Learning to let go

When we first become parents, no matter how many books we attempt to read on the subject, or how many inspirational or cautionary videos the modern mum-to-be watches, we're basically unprepared. There's an enormous learning curve to tackle. The biggest difference for me was that suddenly this small person was there sharing every moment of my life! Forget nappies, and feeding, and bedtime routines, it was that physical and emotional bond I was unprepared for. As your child grows that bond gets less  - they go off to nursery, then school, stay over at grandparents for a night, go on gradually longer trips without you, and eventually leave home. Now it's time to let go, and however much you've readied yourself for it, it's another moment for which you're unprepared.
My elder daughter did things gradually - uni years, back home for a while, flats fairly near, eventually ending up further away, but not far.
Younger daughter, after lulling me into a false sense of security by settling back here after a year of uni, upped and offed with barely any notice, and not just round the corner but two hours up the motorway! I'm still trying to recover.
It's no exaggeration to say I've foundered over the past couple of months, but it was only reading her blog that I realised how badly. In this last few weeks, though, I feel I've at last started to come to terms with this new, empty nest, phase of life. It's been helped tremendously by the fact that recently we've seen our daughter a lot - we went up to Manchester when she ran the half-marathon, she came here for the bank holiday weekend, then we went up again for her birthday. Being able to go to Manchester, walk round the area she works in, see the corner shop she uses, the places she eats, makes me more comfortable, and I feel like I'm still sharing her life, at least a bit.

But lovely as it is to see her, I've discovered is that letting go is equally important. I've always tried to not be a control-freak mother, but it's impossible to NOT worry about children - from the early years of are they eating/sleeping/growing properly, through illnesses and exams, to the teenage years, and where they're off to in the evening, or why they're five minutes late coming home. Even when they head off to uni, you're worrying; will they settle, like the course, make friends, remember to do some work inbetween all the partying? Sometime though, they have to stand on their own two feet - and so do us parents!
So, it's time to stop sweating the small stuff. My daughter proved in the first few weeks that she could cope with organising the day to day running of her life - the bills, food, washing etc. It's a hard thing for a parent to admit, but she doesn't actually NEED me anymore; she's a proper grown up adult more than capable of looking after herself.

Once I'd made the decision to let go, I found that not knowing what she's up to every day was quite liberating.  I'm still available on a phone when she wants to share something funny that happened, or for when she thinks I might know the answer to who/where/when/what? quicker than IMDB or Google. But there's no more needing to know everything she does or trying to track down every social media post she makes. Sometimes it's actually helpful to my peace of mind. She's been talking for years about wanting to go sky-diving (the thought of which really freaks me out), and recently she did. Fortunately I didn't know about it till afterwards, so I could just watch the video, in mixed amazement and horror, without having worried for days beforehand, or even having tried to talk her out of it! Sometimes it's better not to know too much.
I don't think we ever 'stop' being parents - I'll always be there for a quick chat or big emergency, but for day to day things we're no longer part of their 'scene'.


Now I need to work on trying to get my own life in order, and master those baby steps - make sure the dusting's done, the ironing pile kept under control, and work on all those half-finished sewing projects littering the house...   and meanwhile, my daughter's coming home next weekend for a local gig :)