Baby Boomer women are the first generation of women to retire from professional career roles. These women were uniquely born into a generation known for breaking down traditional societal barriers and searching for personal fulfillment. They pioneered their entrance into the male-dominated professional workplace and persevered to levels of unprecedented success. These are strong, bright women. So why wouldn’t retirement be an easy transition for them? Unfortunately, these trailblazing women are ill prepared for the psychological challenges of retirement, and there are no roadmaps and few female role models to guide them. Dr. Rita Smith interviewed over 200 Baby Boomer professional women, and found a common experience among them—being unprepared for “retirement shock.” Empty Nest, Empty Desk, What’s Next? shares these women’s stories, their challenges, and their successes. The book also includes a Boomer Retirement Re-Imagined Roadmap© which, along with interactive exercises, provide the missing guidance and support to help Baby Boomer professional women reinvent a retirement that works!

Your children are growing up and leaving home. You know this is a good thing, but at the same time, you're wondering who you are when you're not busy being your children's mother. You know this is a new season of life, but it's hard not to look back with longing and sometimes regret. How do you adjust to this new season of life? Elyse ...

Discover New Passion and Purpose after the Kids Leave Home Many women approaching their empty-nest years do so with mixed emotions--feeling grief for what is no more but also excitement for what lies ahead. Barbara Rainey and Susan Yates are seasoned empty nesters, and they know firsthand the ups and downs, the uncertainty and challenges that accompany this new stage of life. Although Mom is a lifelong role, the job description changes significantly when the kids are grown. Questions abound: Who am I now? How do I relate to my kids? How will my marriage be affected? Where am I needed? Every woman in this stage needs to determine her own redefined role as wife, mother, friend, and more. Offering practical advice and biblical guidance, along with inspiring personal stories of women who have discovered how to live a meaningful life during the "second half," Barbara and Susan help you work out how to flourish and thrive in your own empty nests.

How to Thrive After Your Kids Leave Home IT’S HAPPENING! You weren’t always sure you’d get here, but the kids grew up and are surviving—more or less successfully. But what now?! If you’re like most moms, you’re caught between grief and delight, and full of questions, loose ends, hopes, and regrets. Empty nesting can be a disorienting time, but it can also be the best time of your life. Jill Savage, an empty-nest veteran, offers you WISDOM for the murky waters ahead. Teaching you what you need to let go of and hold on to ENCOURAGEMENT for when you’re feeling confused and discouraged. Full of stories and new insights, you’ll find your spirits lifted and hope renewed. IDEAS for when you don’t know "What’s next?" Jill offers loads of practical ideas for coping and thriving in this encore season.

When the kids are gone, you can discover a richer, deeper, and more fulfilling life than you ever imagined! Whether you've been looking forward to it or dreading it, the experience of coming home to an empty nest brings with it a well of emotions, realizations, and one gigantic, all-consuming thought: Now what? In Finding Joy in the Empty Nest, Jim Burns combines his personal experiences with his expertise as a family educator to help you navigate your new life as an empty nester and find joy in this new season of life. Rather than offering shallow suggestions of hobbies you should take up, Burns encourages you to actively pursue a fresh start, reinvent yourself, and thrive. Backed by extensive research and filled with interviews with fellow empty nesters, this book equips you with practical advice and timeless principles, teaching you how to: Change the relationship you once had with your children for the better Face big issues--including aging parents, finances, and kids returning home--with confidence Rekindle your fire and purpose to live with passion day by day Amid Burns' wealth of know-how, you'll uncover what may be the most important takeaway of all: the best is yet to come. Praise for Finding Joy in the Empty Nest: "Jim Burns is smart, witty, grounded, and immeasurably practical. Whether you're getting close to the second half of marriage or are in the thick of it, you won't want to miss out on this fantastic book." --Drs. Les and Leslie Parrott, bestselling authors of Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts

Parents whose children are leaving home face many conflicting emotions, ranging from grief and loss to relief and even exhilaration. A time of new beginnings, time to enlarge old relationships, expand personal vistas and set new directions for life. This guide offers a step-by-step approach to help readers turn thei6r empty nest into growth and positive change.

Wondering what to do now that the kids have flown the coop? Look no further than Turning Points for Empty Nesters, wherein answers to the questions and challenges now facing you reside. Fuel-for-the-journey chapters address issues such as redefining and rediscovering yourself, deliberate downsizing, dealing with depression, balancing new responsibilities, becoming part of the sandwich generation, living with a renewed purpose, and so much more. Filled with sage advice and practical, biblically-based guidance, this unique volume will help you devise a new flight pattern as you navigate your way through the rest of your fabulous life.

Newly updated, The Empty Nest is an uplifting, practical and inspiring guide to adjusting to life after your children leave home. More than half a million parents confront the empty nest for the first time each year. It is one of the most challenging phases of parenting, often creating feelings of loss, lack of purpose and crisis of identity which can lead to depression. Yet it receives little recognition. And contrary to popular opinion it doesn't only affect women who've put their careers on hold: working mothers and fathers suffer too. Equally, it can be a period of liberation and discovery of new challenges, when marriages long overstressed by childcare can be rejuvenated. The Empty Nest includes case studies documenting a wide range of experiences of parents living through an empty nest; expert comment and advice; plenty of practical ideas, inspiration and tips. This encouraging, empowering books helps you to focus on the positive as well as how to handle the changing relationship with your children to ensure a fulfilling and good relationship going forward, an area of parenting often ignored.

After Empty Nest, What's Next? Parenting Adult Children without Losing Your Mind, readers asked author Michele Howe for more—covering topics not discussed in the first book, along with questions at the end of each chapter for personal or group discussions. With Preparing, Adjusting, and Loving the Empty Nest, Howe provides expanded practical tips and spiritual wisdom in a three-part primer to help parents in this transitional time of life—helping them look to the future with hope as empty nesters. Preparing, Adjusting, and Loving the Empty Nest covers new and more in-depth topics related to the empty-nest stage of life. The author invites you to sit down and "linger a while in all things empty nest related—then go a step further and reflect upon the life lessons other empty-nest parents have discovered." Sample chapters include: Helping Your High School Kids Ready Themselves to Face the WorldBudgeting Is a Family AffairGenerating a Strong Bond of Trust That Will Handle the SeparationHandling Those Lonely FeelingsNever, Ever Compare Your Journey to OthersWork at Making Coming Home Special for Your Grown Children

If you have young adult children, you are facing different challenges than you had when they were younger. In Empty Nest, What's Next?, Michele Howe helps parents find peace, freedom, and joy as they step into this new phase of life by offering true stories of other parents facing similar challenges, practical suggestions, encouragement, and a biblical model of parenting.