Feeling lost, scared and wanting to fix this.

[SteveLW]

Turbine you have left out a lot of details of your sitch so please continue posting and give us more context.

I will say, based on my recent sitch, that the 50s are a dangerous age for a W. They have given the last 2 or 3 decades of their lives to raise kids. They have identified as a W and mother so long they don't remember who they were before. Once the kids are out of the house they look around and think......how did I get here? I notice your youngest is 21. Your W is 53. That means that she turned 50 as your S was graduating from HS. This was likely when she started thinking "how did I get here?"

In my experience most WAWs (and MWD write about this too) have been contemplating leaving for ~2 years. So the timing on this is probably pretty close.

So as you add more details maybe you could consider when things started to turn south. Also please tell us more about BD, what was said. Her list of complaints (if any). Etc.