The Last Summer Before College: Paying Attention, Not Holding On

There's an exhaustion that comes with standing in the in-between. Not where you were, not yet where you're going — just watching your child live in two timelines while you try to stay rooted in one. Suddenly you're crying over a backpack in the hallway or an empty cereal bowl on the counter, and it makes no logical sense. But you're not crying over a backpack. You're crying over time — over kindergarten and graduation existing in the same heartbeat. This is what it feels like to be a woman in midlife standing at the edge of something that will never look quite the same again.

Here's the reframe: this ache isn't only about your child leaving. For years, motherhood has been one of the organizing forces of your life — your routines, your identity, your purpose. So when that role starts to shift, it makes sense that something else stirs alongside the grief. Not instead of it. Alongside it. This season isn't only loss. It's also a return — to curiosity, to questions you've postponed, to the parts of yourself that waited patiently while you tended to everyone else. That's midlife identity work in its quietest form: realizing the ache is pointing you back toward yourself, not just away from who you're losing.

So here's the doable action, the one small step: stop trying to hold on to the chapter, and start paying attention to it instead. Holding on comes from fear. Paying attention comes from love. Ask yourself — what is one ordinary moment right now that I may someday miss? Then don't rush past it. Stay there a little longer. This is returning to yourself, one small, doable action at a time. You are not broken. You are not failing. You are simply finding your way back — to your child's becoming, and to your own.