Letting Go

I have an adult daughter “H” who recently returned from a full year abroad immersed in a foreign language and culture.  “Reverse culture shock” is a term used to describe the experience of returning home and discovering that “I do not fit in the way I used to”.  It can be surprising, confusing and overwhelming, and my daughter had shared some of her experience with this reality. 

The night my husband and I dropped H off back at her “home” college, I found myself tossing and turning.  I tried all my usual tricks to get myself back to sleep and nothing would work.  I was ruminating on all the things that would/could/should occur as the result of H’s re-entry into her world. Then I found myself generating all sorts of possibilities and options that might make the would/could/should scenarios somehow “better”.  Sometime later I finally realized that while I was focused on resolving “discomfort”, the discomfort was actually about ME, rather than about H.  Here I was trying to rescue her from circumstances that were entirely her own, and from which she never asked me to find solutions.  Ugghhh.

Letting go is something I have never been good at.  I know that it is important for me to actually let go. It is equally important that others know I can let go.  Nobody wants a mother who is overbearing and I don’t want to be overbearing.   When I do that, I usually end up carrying burdens that were never mine - to carry or fix!  I am honored to be invited into conversations, be there for the joy and the pain, and generally be a cheerleading presence on the sidelines of my daughter’s life.   I have long understood that my kids were gifted to me by the universe.  I do not own them.

If you are someone who has just seen a family member or someone you love off to something new in their lives, let go and let them go.  Be supported by other friends and family as you experience this transition in your own way.

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