Why We Rush Toward the Next Chapter—and Miss the One We’re In

I have already done seventh grade three times.

I’ve managed the school transitions, the friendship drama, the teenage mood swings, the driving, the ceremonies, the forms, the meals, the endless mental tabs open in the background.

I’ve been parenting for more than 20 years.

And I still have a 12-year-old at home.

He is wonderful. Truly. He has brought an absurd amount of joy and magic into our family since the day he was born.

And also?

There is a part of me that is tired.

Not “I need a nap” tired.

More like, “I have completed this group project several times and would now like to be excused” tired.

I find myself thinking about the next chapter. The one where my children are grown and I get to be a support person in their lives without being responsible for every dinner, appointment, permission slip, emotional crisis, and mysteriously empty refrigerator.

I’ve already informed my husband that when there are no children living at home, we will be eating charcuterie for dinner every night for the rest of our marriage.

No more meal planning. Just cheese.

It sounds delightful.

But recently, during a coaching session, I realized something uncomfortable.

I wasn’t only excited about what was coming next.

I was rushing toward it.

And there is a difference.

Sometimes Looking Forward Is a Way of Looking Away

I usually think of myself as a fairly present person.

I’m an Enneagram Type One, and one of the strengths available to those of us in the body triad is the ability to be grounded in the current moment. Obviously, I am also fully capable of obsessing over the past and rehearsing imaginary future problems at three in the morning. I contain multitudes.

But in general, presence is something I value and practice.

So when I noticed how much time I was spending mentally fast-forwarding through the remaining years of hands-on parenting, I knew there was more going on than simple exhaustion.

The truth was that I wanted to make sure the next chapter would be good enough to protect me from the ending of this one.

I wanted a landing strip.

Plans. Work. Travel. Meaningful projects. A full life waiting for me on the other side.

Because somewhere inside me was a part that believed if I prepared well enough, stayed busy enough, and built something exciting enough, I might not have to feel the sadness of being done.

Not done being a parent. That never happens.

But done with this version of parenting.

The daily, close-up, minute-to-minute version.

The version where someone needs a ride, a snack, a reminder, a conversation, or a very specific item for school tomorrow that they have somehow known about for three weeks and are mentioning at 9:47 p.m.

That chapter is ending.

And it turns out I am sad about it.

Annoyingly, predictably, conventionally sad.

A part of me would prefer to be above all that. Very evolved. Deeply accepting. Casually waving goodbye to my last child while wearing linen and beginning my next meaningful adventure.

Instead, I am a regular human being with feelings.

Rude.

Your Protective Parts Are Not Trying to Ruin Your Life

We all develop strategies for avoiding pain.

Internal Family Systems describes these strategies as the work of protective parts. They are not bad parts. They are not broken, immature, or trying to sabotage us.

They are trying to help.

They have simply developed some questionable ideas about what help looks like.

One part may believe that if you keep everyone happy, you will never have to feel rejected.

Another may believe that if you never make a mistake, you will never have to feel ashamed.

A part may push you to control your children because uncertainty feels unbearable.

Another may keep you busy because slowing down might allow grief, anger, loneliness, or disappointment to catch up with you.

My strategy was to skip ahead.

Create an exciting future. Focus on what comes next. Make sure the empty nest is so full of possibility that there is no room for emptiness.

It is a clever plan.

It is also impossible.

Because avoiding pain does not create happiness.

It usually creates more avoiding.

Future-Tripping Has a Cost

There is nothing wrong with looking forward to what is next.

There is nothing wrong with being excited for more freedom, fewer responsibilities, new work, new relationships, or a different rhythm of life.

The problem begins when the future becomes a place we go to escape the present.

When I am busy imagining my empty-nest life, I am not fully with the child who is still living in my house.

When you are waiting for your toddler to become more independent, your middle schooler to become less reactive, or your teenager to finally get through this phase, you may accidentally miss the child who exists right now.

That does not mean you have to love every stage.

Some stages are objectively exhausting.

Some are loud, sticky, repetitive, and filled with conversations you cannot believe you are having again.

Presence is not pretending you are enjoying something you are not.

It is allowing the truth to be complicated.

You can love your child and feel bored by the game they want to play.

You can be grateful for your family and deeply tired of being needed.

