Gwyneth Paltrow Gets Candid About the 'Grief and Sadness' of Empty Nesting: 'It's Very Different'

Mar. 15, 2025

Gwyneth Paltrow. Apple, Moses.Photo:Gwyneth Paltrow/Instagram

Gwyneth Paltrow/Instagram

Gwyneth Paltrowis opening up about how her life has shifted since both her kids left the nest.

On Tuesday, Oct. 22, the Goop founder, 51, took part in a Q&A session with followers on her Instagram Stories. With her daughterApple, 20, and sonMoses, 18, — who she shares with ex-husbandChris Martin— both off at college, one fan asks, “How’s life as a free bird?”

“Thank you for asking,” the actress replies in a video. “It’s very different. I have waves of grief and sadness.”

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However, she shares that she’s also found positives in her kids being away at college. “I am kind of getting back in touch with this part of myself that I haven’t felt like since I was in my 20s before I had kids,” Paltrow explains. “Like, a little more space and imagination, maybe. A little more inner space for what I might want to do that day, stuff like that.”

“So, it’s evolving. It’s interesting,” she adds.

Paltrow participated inanother Instagram Stories Q&A in July,where she posted both a sweet snap of herself with Apple and Moses and some thoughts on the traits about them she loves and worries about.

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Gwyneth Paltrow and kids.Gwyneth Paltrow/Instagram

Elsewhere in the Q&A, a fan asked Paltrow to share the “trait you love most and one you worry most about with your kids.” The actress posted a video speaking to the camera in response where she began with the trait she loves that she said that her two children share.

“I think my kids both really know themselves very well and that’s a trait about them that I both love and admire,” she said.

“And I guess one I worry about for both of them is anxiety. This is, as we know, the anxious generation. So that’s probably what I worry about,” she explained.

source: people.com