Latest / 5–Minute Parenting: Tips to Help You Raise Competent, Godly Kids. / How to Thrive in the Empty Nest (or Empty Next) Season w/ Author Kate Battistelli

Transcript

How to Thrive in the Empty Nest (or Empty Next) Season w/ Author Kate Battistelli · 5–Minute Parenting: Tips to Help You Raise Competent, Godly Kids.

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to another episode of the Five Minute Parenting Podcast.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Karen Ferguson, wife, mom, grandmom, and children's book author with a background in K-8 education and a passion for equipping parents to raise confident and God-confident kids.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: In this podcast, we'll cover parenting practices for both a practical view and a biblical view.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: Our goal is to help you raise kids with a positive, godly self-image so they can become all they were created to be.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: I know you're busy, so we'll keep it short.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: Let's take just five minutes and dive in.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome back to another episode of Five Minute Parenting.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Karen, your show host, and today I have the privilege of interviewing Kate Battistelli, who'll be sharing her new book, The After Party of the Empty Nest.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: Mom is not your only name.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: Kate is a best-selling author, speaker, podcaster, former actress in the Broadway theater world, and mom of Grammy Award-winning Christian recording artist Francesca Battistelli Goodwin.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: The after party reminds moms that there is a second act, a future with your name on it, filled with hope and surprises you can't imagine.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: If you plan for it, believe in it, and walk fearlessly into it.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: Kate, thank you so much for being on the show today, sharing your beautiful book.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Karen.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm thrilled to be here.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, you have a fascinating life.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I have some questions that will help our listeners get to know you and your book better.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm gonna jump right in with the first one.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: And uh just tell us a little bit about yourself, Kate, and how you got started writing.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, gosh, let's see.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: I've been married for who's what is it now, 41 years.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Franny's mom, as you said.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: We call her Franny, and um, she's got seven kids.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I was the woman who wanted a big family.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: God gave us one, but now I've got seven grandbabies, which is just amazing.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: And um, well, I got started writing honestly during my empty nest, because when I hit that, when our daughter went off to Nashville and she was doing her thing with music, I just was sitting there stunned, thinking, well, now what do I do?
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: As so many women who hit the empty nest.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: And at that point, God literally dared me to write my first book because I was not a writer.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: I never thought about writing a book.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: It was not, it was just nothing I ever wanted to do until God said, You're writing a book.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that was more about our raising our daughter, what what the biblical principles that we followed to raise her.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: But I knew that he had dared me.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I started looking at scripture a little bit differently and seeing the different ways that God called or dared some of the Bible heroes.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I wrote a book called The God Dare, and that came out in 2019.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: And then I just had this on my heart about the empty nest, because I think so many women they get to that point and they so they're just so confused.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: They have no clue what's next.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: And my goal with the book is really to encourage them that there's a whole nother life.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, raising children, having a family, that was part of it and an important part, a wonderful part.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: But then the kids are gone.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: And now it's time for you to figure out what is the rest of your life going to look like?
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: What does God have for you?
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: What's your other purpose other than being a mom?
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: So that's really just the whole, the whole thing I'm about right now.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: So when did you first publish your first book after God dared you to?
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: First book came out in 2012.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Oh and he kind of, you know, God's funny.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: He's he got me into writing.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: I started a food blog back when blogging was the cool thing because our daughter had moved.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: She loves to cook, I love to cook.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted her to have my recipes.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I just started that, and then the Lord just was putting ideas in my mind.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: I thought, well, I've got to write these things out, you know, and after that, because I knew I could write, I just didn't think I didn't graduate from college, though I did go to four colleges in two years.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: I just didn't graduate them because I wanted to be in theater, as you said, you know, my background with all that.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: That that was my goal until I met the Lord, and then he changed that around.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well, as in a little bit of an aside, yes, so you you did Broadway theater.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: I did.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: For how long?
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Oh gosh.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: For several years until, well, I did um this this big production, a big national tour of the king and I.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, it's a whole long story because I went out as the understudy for the leading lady, ended up taking over the part with Yule Brenner.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: If you've seen the movie or the Broadway show, yeah, I got to do that with him for almost three years, about a thousand performances.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: So that was a big deal.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: I met my husband on that tour.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: And gosh, I guess about six or seven months after we got married and and left the tour, we met the Lord.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then that then we had our daughter.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Then we were we really sensed the Lord telling us to lay all that down.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: We moved back to New Jersey, where we're from, eventually down to Florida, and just left all that behind.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: It was kind of a crazy, it's my yeah, you said my story is different.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: I call it very quirky.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: Just the twists and turns, you know, these 90-degree turns.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it it is, but you just think, God, what is my life?
