I loved the Wild Women Don’t Get the Blues Book Group. We met one Friday night a month and tried to talk about the book in between comparing kids and men, and supporting each other through life’s passages.

We came together to read other people’s tales, and ended up sharing our own. My friends reminded me I was “normal” and normalized my expectations. Some stories made me grateful to have my husband.

We Wild Women went away annually for the weekend and left the kids home with dad. We rented waterfront , stayed up late drinking wine, told stories and occasionally talked about the book.

Those weekends were like therapy to remind us of US, the non-mom person. We got up late, went on walkabouts with no agenda, no children or men to feed or drive somewhere. We skinny-dipped and cooked for each other.  New members were regaled with Wild Women adventures to initiate them into our clan.

Even though conversation drifted towards those we had abandoned for the night or weekend, we celebrated the freedom of gathering in a circle of women to nourish our souls.

With great sadness, as our children graduated from high school, women began dropping out of Wild Women Don’t Get the Blues Book Group. They stopped prioritizing our Friday night meetings. We were lucky to get a few women to our once sacred meetings. Some women said goodbye, moved and got divorced. Some disappeared without a goodbye.

When we finally dissolved the group, we had a meta-meeting and invited everyone who had been a member over its 15 years tenure, sat in a circle and had a bittersweet reunion.

Other groups have filled the hole left by the Wild Women, which I had envisioned belonging  to until I died. I will cherish the memories of our meetings and weekend jaunts. They introduced me to many good books and cultivated the art of friendship and conversation.

I’ve coached moms who have forgotten about THEM. They’ve sacrificed everything for their families and get depressed. Motherhood is like that. It’s easy to get swallowed up by the Great Mother archetype, taking care of everyone else, and forgetting about our own needs.

As all archetypes do, they will drop us, and the drop is HARD. Children grow up. Mothers and marriages need to remember who they were before children invaded.

This guest post is from my nephew Sean who touts the virtues of family camping.

After a 10-day tent camping trip with my wife, daughter (almost 2 ½) and my parents followed by another 3 night tent trip with another family of 4, I said to Susan that camping “is a time to really tune into your family.”

There was a lot of “tuning in.”  As new parents, we were a little nervous about driving thousands of miles with a 2-year-old strapped in the back of our Suburban.  We had space to bring lots of camping amenities and plenty of toys and books.

We decided to forgo electronic gadgets and screen devices and stick to our convictions to use screen time very sparingly.

Our goal was to make it out to Glacier National Park in Montana, which meant about 9.5 hours of driving from our Seattle home.  We chose to divide up the drive into two segments, stopping in North Central Washington for the first weekend.

That drive went uneventfully as Breanna slept about half of the time.  We strategically plan to drive during nap times, so this one encompassed her afternoon nap.  Two days later, we were on the road again, headed to GNP.  After arriving in the park and the rendezvous with my parents, we realized that we had not even turned on the radio the entire drive.

We became so in tune with our daughter’s banter or sleep that we didn’t even need the background noise.  In fact, Bree kind of kept us entertained after learning a few driving games.  Soon she was asking things like “What do you see, Daddy?” or “What color, Mommy?”  Those games translated into object identification games including barns, animals, and various trucks.  So we learned together, and what started out in fear ended up in learning, listening and tuning into one another’s sights and sounds.

The camping trip had lots of outdoor time, inter-generational cooking and discovery time outdoors seeing wildlife, trees, lakes and plants.  We made it through several long days of driving and ended up with in Bend, Oregon– all without a single DVD player!

Back home, one of the biggest realizations hit me.  Breanna had a chance to really tune into us as well.  I was printing and trimming some pictures from our trip; running around as I sometimes do.

Breanna was in the room with the printer and paper cutter.  Suddenly I heard, “Daddy, look!”  I called back “What, Bree?”  “Campfire!” she exclaimed.  I ran around the corner to see the most meticulous campfire built with kindling and all.  Bree had squirreled away the steps in making a campfire during our trip, and without even knowing it we had taught her a new skill.

