Your recent writings are wrecking me. I can not get through them without tears. I have a 2023 graduate who has a disability and will not be leaving home, which brings many emotions. My second born son is headed into senior year with one foot out the door and my baby girl is starting high school. My emotions have also always been at my fingertips and I am starting to understand the impact of that fact on this stage of life. Heavy grief and wild excitement have to live together in a soul prone to cracking under the weight of both. Thank you for sharing your beautiful words and making me feel less alone in this complicated parenting stage!
Reading this at arms length emotionally as my oldest soon begins junior year of high school, and yet, the concept of 18 summers hit hard - like I don’t have to read it to KNOW. There is so much in the messy soup of motherhood and like you so aptly put it, so many cellular losses. I have several mom friends whose oldest are going away soon and I have been trying to be in denial as long as possible, but there is no looking away, no avoiding. Time is a blink. Sending you so much love.
I was going to say I'm not crying, you're crying...until I got to this part and the glassy eyes turned to giant droplets. OOF! "I say this knowing that nothing is really lost. If we are lucky, we get to keep our children. But there is no escaping the series of micro-losses that is the cellular makeup of motherhood. We lose every version of them over and over, minute by minute, year after year. We get to keep exactly none of it. Except in our memories and photos and hearts, the gorgeousness of their grown up selves, in which those nesting doll childhood versions we long for still reside." Gorgeous piece!
Your recent writings are wrecking me. I can not get through them without tears. I have a 2023 graduate who has a disability and will not be leaving home, which brings many emotions. My second born son is headed into senior year with one foot out the door and my baby girl is starting high school. My emotions have also always been at my fingertips and I am starting to understand the impact of that fact on this stage of life. Heavy grief and wild excitement have to live together in a soul prone to cracking under the weight of both. Thank you for sharing your beautiful words and making me feel less alone in this complicated parenting stage!
Reading this at arms length emotionally as my oldest soon begins junior year of high school, and yet, the concept of 18 summers hit hard - like I don’t have to read it to KNOW. There is so much in the messy soup of motherhood and like you so aptly put it, so many cellular losses. I have several mom friends whose oldest are going away soon and I have been trying to be in denial as long as possible, but there is no looking away, no avoiding. Time is a blink. Sending you so much love.
I was going to say I'm not crying, you're crying...until I got to this part and the glassy eyes turned to giant droplets. OOF! "I say this knowing that nothing is really lost. If we are lucky, we get to keep our children. But there is no escaping the series of micro-losses that is the cellular makeup of motherhood. We lose every version of them over and over, minute by minute, year after year. We get to keep exactly none of it. Except in our memories and photos and hearts, the gorgeousness of their grown up selves, in which those nesting doll childhood versions we long for still reside." Gorgeous piece!
Aww Steph this is beautiful and so relatable. But we are strong and learn so much from the cycles...and then we write...