Letting Go by Kerry Campbell
I’m forty-eight years old and for the first summer in decades, neither of my two children will be living with me. There would have been a time when the mere thought of this reality would have brought such heaviness to my heart and an almost literal panic to my mind, but that is not the case today. The lessons I’ve learned in the last several years of parenting and the road that God has tenderly walked with me have revealed truths I wish I had understood and accepted from the start - it would have saved me so much pain, but today I’m grateful for the chance to share them with you: mother to mother, heart to heart.
I raised my son and daughter in the height of the popularity of what is now known as helicopter parenting, though we didn’t call it that then. Instead, it was generally accepted that this style of parenting was just what ‘good mothers’ did: we scheduled the activities, we arranged the playdates, we advocated for our kids to get ‘the right teacher’ or on ‘the right team’. We led the enrichment activities, coached the teams, volunteered at school and all the places. Our snacks were both creative and nutritious, their toys and books both fun and developmentally sound. As an easily identified group of similarly parented children in town, our kids were bright, successful, churchgoing, (mostly) polite, and they knew unequivocally just how much they were loved by their parents.
There was a whole lot of good that came from that kind of parenting but as you can imagine, when it came time for the kids to take the reins of their own lives and to make their own decisions, it could be complicated, too. We had invested so much time, energy, and care, and even big chunks of our own identities, so the idea of letting these kids go was hard to say the least.
The period of time of late-teens-to-early-twenties can be a crucible, for the kids themselves and for their parents alike. If you call to mind your own young adulthood, you’ll likely remember the many people and activities that colored that time of your life. And maybe you’ll shake your head at the things you survived, both literally and figuratively. You may stand back astonished at the lessons you’ve learned since then, the arc of the growth and maturity of a life that comes only through time and experience, often through suffering.
Our generation of parents appeared to have a shared but unspoken belief that was mixed into the batter of all of our investment of time and care over the years: if we work hard enough at this, our children will not ever have to suffer. Ever. It was foolish, and I never heard it said aloud because it was likely an unconscious belief, but it’s unmistakably clear as I look back that this goal of the avoidance of suffering on the part of our kids was a huge motivator for our generation of parents.
It seems to be true that, over time, children team up with God in a precisely designed training program for parents with the goal of helping us to finally let them go. And this may sound like a joke, but honestly, it really did seem that way to me at the time. My kids are wonderful, but at a certain point I realized they weren’t always going to choose the things, teachings, and practices that I would choose for them even if these were, from my way of thinking, clearly the best and most logical things, the things most likely to help them craft a happy, fruitful, and successful life. That each of my children may choose varied elements or a different path from the one I methodically planned out for them when they were three seems elemental and head-shakingly obvious, but it was a truth I’d have to learn to accept over time.
My advice to you, friend, is to cooperate with that process sooner rather than later. Our children are gifts from a loving God, and they came to us with a whole host of traits, interests, talents, and challenges. Helping them to find their own road and to cheer them on as they walk on it in health and independence is perhaps the greatest gift you could ever give them. As your ideas and dreams for them may fade from view, you’ll find even better ones taking their place in the lives of your adult children. After all, they had a great foundation, and the sky really is the limit for our kids, so my best advice to you is to let them soar in whatever God has for them; entrust your kids to Him.
At a certain point, I found that entrusting my kids to God was a practice that I needed to, well, practice. I find beautiful symbolism in visualizing my children in prayer and in “handing them over” to God through Mary, who knows better than most about how to let beloved children go. In daily prayer, I have entrusted them to Mary as their mother wherever they find themselves and I have to say – she’s doing a great job. Both of my kids are thriving and happy, learning and growing into their lives in cities we love to visit. If we as mothers can hold our children and all of our gifts with open hands instead of closed fists, we will experience more grace, peace, and in practical terms, so much more blessing than we could ask or imagine from a limitless God whose very nature is giving. From mother to mother, I promise you it’s so.
Fundamentally speaking, the letting go of grown children will necessitate your acceptance of both their failures and victories as quintessentially “theirs” and in my life this looks like: no college stickers on my car from their schools, no facebook posts of their specific vocational or educational accomplishments, and no brag posts of them with their partners (especially hard when you love them, I assure you!). No, those days are done. My kids’ lives are their own, and I’m better for it. Today I’m planting new seeds in my own life and watering my own garden. I’m planning travel with my husband and with friends during this year before I turn fifty. I’ve poured myself into the production of a new podcast called Raised Catholic. I’m getting back to running, learning a lot through therapy, setting new goals, taking care of myself, and taking the reins of my own life for the first time in far too long. And friend, it’s good.
This year I’ve grown attached to a certain parish’s virtual mass and the beautiful homilies of its pastor in the city where my son lives, and my family gathered there for an early Mother’s Day present to say a prayer before we headed out to dinner. As we stood there just the four of us at St. Cecilia’s, I found myself overwhelmed at the Providence of God, how the good seeds I’ve planted have grown in my kids in ways I may not have expected or planned at the time, but which are more beautiful than I could have realized. Enjoying time with adult children is a particular blessing – as you see your babies turn slowly into friends, as you look look around a space or a table and feel your common bond, the shared experience that no other soul on earth could know, you’ll feel your heart filling at the kindness of it all. As you watch them and cheer from the sidelines as they explore their precious lives with all of the ups and downs, highs and lows, and all of the grace and light that comes in through both, you’ll know for sure that they are held in a Love that’s bigger than all of us and like me, you may bow your head in humility and thanks.
As it turns out, He loved them more and knew them more than we did the whole time. Oh Moms, we couldn’t ask for more.