You can look forward to more freedom and grieve the ending of a chapter.

You can want time to move forward and also wish you could freeze one ordinary afternoon forever.

All of that can be true.

What If the Goal Isn’t to Stop It From Hurting?

I recently worked with a client going through an incredibly painful separation.

As part of the separation agreement, both parents have scheduled video calls with their children when the kids are staying at the other home.

During these calls, her former partner’s new partner has made cruel, passive-aggressive, and intentionally hurtful comments.

My client does not engage.

She does not retaliate.

She stays focused on her children, keeps her reactions off the co-parenting app, and processes the emotional impact afterward in a safe place.

In other words, she is already handling the situation with an enormous amount of restraint and integrity.

But she came into one of our sessions saying she needed to figure out the calls because they were ruining her life.

As we talked, it became clear that she did not actually want a different strategy.

She wanted the strategy she was already using to stop hurting.

Of course she did.

Who would not want that?

We all want to reach the part where the hard thing is no longer hard.

But sometimes we become so focused on getting to the place where it does not hurt that we begin treating the pain itself as evidence that we are doing something wrong.

We are not.

Sometimes pain is simply the appropriate response to something painful.

The goal is not always to eliminate it immediately.

The goal may be to feel it without allowing it to run the meeting.

To notice it without turning it into retaliation, control, avoidance, or self-abandonment.

To let it move through us instead of organizing our entire lives around making sure it never arrives.

The Way Through Pain Is Not More Suffering

Letting yourself feel pain does not mean drowning in it.

It does not mean repeatedly telling the story, spiraling for days, or making your sadness the only truth in the room.

It means you stop fighting the reality that the feeling is there.

You notice what is happening in your body.

You get curious about the part of you that is trying to protect you.

You offer yourself the same tenderness you would offer someone you love.

You allow the moment to be sad, disappointing, embarrassing, lonely, or bittersweet without immediately fixing, analyzing, reframing, or turning it into a personal-growth assignment.

Sometimes the most self-led thing you can say is:

This hurts.

I do not like it.

And I can stay with myself while it is happening.

That is not resignation.

That is presence.

The Parenting Chapter You Are In Deserves You

My youngest child deserves the same intentional, conscious parenting I gave his older siblings.

Not a checked-out version of me who is mentally arranging the cheese board for my future life.

And I deserve to experience these years too.

Not only the fun parts.

The sadness of the ending is part of the experience because the relationship matters.

Grief is not proof that something has gone wrong.

Sometimes it is proof that something has been meaningful.

So I am practicing staying here.

Making dinner even when I am deeply over making dinner.

Listening to stories that require more context than I currently possess.

Being present for the seventh-grade experience for the fourth time.

And allowing myself to feel the sadness that comes with knowing it is the last time.

I do not need to rush past that feeling.

I do not need to solve it.

I do not need to create a future impressive enough to cancel it out.

I can let the next chapter arrive when it arrives.

For now, there is still someone in front of me.

Where Are You Trying to Skip Ahead?

Maybe you are not rushing toward an empty nest.

Maybe you are waiting for your child’s behavior to improve before you let yourself enjoy them.

Maybe you are trying to get through a divorce, a career change, a hard season, a health challenge, or a period of uncertainty as quickly as possible.

Maybe your protective strategy is not rushing.

It may be perfecting, pleasing, controlling, achieving, fixing, numbing, or staying relentlessly busy.

Ask yourself:

What feeling am I trying not to have?

What is my strategy for avoiding it?

And what am I missing while I am trying so hard not to hurt?

You do not have to force the answer.

Just notice.

That moment of awareness is often where the real work begins.

Step Out of the Rush at the Fall Retreat

The Fall Retreat is a space to step away from the fixing, managing, performing, and emotional multitasking of regular life.

Set against the fall colors of Traverse City, the retreat gives you room to slow down and notice what is actually happening beneath the habits and protective patterns that keep you moving.

We use the Enneagram, Internal Family Systems, coaching, reflection, and real human connection to help you understand yourself more deeply—not so you can become a perfect person, but so you can stop abandoning yourself while trying to hold everything else together.

You do not need to arrive with a clear goal or a polished version of your story.

You only need to be willing to meet yourself honestly.

Learn more about the Fall Retreat:
https://www.annkaplanparentcoach.com/fallretreat