Gia's Italian Kitchen's Podcast
Remember how you used to have Sunday dinners with family? Let's talk about Italian food and everything around it. From interviews with experts to my cooking episodes to little recipes to travel tips...my podcast starts to bring us back to those Sunday dinner memories.
What's next? Imagine a unique cooking experience where you could be the hero! We will create memories for friends & family through private dinner parties (virtually or in person) & employer teambuilding events via Italian cooking experiences. You select a custom menu, I provide the instruction!
My full menu can be found on my website:
https://giasitaliankitchen.biz
A private cooking experience, virtually or in-person, is a fun and unique experience that you will all absolutely love!
- Family across the country? Create memories with the kids and grandchildren to laugh while you cook with me with a virtual class.
- Girlfriends in 6 different states? Craving a virtual cooking experience and happy hour, let’s get cooking!
- Friends or family want a private dinner party in-person?
- I can come to your or provide a local kitchen space.
Learn more about us…all of our socials here:
https://linktr.ee/giasitaliankitchen
Let's Get Cooking!
Gia's Italian Kitchen's Podcast
Episode 3.28 - New to Empty Nesting- Jumping for joy or Crying your eyes out?
What happens when your purpose drives away? Our role as a parent has instantly changed.....and I am not really sure how to deal with this!
Seems like people are in one camp or the other. When your last child leaves the nest, parents are either so happy to have the kids out of the house…..or they are crying every day. I am in the latter bucket! The change is so huge and monumental, it is kicking my butt!
The day my last child left for college broke me in ways I never expected. Tissued required! What camp are you in?
Comment here or on my socials...find your favorite, I am on all of them:
https://linktr.ee/giasitaliankitchen
My daughter gave me this little "Olive dude" before she left….how sweet is that! And now it sits in the Iowa State Cyclone Lego.
Visit our YouTube channel to see dozens of our cooking episodes.
Check out our website for delicious recipes, upcoming events, and more!
Hey, so new topic. Today. We have been watching all these people bring their kids to college. It's late August. It's the thing to do. It happens every year. There's millions of people that have done it.
Speaker 1:Yet I feel like I'm the only one crying, and I know that's also not the case. So I feel like there's some families that are waving their pom-poms and setting their travel plans and they're giving each other high-fives that they've delivered their kids to college. Oh, and it's the last kid. That's the minor, major, major detail. It's the empty nesting thing. It's not just bringing your kids to college that I'm talking about. And then you've got the other side of the coin, which I'm on, where, as soon as you start seeing the packages arrive at your house because they're packing up to leave to college, you start crying. And they haven't even left yet. Then you take them and you drop them off at a dorm and you cry. You cry all the way home and then you cry for days. So I'm choked up.
Speaker 1:Right now I've got the knot in the back of my throat and my stomach is nauseous, but I'm not going to cry while I'm doing this podcast. Um, but I don't know. I obviously time is going to make this better. But, like, how the frick do you deal with this? How, how do you redefine yourself as a mom? I'm still a wife, so I know that, that I don't want my husband to feel bad that that I'm so terribly sad and he's sad too. But I think it's different for a mom and our youngest is a daughter, it's different for a girl versus a boy. And my role oh see, I'm going to choke up, darn it my role for the past 21 years has been to take care of the children, and sometimes I worked actually a lot of the times I worked, but I did stay home for part of that when they were younger.
Speaker 1:Then you're a working mom and you're trying to juggle after school care and their performances or their sports, taking them to school lunches, the whole gamut, and you're trying to balance all that with a job. And then they get into high school and everything changes right. They need you less In most cases. I don't know I'm sure there's some that things change in the other direction, but in my case they needed me less, especially once they got their driver's license, and that was like oh my gosh, like that was the best day on the planet, where, when they could take themselves to school or take themselves to their sporting event practice, like if it was a competition we always wanted to go. But if it was just practice, like, oh my gosh, thank you that you have your own car and you have a driver's license now. But then it's like this downhill slope of heading into graduation of high school and wherever they're going next, a trade school, maybe they're going to a local college, maybe they're going to work, maybe they're living at home or moving out.
Speaker 1:In my case, she moved out. So my role is going to change. It has changed and I don't know what that's going to look like. I know they're still going to need me. I know they're going to come home. I know they're gonna come home.
Speaker 1:I know I'm gonna see them on holidays, but for crap's sake, that's not enough. They're not at home, they're not in their rooms. I don't see them every morning and every evening and somewhere in between there I don't get to say good night. I don't get hugs every day. Thank god there's FaceTime. Seriously, that has been so amazing. Every day, multiple times a day, since she left, we've been able to FaceTime.
Speaker 1:Gosh, I can't imagine. I don't remember Cause I was on the flip side of it. When I went away to college, I was like sayonara to my parents. So I'm on. I was on the flip side. So I this is just new right. So I'm more of a supporting role now. When they need advice or the, I have a sore throat and they have to call me. What do I do? Or hey, can I have some extra grocery money? It's what is it going to look like? Eventually, of course, well, not of course. But everyone's telling me that I will wake up one day and I will not cry every day, all day, and that another day I will wake up and I will be so ecstatic that we have our freedom now for my husband and I to go do whatever we want by ourselves, without the kids. I don't know, that doesn't sound all that great to me right now. This feels excruciating right now. So I'm so happy for all those parents that are posting joyous pictures of dropping their kids off at college, but I'm just not in that boat. I haven't even posted anything yet. This is the first time I'm really even doing anything. I'm trying to work during the day and get my job done, and then I'm a zombie. Yeah, this is interesting. So I guess, prayers for all the families out there that are in the same boat and prayers that we all find comfort in our new roles as a parent and that journey, whatever that journey looks like, and if you have any words of wisdom, for sure send me a note. My email is in the comments or in the notes.
Speaker 1:Kelly E-Y at G as Italian Kitchen dot biz. Yeah, I'll take any piece of advice that anyone has out there. Of course, keep busy. Right, I am keeping busy, I always keep busy, but I can still keep busy and cry at the same time, and then when the busy stops and you're standing in the middle of the kitchen, it's just time to cry again. I don't know. Okay, I still have a knot in the back of my throat. I still feel nauseous. It's going to get better day by day, and then I need to get back to cooking and sending recipes and all that good stuff. So I hope you're having a great day and we'll talk to you soon. Let's get cooking.