She had placed the paper strips on the floor as kindling and found some table legs to use as logs over the kindling.  I was excited to see that Breanna had a chance to learn from and tune into us without us even knowing it.  Of course this reinforced my motivation for always being the best person I can for the sake of my family, especially my child(ren).

We spent 25 nights in a tent this summer and learned a lot about each other.  We spent time with several other families and became more intimate friends through cooking, doing camp chores and having real-life sleepovers.

For me, there have been great opportunities to get away from house projects, computers and phones.  Road trips provided great talking and tune-in time for our whole family and camping allowed us to divide up tasks and learn new chores.

The green beans were there and me, the city slicker didn't know it.

The one on the left is Houdini. She likes to escape. The white leghorns produce an egg a day - no matter what.

I grew up in a city on a bus route with a small backyard. The first time I smelled clean air and saw clear water in a lake was on a camping trip to Maine. I never knew city air and water were dirty. They were just normal. Farms were a primitive place that smelled kind of shitty, where we bought produce.

So it’s a shock when I’m able to produce food in my backyard. I’m so green [novice] about farming that Bob said this morning, “There are green beans ready to pick!” I thought that row of plants was eggplant. I couldn’t see the abundant beans hiding under the leaves.

Next year I’ll be planting green beans again because they grew in spite of me, like rhubarb, mint and cucumbers. I like food that’s easy to grow.

Eggs have been easy to produce, too. After much trepidation and research, I started keeping chickens about a year ago. Not raising — that would imply caring for little chicks that can drown in their water. Keeping, which means I buy them at age 4-5 months, when they’re about ready to start laying. And their eggs are delicious. They are the payoff for the hassles of keeping chickens.

My son Ian, the organic farmer, has been coaching me in land cultivation and animal husbandry. Our children love to be the expert and change roles with us. I wish we had grown more vegetables when he was growing up, but he seems to have compensated.

Growing a few easy-to-cultivate vegetables and keeping a few chickens are good family projects as well as opportunities for children to take responsibility. Gardens provide a natural place for children to learn to eat vegetables, too. It feels organic and connected to the earth to eat my own produce, eggs and yes, rooster meat when available.

My chickens gobble up kitchen scraps and relish food turned slightly bad. In return, they provide eggs and plenty of crap that makes excellent fertilizer. All with a very low carbon footprint. I like the feeling of my farmette, especially at mealtime.

The gang. It feels so normal when they're home, and equally as normal when it rebounds back to the two of us.

“Be prepared for the possibility of your parents divorcing during your freshman year,” read the letter from my daughter’s college in 2006. I, too, wondered if our marriage of 26 years would survive.

Our youngest had prepared us for empty nest during high school with a universal strategy.

1. Avoid parents.
2. Get involved with a job, friends and school activities.
3. Interact with enough courtesy to access the car and money.
4. Be out when parents are home, and home when they’re out.
5. Claim, “I can’t eat dinner with you tonight, I have to work.”

When Saturday soccer abruptly ended during her freshman year, it opened up possibilities I had forgotten existed. When she quit Sunday afternoon soccer, whole weekends arrived with no demand for our witnessing, wallet or chaffering.

Even weeknights brimmed with possibilities — no need to whip up dinner, wolf it down and drive someone somewhere.

Her senior year of high school launched us into unfamiliar turf: home alone together often. It was like visiting a foreign country I hadn’t been to in ages, with an old friend, who I hadn’t had time for in a while.

At first, our couple-rebirth was awkward and unfamiliar. Then it blossomed into glorious, fun and eventually, normal.

With our new life for two, we moved into a house in need of total renovation, a distraction for our first two years of empty nest. We’ve always shined under a full-court press.

