self confidnece

I just got done talking to my daughter on the phone. She is away at college. I miss her so much. When she was living at home, I thought we had a close bond. I'll never forget the day we took her to college and all the way home, I felt bad. When we walked into the house, it was so quite and empty (except for our 2 dogs), there was no radio blaring, no one talking on the cell phone and no shower running. I sat on her bed and cried. I called her to see how she was and she had met some kids in the room next door already. I thought, I am the one going through "withdrawl". She is just having fun. The calls were often at first, and then they faded. I started thinking maybe we weren't that close at all. Then I thought, this is what it is suppose to be like, you guided her all through her 18 years and now she is suppose to experience life using the tools that I gave her, and hopefully she uses the right tools for the right problems. I guess she has good self confidence and is able to navigate through, so I guess we did a good job. Now she is in her senior year at college and I appreciate her now more as a kind of friend than a mother. She gives me praise and builds my self confidence since I started a new business. I tell you the best way to build self confidence is to be an empty nester. See I worked 2-3 jobs all my life and got laid off my last one, and decided that since I have the opportunity to, I don't want to work so many jobs. You definately have to find something to do, or you will go crazy. Talk about building self esteem. Going from a mom, I also have a son who is married and beginning his new life, 3 jobs, and keeping up with a house, two dogs and a husband, to just the dogs the house and the husband, is quite a change. It builds character, you really find out if you let your job define who you are or not. It's kind of nice learning about my self my likes and dislikes. I am learning I am creative, organized, and enjoying life more not that I can breathe. I don't think I ever want to work full time again, although I know that life happens and sometimes you can't do what you want. I actually like having every day be different, and becoming more creative and learning about a lot of things. My self confidence has improved, although as a life coach, I have had to stretch my self to do things I need to do to build my business, but don't necessarily want to . I guess you can say that my children are now helping me to grow, giving me tools and guiding me in life. Susan