Holding On and Letting Go

Every day, I'm letting go of my children. Letting go of who they were yesterday to make space for who they are today. Allowing them to change, grow, and develop naturally without clinging to their past selves. Recognizing that the interest in pirates or sharks never completely disappears, it's transformed into a new interest. With each change, they leave something behind, but carry other things forward in a new form.

I'm developing the wisdom to know what to hold on to. I don't need to cling to what they loved to when they were little, because it is alive in their current interests. My own open interest in their interests lets me see the same joy and passion that drove them to spend entire days creating structures in the sandbox, setting up dinosaur worlds, or making stop-motion animation stories show up now in new ways.

So I hold on, not to the form their interests, friendships, and relationship with me used to take, but to the essential nature of those things. I remind myself to start fresh and open to who they are today.

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