While this site serves mostly as a placeholder now, this moment compels me to reconnect with you here, on what began as a mom blog. Click here to listen, or continue reading below.
Breathe deeply and slowly
Settle into this moment
Wrap your arms around yourself and imagine hugging your child, the one about to launch
Picture them as an infant or toddler
Maybe rock back and forth remembering what it felt like to carry them – in your womb, in your arms, or on your back – the weight of them when they were small, and heavy with responsibility. When they were ours to keep safe, clean, and fed. They filled our days and our very selves far past capacity. Peas in a pod. Sometimes more than we could stand to bear, yet never ever enough.
Feel their weight in your arms; the memory of a baby, and now likely a person as big or far bigger than you. Breathe deeply and slowly. Imagine both kinds of hugs. The baby hug and the grown kid hug, too.
Now place your hands on your heart. Remember sending them off to school for the very first time? We told them they were ready and not to be scared, while our own lip trembled. We let this tiny child take one step away from us and into a new world; one we couldn’t oversee, control, or even participate in most of the time. Can you recall your fear? Your resistance? And also the delicious nervous new freedom, away from that adorable weight?
Widen the lens of your memory. See your kid happily engaged with dinosaurs or dress-up, or sitting with a book on the rug, content when they didn’t know you were watching. Delighted, on their own.
It broke your heart when they lost that baby lisp or figured out how to say hamburger instead of hangabur. Recall too the absolute miracle of watching them learn to read, to make friends, to flip on and zip the coat, or tie the shoe their very own self!
Your child’s world cracked open. With, and so importantly, without you.
Think of all the activities- the sports sidelines we sat on, the recitals, the school festivals. Remember the playmates and families your child brought into your lives; the teachers, coaches, caregivers, neighbors. Your child’s world cracked open and became an ever-widening circle. The people came and gathered around you and your child, to celebrate birthdays and holidays, family dinners, playdates. Moments small and pinnacle, sacred and profane too, all the near-misses and things you’d rather forget. Like after the pediatrician drew a picture of a healthy plate with protein and vegetables, and my kid shrugged and told her he mostly ate tortilla chips.
Elementary school became middle school, then high school. Friendships forged and fizzled. Personas tried on and discarded, both parent and child. Bazillions of meals, chores, permission slips, power struggles, consequences, accidents, hurts heals laughter tears gaming hours texts puberty talks karate belts driving lessons.
Then the world stopped in a sudden spasm. Let’s take another deep slow breath and remember this, too (inhale, exhale). The colorful complex world we built, for and with our child, constricted like a camera shutter. We had to feel our way, with no idea toward what or for how long. Peas in a pod. Days filled with work zooms and remote learning, board games and walks, death and profound losses with no way to process them , friction and frustration and fear, despair, near hopelessness, and also quality time.
Quiet conversations. New appreciations. Nature and baking and so much streaming content. We all tried to make it work. We all worked and did our best to try. Some felt sane for the first time, and discovered a healing cocoon, a reprieve from rigidity and schedules.
Some bonds strengthened. We lived through the unthinkable and figured it out. Siblings became friends. Many miracles happened. A Vaccine!
We got to reopen. Life picked up again. Back to now.
Let’s breathe in now, deeply and slowly.
Take your hands off your heart and let them free by your arms or in your lap. Stretch out your fingers and toes and feel the space between them.
Your child is ready to launch, or in the launching will become ready. They get to expand again. Our family isn’t, in fact, shrinking. Its camera shutter is constricting momentarily, preparing to open anew.
Remember, when the world cracks open, the circle expands and the love grows. The love keeps growing. Consider the matriarchs of your family past and present; all the cousins and aunties and babies and people everywhere, with dishes to pass. You left your home and brought new people back with you. You added love to your family–immeasurable love. They had to let you go first. The new faces and facets of your child’s life are awaiting them now.
Remember when you’d ask your child “Do you know how much I love you?” You’d stretch your arms as wide as possible, and it was never ever big enough. Stretch them wide now. Make room for all the love you haven’t even met yet. So many hugs are waiting
Breathe in. Breathe out.
I no longer blog, but my work continues. You can find more meditations and writings that offer hope in my coaching newsletter. Subscribe here.
