Letting Go

Here’s this week’s reflection. I hope it resonates with you and ask that, if you enjoyed, please comment and share on your social media. Heartfelt thanks for all your support!

Keeping the light on for you,

Carol

Recent conversations with each of my twenty-two-year-old twin daughters revealed the (glaringly) obvious: it’s time for me to let go. Even with their gaps in logic for a variety of adult tasks they’ve yet to experience, we parental units are no longer deemed worthy of input. 

I knew this day was coming. It inevitably does. Overall, parenthood has been a great ride. Yet now we are all in transition. And some days it’s just plain hard to navigate.

Our road to parenthood began with no tangible success on our own. Next came infertility treatments, during which the road to pregnancy is anything but kind. So when success happens, as it blessedly did for us, you guard it with your life – literally. Protecting that (multiple) pregnancy becomes an all-consuming experience that naturally fertile couples thankfully don’t have to endure. Yes, all pregnancies require an ever-watchful eye, but for those who have suffered infertility, it’s a new level of hell. And letting these precious gifts fly into adulthood may be wrought with a bit more angst –a lot more angst to be precise– for their personal safety, wisdom, and well-being. At least for the one who carried them successfully to their 35^th week of gestation. 

I rarely talk about our road to parenthood for a number of reasons. Healthcare is an amazing field with frequent breakthroughs, but there are some parts that just aren’t pretty. Infertility treatment is one of them. It’s therefore no surprise that such parents may enfold their children a bit more completely. I certainly have, and I pray not to their detriment. It was quite an arduous climb, after all, to reach that summit.

My husband and I have held on for the ride, if only by a thread at times, while raising two amazing humans. We have nurtured to the best of our abilities and sometimes fallen short. But at the end of the day, all that holding must eventually be relinquished. And now, it is time to loosen the grasp. 

It’s scary. I won’t lie. It raises our blood pressures more than occasionally. But we Must. Let. Go. Even despite the angst employed to conceive and bring two beautiful daughters to fruition in the first place. It’s clearly a motherhood issue; carrying two tiny humans will do that to you. Let it be known: I officially apologize to our daughters who endured an overly-anxious mother because of her personal struggles with conception. 

Seeing your kids morph into adulthood is heartwarming, hilarious, and terrifying. Have they really listened all these years?  Will they ever care enough to sort laundry, pick up after themselves, and think beyond an egocentric universe? Are they indeed equipped to navigate this world? Every generation of parents has its worries and ours is no exception. 

Our daughters are successfully charting their own unique, productive paths for which my husband and I are proud. However, a distinct transition for we three females has now surfaced. If I am completely honest, we ladies have always transitioned together (imagine puberty colliding with menopause). And while we might scrap at times (we are women, after all, and while two is company, three can be a definite crowd), there is still communication. Sometimes spotty, at times free flowing. But it’s there. I would like to think words will help bridge whatever troubled waters attempt to flood us with interpersonal scorn. 

Letting go is difficult, yet critical work. 2024 will be another journey of discovery watching a pair of young adults take flight and further themselves from the nest. At 18, they felt the onset of emancipation. And now with their wings fully unfurled, it’s an exciting time –even for me, despite my nerves. As parents, we don’t need to accompany them through every pocket of turbulence. We can gratefully remain watchful from below, tracking the direction and destinations of their flights. Another rhythm of existence has (politely?) cut in as a new dance partner, and I have firmly (and to my daughters’ delight, finally) chosen to sway with, not against this new tune of the future. 

Happy New Year, dear readers! May this year offer us all the opportunity and strength to relinquish what may be standing in the way of our growth.