Writin' on Empty: Parents Reveal the Upside, Downside, and Everything In Between When Children Leave the Nest

by Joan Taylor Cehn, John Leland, Al Martinez

This collection of essays is indispensable for parents whose kids are leaving -- or have left -- the nest: for college, for the service, or for parts unknown. Writers share their touching, sometimes humorous, and always poignant reactions to watching the kids take off into the world beyond the comfort of home.

180 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 17, 2008

Reviews

[Bonny · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have turned to books most of my life to help me answer questions, deal with life, and be informed, enlightened, and entertained. With both of my children now in college, I hoped Writin' on Empty could provide some comfort and insight. While these essays did validate many of my feelings, they quickly became repetitive and I had trouble telling one from another. Many of these parents changed their eating habits and relish the fact that they can now be naked at home, but I had hoped for more. I wish I could tell you how many essays are in the book, but the formatting on the Kindle (including the table of contents) is so bad that approximately 20-25% of the book is almost unreadable. There are large sections in almost every essay where there are no spaces between words so the text just appears as a large string of letters, followed by many random line breaks. Numbers and special punctuation characters are displayed as a diamond with a question mark inside of it. I give the essays 3.5 stars, but the Kindle formatting only gets 1.