Gwyneth Paltrow admits she is “mourning” the loss of her and Chris Martin’s children

Gwyneth Paltrow feels “deep sadness” about her children’s upcoming college years.

The 51-year-old Goop founder has daughter Apple (20) and son Moses (18) with her 47-year-old ex-husband Chris Martin. She is also stepmother to children Brody and Isabella, who are married to her husband, producer Brad Falchuk.

The lifestyle expert admits that she has no idea what life will be like when her children leave the nest, as motherhood has been her only identity and “driving force” for the past two decades.

Moses and Brody will be going to university later this year. She told The Australian Women’s Weekly magazine: “It will be interesting to see how the morning routine changes when there are no children in the house.”

When asked how she felt about them leaving the nest, she confessed: “On the one hand, it’s incredibly sad. A deep sense of impending grief. On the other hand, it’s exactly what should happen. You want your children to be young adults who are achieving and coping, making connections and being resilient. That’s exactly what you want. And that means they’re leaving home.”

When asked if her feelings were “complicated,” the A-lister replied, “Yeah. Motherhood has been so defining and fulfilling for me. It’s been kind of the central… it’s been kind of the central… I don’t even know how to express it! It’s like the driving force. It’s what I go back to.”

Gwyneth hopes to find the “silver linings” and is “excited” to see how her life will change and what she will do without her brood at home. The Iron Man star added: “I’ll let you guys know. I was talking to a friend about this the other day. As a woman, I think we have these very different chapters, and you have no idea what those life changes are going to feel like until they happen, right? You don’t know what it feels like to be married until you’re married. You don’t know what it feels like to lose a parent until you lose a parent. It’s like you get a whole new lexicon of feelings, and I don’t know what it’s going to be, but I’m going to try to really keep an open mind and try to, I don’t know, find the silver linings.”

Previously, Gwyneth admitted that her biggest concern was “fear” when thinking about the traits her children might inherit. When asked by an Instagram fan about the “trait that you love most in your children and that worries you the most,” Gwyneth replied in a video: “I think my children both know each other really, really well, and that’s a trait about them that I both love and admire.”

Then she said, “And I think what I worry about in both of them is the fear. We are, as we know, the fearful generation.” She concluded, “So that’s probably what I worry about.”

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