not sitting around at little league anymore, talking to the other moms. Your marriage might change a little bit because you've got to reexamine what that means now. And so there are a lot of ways that your life does change through this process. And so some of the tools that I really teach is first spending some time just letting yourself feel whatever it is that you're feeling and not judging it. Everybody's like, oh, I'm not supposed to be sad that my kids left. Oh, I shouldn't be happy. There's a lot of shoulds that kind of come with this, and it's like, no, no, just feel it, normalize it, spend a little time there. You can also spend some time remembering the positive memories of those moments, which is really helpful because it consolidates memory and your relationship with your child. So I encourage a lot of photo albums, videos, like reliving some of those happy moments while you're in this harder emotional time. Then we do some reframing, and we really look at, you know, like, okay, well, is there an opportunity here? It's not all bad. What opportunity do I have now that I don't have kids in the house anymore? And then we really work on, you know, like, who am I now? If I'm not the parent who's doing all those things, who am I? What do I want to be? And doing a lot of self-reflection and introspection on that identity question.
Katie Fogarty 22:55
What comes up for you in terms of the identity question? If you think back to just before your children started leaving the nest, who were you identifying as, and have you come up with sort of an identity that is serving you now?
Kari Cardinale 23:14
Well, okay, so I have to say that I feel like my answer might be a little controversial here, and not everybody has this. I love my kids. I adore being a mom. But I always really enjoyed my career. Like, I never wanted to just be a stay-at-home mom. That didn't really resonate with me. And so when my kids started leaving, I really didn't feel all that sad about it. And I know, for some people, that might seem really surprising and not right. But I felt like, oh, wait, now there's more time for me, right? So, you know, I've got kids I'm paying for through college. I've got a full-time job. I can't quit my work anyway. They need me in that way. And so I've just really leaned into this idea that, like, where do I want to spend my time? And I've actually gotten to that kind of step six, seven of the transition, which is like, cool, I have all this energy and attention and time that I can invest in something. Now what do I want that to be? And right now, it is my work. I am very committed to the idea of being a modern elder and helping other people explore this phase of their life.
Katie Fogarty 24:38
And I don't think it's controversial at all. I think that the thing that would have been controversial is if you said that a decade ago. I actually think that now it's much easier to hear women say, you know, I got into this phase and I've got both sadness and excitement, and honestly, I think that the messaging is getting through that women can have both of those things. And they're not bad mothers because they want to have more space for self or career or purpose. You know, we devoted 18 years or more to raising other people, and to want to turn that corner and turn that page and say, okay, now it's my turn. I think we're going to hear that a lot more, and I think that's an incredibly healthy thing, and the normalization of this is so important because women are living longer lives, and they're staying healthier longer, and they're more economically empowered than they ever have been. And actually, there's a real impetus, especially with the gender, the long lifespan that we have compared to our male counterparts for us to be earning money, for us to be pursuing purpose. One of my favorite books from the last couple of years was Lois Frankel's book Nice Girls Still Don't Get the Corner Office, and she has a chapter in it about retirement. She basically says retirement is a dirty word for women, and she basically says you're going to outlive your male counterparts by, you know, six, seven years. Don't retire. You're going to need the money. You're going to need the engagement. So I think all of us are kind of being given permission here to sort of lean into our own.
Kari Cardinale 26:23
Yeah, I love that. And that's a really, really excellent point. And I also think the flipside is, and I said this at the beginning, we're probably the first generation who had equal co-parenting partners, which means there are men now who raised their kids equally, and they're also experiencing a real empty nest that we don't talk a lot about. And so I think it's really interesting that the idea of somebody said to me, is this a class only for moms? And I said, actually, we have a fair number of dads who are also feeling that their identity has really changed as a result of not having their kids around every day.
Katie Fogarty 27:08
It's really nice to hear that there's room being created for them, because actually, you're talking to somebody who would like to hear that my husband needs that space in this process too. And one of the things that we've been navigating in this last year or so together is the whole question of, okay, what is our marriage now? And our kids aren't around as much, and we have new patterns that we're developing together. And I think that that's one of the things that I sort of was a little bit naive about. You know, you devote so much time and energy to making sure that kids are where they're supposed to be and they're doing what they're supposed to be doing. And when they're not there, you're sort of sitting at the dinner table looking at each other going, okay, well, what now? What do we want to talk about? And how do we want to fill this time? And that can be exciting, but it can also be a little bit, you know, it's a work in progress. I have to say, I don't have all the answers here. So that's an area that I think is something that I continue to kind of think about and work on.