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: But I've thought about writing a memoir.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, the God there has a lot of memoir in it.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: It has a lot of my story.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm I'm getting ready to redo that to add a bunch of stuff to it.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: So that will be re-released hopefully by the fall.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, getting back to your new book then, uh, The After Party of the Empty Nest.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: So you have given us some background.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, was there like a spark of inspiration, you know, as you sat down to write it?
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: Or I know you you mentioned it was just you were in that season, is that correct?
• 5:57
  unknown: Yeah.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: Did you talk with other parents in that season?
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: I think somewhat, but it that actually started as a blog post because I was just thinking about the emptiness and I thought, wait a minute, this doesn't have to be this hard, grief-filled morning time.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you're gonna go through, so it's gonna be hard in the beginning because you've been you've identified yourself as a mom.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: And now you're still a mom, but you're not a mom the way you were.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought, but there's a whole other life.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: There's an after party.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: That just came to me, I guess in the theater world, when a show closes, you do a big party, you know, to thank everybody and just think about all that you accomplished.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, okay, well, that can be the same for motherhood.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where the idea came to me way back in 2012.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it it's been stirring in me for a long time.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, about a year ago, I started writing the book.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: And the the original blog post was called Motherhood the After Party.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: But we kind of thought people aren't going to know what that means.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: So we changed it to the after party of the empty nest.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Mom is not your only name.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because God has other names.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I always thought, you know, that's what I was.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: That was my calling and that was the thing.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: But God said, no, I have a different name for you.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I tell women all the time, if you told me back when Franny left 15, 12, 15 years ago, that you're going to have written three books, you know, in 2025, you'll have written three books, you'll be part of a successful podcast, you'll be speaking around the country.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'd have said, You're crazy, that's not me.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: But God says that is me.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: And he says that about every one of us.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it it can be the empty nest, or I like to call it the empty next.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: What's that next thing?
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that it and it won't be empty.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: It'll be full.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: That's a very good point.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, next right step.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so often God does call us to get out of our comfort zones, doesn't he?
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, oh, all the time.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's what the God dare is all about.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's about taking doing that crazy thing that he drops in your spirit, and you're just like, God, there is no way I can do that.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I said.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, there is no way I can write a book.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: But if God calls you to it, he will always equip you to do it.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then he gets the glory, doesn't he?
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: Because we know it's absolutely strength.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: That is so 100%.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: Well, if you could, you know, pare it down to one main message that you hope readers would take away after reading your book, what would it be?
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: Don't be afraid.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Don't be afraid to step into the new thing.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: Don't be afraid to realize God has more for you.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: He has a calling for you from before the foundation of the world.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I think about this time in history that we are put on the planet.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: What a privilege, what an honor to be here.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: And we're getting towards the end.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: But God has put us here and God needs, He needs what you are supposed to do.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: He needs your, he needs your story, He needs your work, whatever it is you're going to do to build the kingdom, however big or small that is, it doesn't matter.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's obedience.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's saying, okay, Lord, I'm going to do this thing that you're calling me to, whatever it is, and get out there and make a difference.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's a beautiful and powerful message.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: Well, this has been a real treat.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you again for being here today, Kate, and sharing your new book.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, excuse me.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, thank you.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for having me.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: And moms, grandmoms, I encourage you to get a copy of Kate's book.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: Whether you're in the middle of the emptiness season, like I am, or preparing for it, this book will be an encouragement to you.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: So we will have links to Kate's website and to her book in the show notes.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: So be sure to check that out.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you again, Kate, for being here.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: And listeners, thank you for joining us.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: Be sure to come back next week for another episode of Five Minute Parenting.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: Until then, have a blessed week.