Love/Hate

Does anyone else have a love hate with this time of year? Today my emotions were all over the place. Super excited for Eva to do her morning orientation for middle school. And this next chapter for her. She had a great morning.

But the non-stop articles about kids going off to college and how sad parents are that are clogging up my facebook feed are also making me so depressed.

I have been there and done that. Twice. And it still can creep up on me and feel pretty raw. I miss the way things used to be. A lot. And the time I get to spend with my older kids is so much shorter now and goes by so fast.

But then last night I was reading Austin’s essays for med school and I got really happy and excited for his future. Because we raise our kids to give them wings and let them fly. It means I did my job.

I will never forget when I was rocking Austin when he was a baby and reading an article in Mothering magazine. It was about a mom who was really struggling with her young child at the grocery store and a man looked at her and said, “My daughter was like that yesterday. Today I dropped her off at Ohio State”. I started sobbing. One for the local reference but mainly because I just KNEW it was going to fly by. And it did.

And now as he waits to hear back from med schools my heart is bouncing around all over the place. But at the end of the day I am ok with that. It’s ok to be honest and let myself feel sad for a bit. But it’s also ok to avoid facebook until those stupid articles stop and go out and enjoy my day knowing I did what I was supposed to do.