Letting Go: Graduation, Family, and New Beginnings
I try every day to notice things to be thankful for and to find the positives in life. When I can choose to laugh or cry, I almost always choose laughter. That outlook helps me through most days, but there are moments that still ache.
Some realities are especially hard to accept—my mother’s dementia, and the bittersweet absence of family members who now live in Heaven. Those losses sit heavy in my heart. Sometimes laughter must wait and I give myself permission to grieve.
Another hard truth revealed itself to me a couple of years ago, on the day this little boy finished high school:
That boy was our oldest son, Brad. I rarely write about parenting here—not because it isn’t important, but because it’s so personal and complicated that I don’t feel qualified to give advice. Still, I hope I do my best.
I love my three boys with everything I have. When they first boarded the bus for kindergarten, I wasn’t the kind of mother who went home and sobbed. I believed then, and still do, that children should grow, learn, and experience life beyond home.
I didn’t realize the tougher part of parenting would come years later, on graduation day. Watching your children move into adulthood means learning to let go. It’s a slow, stretching process that tightens like a knot in your chest.
Two years after Brad’s graduation, our second oldest also reached that milestone.
Joel. Once again I felt that wrenching mix of pride and sorrow as the reality of letting go became clear.
Letting go means releasing a precious chapter: the era when our home held five people together every day. It means stepping back and trusting that the lessons we’ve shared—about kindness, hard work, resilience, faith, and responsibility—will help them face the real world.
Letting go also means saying goodbye to predictable routines and nightly conversations, to the small, ordinary moments that once defined our days.
That goodbye is the hardest part. It keeps me awake at night and turns my stomach. But when I dry my tears and look more closely, I see that letting go is also a reason to celebrate.
It’s a celebration of memories we created together, of milestones reached and lessons learned. It’s a celebration of new beginnings: of striking out on their own, meeting new people, discovering new paths, and learning fresh truths about themselves and the world.
This week we turned that pain into a celebration: a graduation party full of hugs, photos, and laughter. I wiped my tears away and focused on joy—on the gratitude I feel for having had these young men under our roof, for the privilege of guiding them, and for the promise of the future before them.
Congratulations, Joel. We have been blessed beyond words by your presence in our lives. For a few brief hours you were even named Brett Alan, but you became Joel Mark, and I can’t imagine it any other way.
And a note of levity: my boys have a knack for growing facial hair. Just hours after one little photo shoot, Joel shaved his beard off. Do we need to take more pictures now that he’s clean-shaven? Probably—because these moments are worth holding on to, even as we learn to let go.