Kari Cardinale 28:13
Oh, yeah, I think that's super common. And I think it's one of the aspects that we need to talk about more. I have friends who, you know, they got divorced once the kids left because, like, they were just kind of white-knuckling it until that transition was over because it would have been, you know, too complicated or whatever to divorce while you're actively parenting. And then once the kids were gone, they were like, eh, it's not working. But I think most couples have a moment of reflection, like, you know, our kids are out of the house. Like, who are we? Do we have hobbies in common? Do we have interests in common? What do we want to talk about? And I think that's a really healthy time to like, look at what is our relationship now. And you also have to remember, our kids are still in this revolving decade, which means that they're going to call you and need you and have questions for you. There's going to be some challenging things that you're going to encounter, and you and your husband may not always agree on how to approach it. And so the communication that you guys have at this stage is actually still pretty important because you are going to be united as parents throughout this period. So it's not a moment to like, kick up your heels and forget about the kids. They're still very much a part of your life, and you want to make sure that you guys have the communication skills to be able to navigate how you're going to handle the next issue when it comes up.
Katie Fogarty 29:44
That's a really good point. The transitional intelligence piece of it, it's not just you going through a transition, it's your child, and therefore, because your child is going through a transition, you are going through the transition of responding to how they're transitioning. We are kind of dealing with double transitions. Can you give me an example of maybe something that you've experienced in the last decade where you can sort of see that interplay between your transition and your child's transition and how you had to navigate and adjust?
Kari Cardinale 30:23
Yeah, so here's an interesting example. So my daughter was in an apprenticeship program with a really prominent artist. She was working directly with him, working at art shows, getting the art history lesson, everything. And her dad and I were like, oh my God, she's apprenticing with this person. This is amazing. She's so lucky. And she was miserable. She was absolutely miserable because she felt like all of her creative expression was being squelched because it was all about his expression of his vision and what he wanted and what he needed from her. So we wanted her to stay in this prestigious situation, like, hang in there, tough it out, kid. But for her, that was a loss of her identity. So her and I really had to work through like, you know, this is your life, this is your creative expression, this is your vision. And you know, maybe you give this another month and see. And then after that month, she came back and she said, no, this is not for me. And so it was a moment that we had to like, get together and like, navigate as a family. And ultimately, it was her decision, but we were certainly involved in like, hearing where she was at and like, encouraging her to think about other opportunities.
Katie Fogarty 31:57
Yeah, well, I think that's a perfect example of how our ego and our hopes and sort of our vision for our children, because it's hard not to project and not to have a vision, sometimes can get in the way of listening to them and really letting them find their way. And so I think that the fact that you had the wherewithal to say, okay, this is my issue, this is yours, how can I support you with yours? That's a nice example of healthy transitional intelligence, so thank you for sharing that. So one of the other things that you talk about when we were preparing for this conversation is this idea that we move, that when we are more prepared with transitional intelligence, we move from rumination to reflection. Talk to me about that.
Kari Cardinale 32:49
Yeah, I love this. So I'm ruminating, God, my kid's miserable. They're never going to get a job. What are they going to do? Are they going to live in my basement forever? And I'm just kind of in this anxious, frenetic energy, and really, all I need to do is to get a little bit more clear on what my role is and maybe ask myself some questions. So like, what do I actually need to do right now? How can I support my kid? What don't I need to do right now? Like, maybe I need to not call them five times a day or check their bank account. But like, part of it is like, getting clear on, like, your role and what you're responsible for versus what they're responsible for. So that's the reflection part. It's like, what is my part? What is their part? And let's try not to ruminate on like, oh, they're never going to be okay, because they probably are going to be okay.
Katie Fogarty 33:46
Well, talk to me a little bit about what MEA offers in terms of transition support, because I know that you have materials, and there's a lot of information where a reader, a listener, a student can interact with the different kinds of materials that help them figure out how to better manage transitions on their own.
