Chicken Soup for the Soul: Empty Nesters
Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Carol McAdoo Rehme,
Patricia Cena Evans
Reviewed by Richard Skaff
Coping with the empty nest syndrome:
Empty-nest
syndrome is the name given to a psychological condition that can affect
a man
or a woman around the time that one or more of their children leave
home.
This
phrase is used to encapsulate the feelings of sadness and loss that
many
parents experience when their children no longer live with them or need
day-to-day care.
”Empty Nesters, 101 stories about surviving and thriving when the kids
leave
home”is a delightful
book that
discusses, as the title suggests, various stories by thedifferent
authors on facing
and coping with the empty nest syndrome.
The stories are inspiring,
touching, and amusing. It will help guide the parents who are going
through
this process to rediscover themselves, theirs needs, and each other.
The empty nest does not have to be
an end of a story, but a new beginning for the parents as well as for
the
children, where everyone will face new challenges, achieve personal
growth, and
improve their personal and interpersonal lives.
Empty nest is about loss, but it
is also about rebirth and about re-experiencing life and the children
who left
us in a different light.
Finally, the stories in this book
will inspire the readers as well as educate them on managing and
reclaiming
their lives. It will provide them with psychological and emotional
support by
edifying the process of coping with separation, and by helping them
realize that
their current experience of loss is universal, because many others like
them have
already embarked on this same journey and survived it successfully.