05/12/2019
So true!
One day they're born. And you feel like you have forever. Their little body fits into your lap, their hand tucked in yours, their head nestles into your shoulder. The years seem so many, the moments endless. It's this letting go. Don't fear it, don't hate it, don't love it. Accept it. This is why.
They grow. Oh sometimes it's subtle and sometimes it's crazy. A change here, some bravery there, but they don't stay small. They stop needing to hold your hand across the street and find friends and do daring things and read and grow up. The clothes are donated, the play food let go, the training wheels discarded, the new freedoms of growing up gained.
And then one day, they close the door and it is the last time. The last time home with you in it is, well, home. Tears. Of joy and sadness and celebration and "where in the world did time go?"
That little one who fit in your arms so tightly now is walking out, walking away, growing up. On their own.
Oh don't get me wrong - It will always be home. You are home for them. But it's not the same. Maybe we don't talk about that space - that growing up, letting go space - when our homes, instead of becoming noisier, become the opposite.
Quiet.
In life there is that moment, that gut-wrenching place of motherhood that is both bittersweet and joyful when that little one you raised leaves.
It is a fierce bravery to let them go. It's where we tuck back the tears and shout, "Way to go! You can do it!" But inside, sometimes we are whispering to ourselves the same thing.
You can do it. You can love and give and in it all let them go.
We all want it. We want them to be successful, to have a voice, to find love, to pursue their dreams. Childhood is this place of pushing them to be more and speak up and live.
And underneath it, tucked in all that growing is that sweet emotion of letting go.
They start out needing us so much. Feeding them and clothing them.Picking them up and helping with homework and dropping them off and teaching them to tie shoes or parallel park or how to multiply.
We go to sleep listening for them. For a cough, the door to open, for that whisper of "mom are you awake?" when we clearly weren't.
Letting go is the deepest love of all.
We don't cling so tightly because we want them to fly.
Yet our hearts switch between that pride of who they are and that longing of the years gone by.
Love them now, love them then, and love who they will become. The door will close, the bedrooms will change, the world we knew when we were the center will shift.
But we always be mom.
And that, that is something that will never be let go of.
From me. The mom learning to let go.
Holding her once little one in her arms.
~Rachel
#findingjoy
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