The Need To Be Needed
A few ideas
Recently, I did an episode with Homeworthy and it was something. It made me look at my home differently, but the part I wasn’t prepared for was my reflection on where I am now. I am living in a home that had three more people living here until this year and that has changed the way I live in this home.
What is this feeling I have? Is it relief? Grief? Confusion? How about “Need”?
What are the three stages of empty nest syndrome?
In the first stage, parents tend to experience sadness, loss, loneliness, or even depression. In the second stage, parents move on to feeling relief and a sense of freedom as they develop a new rhythm of life. Facebook link
The need to be needed.
This is a huge part of midlife. Like it or not, we were all in positions to support others whether it was our kids, our parents, our work. Now all of that is shifting or ending. It is a big deal! Don’t think that this sort of change isn’t a seismic shift in how you experience your daily life. The trick is how to manage this time and change because it is a great opportunity.
It is ok to say “I miss their needs and to be needed”. Everybody wants to be needed and you need to figure out a new way to be needed. That’s a lot of needing already.
I’d love to hear from you and how you are coping with finding new ways to be needed.
A mistake many of us make, is to get overly involved in lots of needy organizations. Anything that is a volunteer position needs your time and whatever money you can give. Be careful how quickly you fill your time with needy organizations. Give yourself some air to see what else you might need for yourself before you sign up. However, do get involved in a needy organization…just not three or four, if you catch my drift. Think before your jump.
GARDENING
Here is a great way to feel needed: gardening. The NYTimes posted the article I share below this week and I was taken with the visual (above) so much I went and ripped out a bunch of old gnarly bushes in my own back garden to make way for something more magical. Isn’t the video inspiring?
And, by the way you don’t have to go hog wild with physical gardening to garden (although gardening is really good for you). You can plant your tree pit, your window boxes, take up Bonsai, or how I city garden, tend containers. You can hire a gardening and work together on a project. I’m not a gardening freak, but I do see how one might fall down the rabbit hole of tending and forming a garden. A garden needs you to be its best. You are the care giver and you see the benefits of your care and attention by its healthy bushiness and flowers.
Perennials, the plants and flowers that die off each Fall and like a phoenix are reborn each Spring, are wonderful for one’s sense of creation (and pocketbook). I have some plants in my deck containers that have come back up for over twenty years! Right now they are out there with their sweet spikes of growth peaking up waiting for the coast to be clear to burst forth from the dirt. It’s sunny today, I expect some real action from them.
I have a pre-covid jasmine tree that against all odds I haven’t killed (I have no idea how old the plant is, but I’m pretty sure it’s was around during covid). We put it out in the Spring about when we notice it has become home to a battalion of tiny ants and we bring it in before the freeze. It is in full bloom right this minute. I don’t really deserve its explosion of love. I water it, sure. But, we go away and the poor thing barely survives. I think I feed her (when I talk about the jasmine bush at home I refer to it as “she”) once a year, but didn’t until I realized it must need something to replenish the soil as the constant watering washes the nutrients away. I repotted her once into a larger container but she really could use a much bigger pot. I have moss covering the top to try to keep her soil moist. It’s unattractive right now.
Above, there she is in full bloom, filling the kitchen with her sweet jasmine perfume. I love her. And, that’s how I see gardening. Need filled, at least in part.
MEET ME IN THE COMMENTS!
how you are coping with finding new ways to be needed? Any pitfalls? Are you newly into gardening? Do tell!
How to Start a Garden
By Hannah Kofman
April 9, 2026
Everything you need to know to cultivate the green space of your dreams.
I really enjoyed reading this Kim ♥️xx
Great point Kim about unintentionally filling our time with volunteering when it might end up leaving us more drained than we expected. Becoming an empty-nester can be a great transition to more fulfillment if we take the time to turn our lens inward and see what’s there. What’s hiding behind the years of busyness and service? What is important to me now? For most of us this is not an easy thing to figure out and, of course, it’s going to change over time but perhaps it’s the question itself that leads the way. I’ve found it’s rarely easy.
Also, I love your tree, gardening to the rescue!