A few weeks ago, my twins and my youngest children left for college. And just like that, my house got quiet.
I knew I would be sad. I knew I would miss them terribly. I wasn’t prepared for the ache in my chest that never seems to fully subside—or for the moments when it catches me off guard with the sheer volume of the emptiness it brings.
Everyone is exactly where they are supposed to be. And everything hurts.
This is where I am. Maybe you can relate.
We talk about having to let go of our children. We say it as though it is something we should know how to do—something natural. But the phrase has never felt quite right to me. What, exactly, are we supposed to let go of? Certainly not them. And not the relationship that has shaped nearly every part of our lives.
Yet something is being asked of us here. I can feel it in the quiet of my house, in the questions I ask to a dark room and in the shoes no longer piled up by the back door. I am only beginning to understand what it is.
HOW WE GOT HERE
There is loss woven into every stage of parenting. The baby disappears into the toddler, the toddler into the preschooler, the little boy into the teenager. We barely have time to miss one version of them because we are already trying to figure out how to parent the next.
In the beginning, they need nearly everything from us. I look at old pictures of myself with my boys when they were babies and laugh. They are perfectly dressed. I look like I skipped my shower. I think that pretty much sums it up.
The days are long and the years are short. It is the best thing we have ever done and a total grind. Our hearts are broken and healed several times a day, and for so long, there seems to be no end in sight. We rearrange our schedules, priorities, sleep, relationships, and sometimes pieces of ourselves for these people we love more than we knew it was possible to love.
And all along, we are working toward a goal. We want to raise children who can eventually navigate the world without us. We want them to trust themselves, make decisions, survive disappointment, find their people, ask for help when they need it, and build lives that belong to them.
What we don’t think much about is what achieving that goal will eventually require from us.
For them to become the center of their own lives, we have to give up that spot.
I thought I was on track. As it turns out, not so much. I let go of their hands—but I always watched them get safely to the other side.
Eventually, they drove themselves. They made their own plans. They spent more time with friends and less time with family. But I could still hear the garage door open, so I knew when they were home.
There was also evidence of them everywhere: a hockey bag in the garage, a water bottle left where it didn’t belong, carryout boxes that never saw the light of day, and all manner of socks with no match. Those ordinary signs of their existence that sometimes frustrated me were also deeply reassuring.
I see now that it was more than watching. I was bearing witness—to the joys and the heartaches, the struggles and the triumphs. I knew something was wrong by the look on their face or the way they walked through the door. I knew all was well by the sound of their voice at the other end of the house. Most importantly, when they hurt, I was there to comfort them.
Now they are building lives that do not unfold in front of me. There will be victories I hear about afterward, disappointments they work through before they call, and ordinary Tuesday afternoons I will know absolutely nothing about. There may even be heartbreaks I never know happened.
I am not only grieving their absence. I am grieving the loss of bearing witness to their everyday lives.
When I cannot see what is happening, I notice my mind is remarkably good at filling in the blanks…with worry. Are they okay? Are they making good decisions? Are their classes too hard? What if they get a crappy teacher? Is it possible they need me and aren’t saying it? All is well, and anxiety is still the loudest voice I hear.
For most of my parenting life, worry had somewhere to go. I could check on them, fix something, send the reminder, make the appointment, offer advice, feed them, or hug them. I could do something. Now I can’t.
Underneath the worry, there is a much simpler truth: I miss them.
I can try to distract myself with the work I love, or with gratitude for what is going well in our lives. But grief doesn’t go anywhere. It waits.
It wants to be felt and experienced without looking away. Sometimes that means a few tears. Other times, it brings deep, soul-churning sobs that send me down a spiral of all the losses I have experienced along the way—the things I never took the time to grieve before now.
LEARNING TO LET GO
So I let myself miss them. I remind myself that the pain is not evidence that something is wrong, but rather that something has gone beautifully right.
When what I feel is anxiety, I am learning to pause before I act. I ask myself: What do I actually know? Has something happened, or am I filling what I cannot see with fear? When I can, I wait.
I let the wave of anxiety rise, and I notice that it also comes down. Each time I do, I show myself that I can love them, worry about them, and miss them without acting on every feeling those things create.
Perhaps this is where letting go comes in—not with caring less, but with trusting more.
Trusting their judgment. Trusting their ability to read a situation. Trusting that they will recognize when they need help and know where to find it. Trusting that eighteen years of conversations, boundaries, mistakes, consequences, laughter, values, and unconditional love somehow traveled with them.
SETTING THEM FREE
Well, I’ve been afraid of changin’
‘Cause I’ve built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Even children get older
And I’m getting older too
— Stevie Nicks, “Landslide,” Fleetwood Mac
The whistle has blown and they are out there living their lives. And it has me wondering if maybe it is time for me to get back in the game too.
I spent so many years thinking about what loving my children was giving them that I never thought very much about what loving them was doing to me. It stretched me, softened me, and strengthened me. It asked more of me than I knew I could give and somehow increased my capacity to give it.
I will always be a mother first. But their growing up does not mean my growing is finished.
Somewhere in all of this, the whistle blew for me too.
I don’t know exactly what comes next. Right now, some days, all I can see is the empty space. And that is okay. I don’t have to hurry to fill it.
Maybe I just need to stand here long enough to discover that empty and open can look remarkably similar.
Kind of like letting go and setting free.
They can look the same. They can even feel the same. But up close they are very different.
We are not letting go of our children. We are letting go of the ways we once held them. The ways we stepped in. The ways we protected. The ways we guided and carried and knew what came next. Those belong to a time when they needed us differently.
So they can be free! Free to come and go. Free to find their own way. Free to build lives that belong to them.
And through this transition, love remains.
It is not diminished by distance. It does not depend on daily interaction. It does not need to be held tightly to be held deeply.
It lives in us.
It lives in what they carry with them.
It simply is.
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