Next, we took some trips together and rekindled an old interest, duplicate bridge. We play with gusto at least twice a week. It’s a partnership game that’s a lot like staying married. The best teams succeed under duress, don’t berate each other too much for mistakes, and celebrate victory.

The college schedule brought them home with astonishing regularity for a dozen years. As soon as we got used to them being home, filling the fridge with food, sharing cars and TVs, they departed. Silence and stillness descend, until another holiday.

The final curtain has fallen with youngest settled in graduate school. We’ve rehearsed during the renovation project, across the bridge table, and in the quiet of the dinner table set for two.

I fell in love with him. Again. It’s hardly an empty feeling.

That's me ironing at age 5 in about 1963. I eagerly waited for handerchiefs, dresser scarves and pillowcases to iron.

This photo says so much about how my parents raised their nine children. We all had chores and those chores taught us self-discipline and nurtured our self-esteem because we contributed to the family. Today, most of us are in business for ourselves. We’re very self-directed and I attribute that to doing dishes regularly.

Do you have a photo of YOU doing chores? Or of your children doing chores? Post it on my Raise Able Young People Facebook page. While you’re there, vote (LIKE) for your favorite photo of a little person working. The winner – to be determined by Sept. 7, 2010, will win a $50 gift card.

Chores are the anti-brat remedy. It’s impossible to be entitled when you take out the trash, scoop dog poop and sweep floors. Chores teach children about life. Sometimes we have to do things whether we want to or not.

Some of my best memories growing up are doing dishes with my brothers and sisters. It was fun to rake leaves, clean out the garage and paint the house together. I felt important.

I loved when I was old enough to paint a radiator while my older brothers painted the walls. They carefully instructed me, “Watch out for drips!” I didn’t know that painting radiators was boring and time-consuming. I relished being part of the action. Painting the radiator was challenging. Instead of bugging them or tagging along with them, I was helping.

By the way, today I don’t iron very much. I got into the Zen of Ironing then. The skill has transferred to other areas of my life

I'm waiting for a sticker from Alfred University.

Look carefully at the top of the photo and you’ll see three college stickers. They explain where thousands of dollars have gone in the past dozen years.

A friend who also has four children explains college tuition: “Evey year when I pay the college bill, it’s like driving a brand new Volvo over a cliff.”

His children went to private colleges. We drove used Volvo’s over the cliff because we’re patrons of state schools.

College is a good investment. I’m not complaining, only noticing and explaining the connection between old cars with college stickers.

The 2001 Camry pictured above passed 200,000 miles this summer. I figure every minute I drive it I’m saving money — for more college expenses.

Although this year we have a reprieve. Kristen is in graduate school, with tuition included in her fellowship, and a grant for living expense. She’s almost across the finish line. We’re still supplementing, and I’m happy to be able to do it.

I see my peers on the road, driving old cars, plastered with college stickers on the back window. They should read, “My child goes to this college and all I got is a lousy windshield sticker.”

After people have enough money to meet basic needs, money doesn’t buy happiness, experiences do.

Which is why I’m glad I made the sacrifice to stay home with our four children. We had less money and more time. I don’t think my marriage could have survived the stress of two high-profile careers — and hiring a nanny to make it work.

Other people would have raised my children. I’d have missed the bulk of the most rewarding — and most challenging — experience of my life. Paid jobs will always be there. Babies and children won’t.

Young mothers struggling to meet the social expectation to be employed have fatigue in their voices and faces. I wonder how they find me-time and deal with the stress of chasing a shrinking pool of time and money.

Children can be taught to value going to the mall, Disneyland and Chuckie Cheese. Children can also be taught to savor a good yard sale, homemade pizza and a family hike in the woods.

One of our traditions was Friday night pizza and a family movie. We made the pizza from scratch together — an experience in itself. When I ask my 20-somethings “What do you want me to cook for your birthday?” Their answer is often, “Pizza.”

My mother had a bumper sticker – “The best things in life are not things.” Embracing the truth of that statement makes my life simpler and richer, in ways money can’t buy.

