It can be difficult adapting to life with an empty home after your kids fly the coop, but there are many perks to having free time again. An empty nester who felt "lost" when her daughter went to university decided to pack up and venture on a midlife gap year all by herself - now she's "living her best life".
Rachel Stump, 49, always knew she wanted to do "something big" when her daughter, Wynter, 20, fled the nest, so she sold everything she owned to backpack around the world. After roughly planning her travels, she set off to Spain last year and has never looked back - now she hopes to inspire other mums.
Rachel, from Louisville, Kentucky, US, said: "The months leading up to my daughter leaving were so hard. I felt lost when she was gone.
"I would go to the grocery store and wouldn’t know what to just get for me. Planning my trip was a nice distraction.
"It was terrifying leaving but I'm living my best life. I'm on my midlife gap year. I hope to inspire others facing this."
Rachel is "best friends" with her daughter and the pair have taken month-long trips together ever since Wynter was in high school.
She said: "We've always been barebones travellers. I never felt the urge to come home. I felt I could be away for a year."
The waitress found that she "never got homesick" whenever they went away, so decided to take a whole 365 days out.
Rachel saved $10,000 (£8,100) for her trip by selling all of her belongings at the beginning of last year.
She's since hopped around Europe visiting Italy, Sweden, Albania, Lithuania and Bosnia, before heading to India and Vietnam.
Rachel immersed herself in culture experiencing the pyres of Varanasi - a ritual in India where the community cremate the bodies of lost ones on the side of the Ganges river.
"For the last 20 years all my focus has been on raising my daughter. Being the best mum," she said.
The mum-of-two found it "so hard" when she knew Wynter would be leaving to pursue her studies at the University of Hawaii.
She set her hopes on her travel plans as a "distraction" and set off in April 2022 on the anniversary of her grandma's death.
Rachel said: "My grandma raised me. She wanted to travel when she retired but she passed in a car crash just weeks before her 62nd birthday."
The 49-year-old spent the first few weeks of her trip in Spain, before meeting up with Wynter in Venice, Italy.
From there, she hiked in the Theth mountains in Albania which she says was "spiritual".
"I've made friends and had amazing conversations along the way. I've been on amazing cruises," she explained.
"I saw people burn bodies at the Ganges river. I'd never seen anything like it."
Rachel is now running out of funds but is looking at getting certified to teach out of America or buy a cheap van to live on the beach in Hawaii.
She said it was "terrifying" to leave the home she had made with her daughter for the last 20 years - but so worth it.
"I want to inspire other empty nesters. You can do something big. You can do it by yourself," Rachel added.
"People ask me all the time – 'how do you do this by yourself?' I've learnt that you take yourself wherever you go."
Do you have a real-life story to share? Email nia.dalton@reachplc.com.
