Facing the empty nest can feel overwhelming, even for those of us who thought we were prepared. I know I cried some tears the first time I came home to an empty and quiet house. Transitioning from full-time Mom to Empty Nester can be unsettling as well. It can feel like we’re going from being a mom to…well, nothing? Fortunately, we can lean on the wisdom of those who came before us. These 55 empty nest quotes will remind you of the importance of being a mom, reassure you that you’re still needed in your kids life, and inspire you as you begin this next phase of life.
Motherhood is the Greatest Thing – and the Hardest Thing
Motherhood is the greatest thing and the hardest thing
Rikki Lake
We Understand Our Kids are Miracles
You are a Miracle. And I have to love you this fiercely: So that you can feel it even after you leave for school, or even while you are asleep, or even after your childhood becomes a memory. You’ll forget all this when you grow up. But it’s okay. Being a mother means having your heart broken. And it means loving and losing and falling apart and coming back together.
Katherine Center
We Love Our Kids from the Very Beginning
I loved you from the very start. You stole my breath, embraced my heart.
Anonymous
Mothers are Special
It takes someone really brave to be a mother, someone strong to raise a child, someone special to love someone more than herself.
Ritu Ghatourey
We Have the Biggest Job
Having kids – the responsibility of rearing good, kind, ethical, responsible human beings – is the biggest job anyone can embark on. As with any risk, you have to take a leap of faith and ask lots of wonderful people for their help and guidance. I thank God every day for giving me the opportunity to parent.
Maria Shriver
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Because We Shape the Lives of Our Children
All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.
Abraham Lincoln
All Mothers Have Doubts
Behind every great kid is a mom who’s pretty sure she’s screwing it up.
Anonymous
We Teach Our Children How to Live
The art of mothering is to teach the art of living.
Elaine Hefner
And How to Be Independent
It is not what you do for your children, but what you have taught them to do for themselves that will make them successful human beings.
Ann Landers
And Sometimes They Hate Us For It
If You’ve Never Been Hated By Your Child, You’ve Never Been a Parent
Bette Davis
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Mothers Sometimes Struggle
To all mothers in every circumstance, including those who struggle, I say, ‘Be peaceful. Believe in God and yourself. You are doing better than you think you are.
Jeffrey R. Holland
But We Are Stronger Than We Know
Being a mother is learning about strengths you didn’t know you had, and dealing with fears you didn’t know existed.
Linda Wooten
We Can Be Silly
SING OUT LOUD IN THE CAR, even, or especially, if, it embarrasses your children.
Marilyn Penland
We Know What’s Going On
A mother knows what her child’s gone through, even if she didn’t see it herself.
Pramoedya Ananta Toer
You Can’t Fool Your Mother
You can fool everybody some of the time and you can fool somebody all of the time, but you can’t fool your mother.
Anonymous
Because Your Mother Knows Everything
And despite everything I know now, I still believe, as I did when I was little, that there is an entire universe of things that my mother knows that I don’t. I still believe that nothing truly bad can ever happen if my mother is around. I know it’s not true. But still. It is true.
Katherine Center
She’s Always Got a Few Tricks Up Her Sleeve
The best way to keep children at home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant, and let the air out of the tires.
Dorothy Parker
Mothers Give the Best Advice
I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want, and then advise them to do it.
Harry Truman
We Know How to Tell the Hard Truths
Clarity and focus doesn’t always come from God or inspirational quotes. Usually, it takes your mother to slap the reality back into you.
Hannon Alder
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How to Find Yourself Again [Free Workbook]
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Mothers and Daughters Have a Special Bond
As mothers and daughters, we are connected with one another. My mother is the bones of my spine, keeping me straight and true. She is my blood, making sure it runs rich and strong. She is the beating of my heart. I cannot now imagine a life without her.
Kristin Hannah, Summer Island
We Need Each Other
In my daughter’s eyes I am a hero
I am strong and wise and I know no fear
but the truth is plain to see
she was sent to rescue me
Martina McBride
We Teach Our Daughters to Be Strong
Here’s to Strong Women. May We Know Them. May We Be Them. My We Raise Them.
Anonymous
To Be The Person They Are Meant to Be
When I stopped seeing my mother with the eyes of a child, I saw the woman who helped me give birth to myself.
Nancy Friday
Even If It Hurts to See Her Grow Up
It hurts to let her baby go down the aisle
She walks right by
Looks back into her mother’s eyes
And that smile lets her know
She’s somebody’s hero
Jamie O’Neal
Daughters Honor Their Mothers When They Decide to Become Mothers Too
Mothers and daughters are closest when daughters become mothers.
And We Stay Close to Our Daughters, Even After We’re Gone
I always knew I wanted kids, but when my mom passed away I was like, ‘I want a bunch of kids. I want three kids or four kids, and I want to have that relationship again.’ I can’t bring my mom back, but I can have children.
Mindy Kaling
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A Mother is Always There When You Need Her
A Mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled.
Emily Dickenson
We Know Just What You Need
It’s funny, what the younger generation assumes we don’t know. They assume we couldn’t possibly understand the agony of heartbreak, or the pressure of buying a house. We couldn’t understand infertility or depression or the fight for equality. If we have experienced any of these things, they were milder, softer versions, played out in sepia, not experiences that could compare to theirs. You have no idea what I know, I want to tell her. Instead I open my arms and let her lie against my shoulder and cry.