I’m a dog owner by default. Two dogs ago, I yielded to the urgent wishes of my four children and husband to add a dog into our cacophony, confusion and camaraderie.

Our three dogs have brought more gifts, laughter, wisdom and family unity than I could ever have imagined. They have been well-worth the investment and energy.

Gonzo’s door trick never fails to get a laugh from visitors on our porch. Usually she comes and goes through the screen door with little fanfare while we’re eating or kibitzing on the porch.

When a guest catches sight of her opening the door, they interrupt the conversation and exclaim, “Did the dog just open the door?!” Translated, “Did I just see what I thought I saw?”

Gonzo figured out how to open the door out of necessity. We didn’t interrupt what we were doing when she wanted to come in to let her in. We gave her the time and space to figure it out for herself. When she did, we congratulated her.

After the house is buckled closed for eight months of cold weather and we re-open the porch, Gonzo needs a few days to remember she knows how to get in and out of the door independently.

We have empowered our dog.

More young people could benefit from such an opportunity to think for themselves, solve problems, do homework [or not] and experience the natural and logical consequences of their decisions.

When allowed to make decisions and experience the consequences of say, sleeping late, forgetting lunch money, missing the bus, young people will make better decisions. The goal of parenting is to nurture independence so when children become teens they will make good decisions when 60 miles away, going 60 miles an hour.

Start by teaching morning self-management in kindergarten forward. It will eliminate a huge source of family conflict and nagging. The key is to coach them, give them the tools and then treat getting out the door as their problem, not yours.

Download my tip sheet on how to create a nag-free morning experience. Start with a family meeting and providing each child with an alarm clock. Be patient for three weeks and encourage them to meet your new expectations. Either say something encouraging or keep quiet. If necessary, go to another room!

Be willing to let them fail if they don’t plan properly — without breakfast because they didn’t allow enough time or without homework because they couldn’t find it. Parents can offer neutral statements such as, “The bus will be here in five minutes. Do you need help?” Give enough rope to burn but not enough to hang.

Remember — it’s their challenge to learn to manage getting up to an alarm clock and allowing time to get ready for school. Practice the double E — encouragement and expectation. Notice what they have done: “I see you packed your lunch last night. Good idea,” or “You have one shoe, do you know where the other shoe is?”

When parents change their behavior, children will respond. You can do it — have a plan and stick to it. It will transform your morning routines and give your children skills for life.

Kristen at a crossroad of her life.

Kristen  left on Monday for her first semester of graduate school. Her car full, the house empty. I feel the familiar yin-yang of college students coming and going of the past 11 years.

This time is different. Nothing could have prepared for the day when the youngest left, never to return for more than a visit.

I moved a few orphaned belongings to the attic, feeling like an orphan parent. I donated a bag of clothing , scaled down food purchases, and expect her to turn up in the morning, at dinner time.

I can’t believe she fit everything into her little Celica and how orderly she left her room. My soul is disorderly and crammed with conflicting emotions. I detoured my life and put the four of them first, ahead of my own needs, career and life.

Empty nest was expected, anticipated and prepared for. I gave them skills to live independently — based on the ability to make good decisions. Now I now coach other parents to teach children and teens the art of independent decision-making.

I’ve done my job well. I’m as obsolete as her empty bedroom. My relationship with my four grown children is optional, and hopefully out of desire, not obligation. We’re establishing new traditions and reasons to get together. How often is often enough? How many calls and visits are intrusive? At what point does an adult child’s extended visit imply he should pay room and board?

There’s always new ground to cover in parenting, which is why children invading our lives enriches, challenges, frustrates, entertains and gives us a purpose.

It has been worth every sacrifice. My husband, dog and I mourn over the end of an era. The dog tried to stow away in Kristen’s already-crammed car. Bob and I had a good long wet hug when she didn’t show up for dinner.

It’s been a good run.