Kari Cardinale 34:08
We do. We have lots of things. I actually have an ebook that I can give you to give to folks who might want to download that from this episode. But an MEA as an organization has a lot of free wisdom that we have on our website, which are talks with folks that you might recognize their names who have topics that you're interested in. Karen Walrond, for example, Bruce Feiler, Chip Conley, are on there. You can just browse the library for free. And then we have a digital campus where we have these really interactive courses, like we're running a four-week empty nesting camp right now, where parents get to come in and chat with each other and explore this topic, reflect on it in more detail. We have all sorts of online courses. And then we have two campuses. We have a campus down in Baja, Mexico. It's just beautiful. It's on the beach, gorgeous, comfy, all-inclusive week where you get to go and you're fed and you're in a small group, and you get to really put your life away and have these deeper thoughts, more spacious thoughts. We have a campus on a 2,600-acre ranch in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which also offers a beautiful, high vibe, big sky space to reflect, interact with horses and hiking. And they're designed specifically to be smaller groups so that you have an opportunity to get to know other people and connect. And we have an alumni department, which is very unique. I don't know of any other retreat spaces out there that have an entire department dedicated to the graduates, the alumni, hence being a modern wisdom school. So our 6,000 to 7,000 alumni are put automatically into a local chapter where they live. You can choose up to three, so you can go to local events with other alumni. We do reunions. We have special alumni weeks. We have affinity groups. So it's really been wonderful to see that there is sort of a place that you can go where you can build a community, you can explore topics of interest. We have hundreds of workshops on the calendar for next year. So yeah, I feel very fortunate to be part of such an important mission.
Katie Fogarty 36:24
And it's such a rich, robust offering. And when I'd interviewed Chip, it was right around the time that Time Magazine had designated one of your campuses like the 100 most beautiful places to see in the globe. And I thought that was such a marvelous accolade. And to hear you describe the campuses so vividly, it's definitely—I'm putting it on my list. So Kari, my last question for you before I say goodbye and let you wander again the grounds of the beautiful campuses where you work: we said at the top of the show, this is not your mother's empty nest, this is not your father's empty nest. When you look at your own children and what they're seeing you do every day, and how you iterate and evolve and grow, and how you're embracing this time of life, what message do you think you're leaving them about their own future? What do you think they're taking from your experience that they might apply to their own situation, which will be so different for themselves in 10, 20 years when they experience it on their own?
Kari Cardinale 37:26
Yeah, such a great question. I really do believe that we are examples for our kids at each one of these stages. They are watching what we do, not what we say, always. And so to be willing to kind of be brave and explore new worlds and build hobbies and have new interests is a direct example to show them what they can do as well. So that they are watching me be open and exploratory gives them permission to do the same when they get there. My mother didn't do that, you know. She really didn't expand her horizons all that much. So I feel very committed to demonstrating that this, you know, this next stage of 50s, 60s, 70s can be a really vibrant time that they can look forward to and not buy into kind of the ageist tropes that it's just all downhill, that there's no reason for that, and certainly not once they get to this stage.
Katie Fogarty 38:24
I love that you're sending an optimistic message. And I always think too that when we give our children the chance to see us shine and reinvent and be happy and pursue purpose and joy and learning and curiosity, we free them up from the burden of having to worry about us and to be concerned that their absence and they're creating their own lives in some way is causing us pain. So I think that we really want to be an example for our children, but we want to give them the freedom to go off and live their own lives and not worry that we're crying into pints of ice cream at home. We'll just do that privately. We'll do that privately. Kari, I so enjoyed this conversation. I knew it was going to be just such a treat to spend time with you to really explore why empty nesting, which we're still calling empty nesting because no one's come up with the better phrase. I know there's the open door, the free bird. All of them, we need a wordsmith to come up with a better word for this type of life. But it's a time of opportunity, a possibility. It can be a time of challenge. It can be slower sometimes than we think it's going to be, but you've given us ways of thinking about and interacting with this, and I appreciate your time with me today. Thank you so much for being with me.
Kari Cardinale 39:44
My pleasure, Katie. Thank you so much.
Katie Fogarty 39:48
This wraps A Certain Age, a show for women who are aging without apology. This show was another fantastic conversation. Kari really expanded how I see the empty nest years. It's not a one and done. Sometimes it can take time, years, even up to a decade for these transitions to be made complete. I also really enjoyed her thinking on how we can improve and boost our own transitional intelligence, how we can help hone it in our children, make them better equipped to deal with life's inevitable changes and transitions, and how we can use that thinking in our own lives, because midlife equals change. They are coming in our careers, our friendships, our relationships, and we can approach them with a spirit of enthusiasm and growth, seeing these inevitable transitions as an incredibly rich period of opportunity and possibility. Love hearing her thinking on this. Thanks for sticking around to the end of the show. If you took something away from it, if you have a new approach to how you think about empty nesting, I would love to hear in an Apple podcast or Spotify review. Reviews always make my day. Reviews help other listeners find the show. Special thanks to Michael Mancini, who composed and produced our theme music. See you next time, and until then, age boldly, beauties.