Sally Hepworth, The Mother-in-Law
Mothers Protect Their Kids Because It’s Our Job
It is not the job of the child to protect her mother. It’s the mother’s job to protect the child. By allowing your mother to protect you, you gave her a gift.
Kristin Cashore
We Cover Our Kids with Our Protection
My mother shed her protective love down around me and without knowing why people sensed that I had value.
Maya Angelou
And Change Our Children for the Better
Love as powerful as your mother’s for you leaves its own mark.
J. K. Rowling
We Teach Our Children by Our Example
Live so that when your children think of fairness, caring, and integrity, they think of you.
H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
And We Teach Them with Our Love
My mom and dad gave their kids the greatest gift of all – the gift of unconditional love. They cared deeply about who we would be, and much less about what we would do.
Mitt Romney
But We Know That Sometimes the Best Teacher is Life Itself
I, on the other hand, have always wanted hardship for my kids. Real, honest hardship. Challenges big enough to make them empathetic and wise.
Sally Hepworth, The Mother-in-Law
We Let Them Try Things for Themselves
I think that the best thing we can do for our children is to allow them to do things for themselves, allow them to be strong, allow them to experience life on their own terms,
C. Joybell C.
Because We Know Someday They’ll Be On Their Own
A wise parent humors the desire for independent action, so as to become the friend and advisor when his absolute rule shall cease.
Elizabeth Gaskel, North and South
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We Have our Children for Such a Very Short Time
Mothers hold their children’s hands for a short while, but their hearts forever.
Anonymous
And Motherhood is Often So Hard
There are two times when parenting is the most difficult. When the baby first arrives at home, and when the adult first leaves home.
Jennifer Quinn
But We Know What We Do is Important
Nothing you do for your children is ever wasted.
Garrison Keillor
So We Try to Give Them All We Can
There are two gifts we can give our children. One is roots and the other is wings.
Anonymous
Because We are Teaching Our Children to Be Adults
To raise a child who is comfortable enough to leave you, means you’ve done your job. They are not ours to keep , but to teach how to soar on their own.
Anonymous
Even Though We Know That Means They Will Leave Us
Our job as parents is to teach our kids not to need us. And it hurts, but when you see them as accomplished, confident, kind, thoughtful responsible people, then you know you’ve done your job.
Barack Obama
Because Our Job is Raise Children Who No Longer Need Us
A Mother’s Job is to teach her children not to need her anymore. The hardest part of that job is accepting success.
Anonymous
So We Let Them Grow Up
She stopped herself. He wasn’t a boy. A time comes in the life of a mother and son when that kind of mothering crosses the line into critical behavior. At age thirty he could eat and talk in any way he saw fit.
Catherine Ryan Hyde, Heaven Adjacent
We Watch Them Grow Away from Us
The mother-child relationship is paradoxical and, in a sense, tragic. It requires the most intense love on the mother’s side, yet this very love must help the child grow away from the mother, and to become fully independent.
Erich Fromm
We Let Them Make Mistakes
…it’s hard—
looking ahead, seeing their mistakes coming, and then, unless they are in actual mortal danger, holding their hands as they make them anyway.
Kelly Harms, The Overdue Life of Amy Byler
We Give Them the Freedom They Need
Give the ones you love wings to fly, roots to come back, reasons to stay.
Dalai Lama
Even If We Really Don’t Want to
Sometimes love means letting go when you want to hold on tighter
Anonymous
Even If We Have to Pretend to Be Ok
Now, standing among the accumulation of the life of a little boy he no longer is, I look at my own young doppelgänger and realize: it’s me who has become a boy again. All my heavy-chested sadness, loss and longing to hold on to things as they used to be are back, sweeping over me as they did when I was a child.
Rob Lowe
Even if It’s Really Hard
I think the hardest thing for a mother is to make it possible for a child to be independent and at the same time let the child know how much you love her, how much you want to take care of her, and yet how truly essential it is for her to fly on her own,
Madeleine Albright
So Very, Very Hard
People make a lot of jokes about the empty nest. Let me tell you, it is no laughing matter. It is really hard.
Michelle Pfeiffer
Because We Know Giving Our Children Their Independence is the Best Thing We Can Do
Our children’s independence is a reminder of how much we had to give and all that we have accomplished. It is a pleasure to remember that it is not a form of abandonment but an expression of a job well done
Madeline Levine
Our Children Will Always Be Our Children
Grown don’t mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown? What’s that suppose to mean? In my heart it don’t mean a thing.
Toni Morrison
They Will Always Have Our Love
Making the decision to have a child–it’s momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.
Ellen Cantarow
We’ll Always Protect Our Children with Our Prayers
I remember my mother’s prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.
Abraham Lincoln
But We Know It’s Time for Us to Let Go
The biggest change for me as a mom was realizing I needed to put someone else before me. Now the hardest part about the empty nest is learning to put myself first. I know that I have raised my sons to be big, strong, independent men who love God, themselves and care for others. I have to learn to let them have space and learn without me.
Kim Alexis
It’s Time to Focus on Our Ourselves Again
It’s not only children who grow. Parent do too. As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do with ours. I can’t tell my children to reach for the sun. All I can do is reach for it myself.
Joyce Maynard
It’s Time to Get Excited About Our Future
The afternoon of life is just as full of meaning as the morning; only, its meaning and purpose are different.
Carl Jung
But You’ll Always Be Their Mom
It doesn’t matter how old you are or what you do in your life. You never stop needing your mom.
Kate Winslet
