How to Cope with Moving Away from Your Parents

Lemony Snicket once wrote that leaving home is always sad, unless the person stepping out the door is just rounding the corner and will be back in a few minutes with ice cream sandwiches. For the rest of us, the goodbye lasts longer than that.

Leaving the place you grew up in is rarely simple. Maybe you're heading off to college, signing a lease on your first apartment, or getting married. The distance might be a few hundred miles or a few blocks. Either way, it reshapes your daily life. People who have never spent a night outside their childhood home sometimes feel the shift as something close to grief, and that reaction makes sense.

Part of the difficulty comes from how protected most young adults have been, even without realizing it. A rough childhood is still a childhood where someone else paid the electric bill and handled the emergency phone calls. Once you're on your own, those jobs land on you. That weight alone can rattle your nerves during the first weeks. If this is your first move, the suggestions below are meant to make the early stretch more survivable.

Pack the things that carry memory. Family photographs, a stack of old birthday cards, the stuffed animal you refused to throw out at age nine. Bring the objects that whisper home to you, and when you get to your new place, put them where you'll see them. On a lonely evening you can pick up the photo on your desk or hold onto that worn stuffed animal. The homesickness does fade, slowly, until you start feeling like yourself again.

Social media earns a lot of criticism, but it genuinely helps when you can't be in the same room as the people you love. Facebook and Twitter let you post what's going on in your life. Instagram lets you show the view out your new window. If your parents aren't already online, consider setting them up with an account. Then, on the nights the apartment feels too quiet, you can send a quick message instead of sitting with the silence.

Check your phone plan before you leave, not after. A plan with plenty of texts and calls means you can reach your parents when you're sick or just feeling flat, without worrying about overage charges piling up during your first months away. It isn't the same as sitting at the kitchen table with them, but a call, a text, or a video chat gets close.

Find work, even if your bank account doesn't demand it. A job eats up hours that would otherwise be spent missing home. It drops you into a room full of new people, some of whom become friends. There's also the plain satisfaction of being useful, of moving toward something you actually want. No job available? Classes do much the same thing. Sign up at a local college or go finish a degree, and coursework plus classmates will keep you too busy to mope.

Get out of the apartment. Socializing is probably the last thing you want after a big move, but shutting yourself in and brooding is the fastest route to feeling worse. If you've landed somewhere you know nobody, give it time. Neighbors, coworkers, and classmates turn into friends. Stay open to it, and you might even meet someone who matters to you more than you expected. So when the invitation comes, to a party, a dinner, whatever, say yes even when you don't feel like it. Going out can lift a low mood and remind you why you came here.

Cry when you need to. Missing your family is normal, and so is getting sad and lonely about it. Nobody expects you to feel nothing. Most people eventually leave their parents' house, so the people around you have been through the same ache. Let the tears come when they come.

Put trips home on the calendar. Knowing you'll see your parents in a few weeks or months takes some of the pressure off and lets you breathe. That pull to go back tends to be strongest in the first couple of months, then it loosens as your new life fills in with friends, a partner, a job, or school.

One caution: if the sadness turns into something you cannot carry, and the separation feels unbearable, you may be dealing with separation anxiety. A counselor or psychologist can walk you through healthier ways to handle the move.