The Challenge of Letting Go
“Letting your children enter the big wide world should be about them and their welfare. It should not be about you!”
Keep Your Children Close by Letting Go
When my children left home to go to university I suffered excesses of empty nest syndrome. Whilst I knew that my girls needed the freedom and space to be themselves, make mistakes and live their own lives, I struggled to allow it.
At the time it felt like I was being demoted out of my children’s lives. What I am now able to see, at least a little more clearly, is that I was actually being promoted. Rather than teacher, coach and supervisor I had become more of silent partner, managing director or board member. I was wishing to micro-manage whereas I should have been overseeing and reaping the benefits of this more supervisory, strategic and less hands on role.
Promotions are the result of working hard, significant investment in time and energy, and long term commitment to producing an excellent end product. At the risk of extending the metaphor too far my end product was two wonderful ‘almost’ grown up women who were equipped to face the world.
It is only now that I am beginning to realise that I had struggled to let go because I hadn’t…
