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The Mothering Muscle

Does this feeling ever go away?

Laura DeMaisBerg
Crow’s Feet: Life As We Age
5 min readDec 1, 2024

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Hand holding a yellow maple leaf with a heart cut out with green trees in the back
Photo by Anthony Intraversato on Unsplash

About a year and half ago I started a practice to tame my nerves as my daughter Lucia, then almost 18, was preparing to leave for college. My mind was full of to-dos and my heart-rate was irregular as thoughts of our impending separation sent jolts of fear and worry through my body.

I wasn’t able to soothe myself. I really tried to temper my nagging, my nostalgia and my sadness, but the thoughts and feelings somersaulted out of me to poor Lucia. The intensity of it all was making her want to hide from me; it was wrecking our last few months of togetherness before she left for college.

I was desperate for some way to contain my worries. I needed an arena where I could battle out my resistance to Lucia’s growing up. I’ve always written Lucia letters and poems for her birthdays and big milestones. Writing down all the things I know and love about her and sharing it in words is a way to celebrate her and it also gives me a sense of release and comfort.

At that time, I started a daughter-journal, a book of pages where I’d write letters to Lucia but I would spare her the reading of them. These letters would be for me, a way to comfort myself by bearing witness to my own worries instead of piling them onto her. I wrote every day for months. I wrote until she left for college and I wrote…

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Crow’s Feet: Life As We Age
Crow’s Feet: Life As We Age

Published in Crow’s Feet: Life As We Age

“The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes.” (Frank Lloyd Wright) Non-fiction pieces, personal essays and occasional poems that explore how we feel about how we age and offer tips for getting the most out of life.

Laura DeMaisBerg
Laura DeMaisBerg

Written by Laura DeMaisBerg

I write about seemingly mundane experiences that are relatable because we are human. Subscribe on Substack to get my stories directly: lauramc.sub-stack.com

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