For teens, college can be some of the best years of their young lives between the football games, the getting-to-know-you mixers, the parties and, hopefully, the occasional lecture or two.
For parents, though, who suddenly find themselves out of work after nearly two decades of 24/7 child-rearing, the transition can be a bit…jarring.
“I sat here a year ago and I watched my big girl leave,” Brooke Shields reflected in a tearful Aug. 26 Instagram video, referencing daughter Rowan‘s junior year at Wake Forest University. And now that 18-year-old Grier has joined her big sis, 21, at the North Carolina school, the actress continued, “I’m back on this porch and I am now officially an empty nester.”
With both of her and husband Chris Henchy‘s “baby birds” spreading their wings, “It’s not easy for the moms,” admitted Shields. “It was really hard and then she started crying, and then I really started crying. And then, I cried a good portion of the ride home.”