I almost didn’t write this.
Not because it isn’t important — but because it’s still tender. Still close. Still something I’m sitting with in the quiet of my morning meditations.
But I think that’s exactly why I need to share it.
Because I know I’m not the only one carrying something like this.
This Mother’s Day was hard.
My oldest son is 19. In October he made the decision to move out and live with his other parent permanently. It was a decision that came with a lot of hurt — and since October I’ve seen him a handful of times.
My middle son is 17 and is about to graduate from high school. My youngest is 14. We are in the middle of a massive transition in our family — the kind where you can feel the shape of everything shifting beneath your feet and you’re not quite sure yet what it’s going to look like on the other side.
The night before Mother’s Day I texted my oldest.
“Hey. I love you and miss you. Tomorrow is Mother’s Day — I would love to see you.”
He texted back: “Sorry I can’t make it. I have to work all day.”
No alternative. No maybe after. No can we do something later this week.
Just — he couldn’t make it.
And I won’t pretend that didn’t hurt. It did. It hurt deeply.
Mother’s Day morning I woke up and went straight to my meditation.
And I fell apart.
I shed a lot of tears. I sat with the ache of it — the distance, the silence, the gap between what I had hoped for and what was actually happening.
And at one point I want to be honest with you because I think someone needs to hear this — I had a thought that went something like:
Why is there this hideous day to remind me of this ginormous hole in my heart.
That was the thought. Raw and real and not at all the version of myself I aspire to be — but completely, honestly human.
I let myself feel it. I didn’t try to fix it or spiritually bypass it or remind myself to be grateful.
I just felt it.
And then I got myself together and went to be with my family.
Later that day my middle son showed up at my aunt’s house.
He had two cards. One from him — and one from his older brother.
I opened my oldest son’s card.
I read every word of it. How he’s always been able to count on me. How he knows I’m always there. What a wonderful mother I’ve been to him.
And at the very end, in his own handwriting:
“I’m always thankful for you.”
I held it together in that moment. I smiled. I tucked it away.
But the next morning — Monday — I was back in my meditation.
Sitting with everything from the day. Letting my feelings move through me.
And I took out the card and read it again.
Every single word.
And this time it landed differently.
Because I realized something I hadn’t seen the day before.
He took the time to write that. He didn’t have to add anything. He could have just signed his name. But he didn’t. He wrote something real and something true and something that came from a place inside him that loves me — even when the distance between us makes that hard to see.
He just doesn’t give and receive love the same way I do.
And that — that — is not a reflection of who I am as his mother.
Here’s the aha moment I want to share with you.
With my youngest son I’ve had years of opportunities to untangle my worth from his experience. Years of learning to separate who I am from what he was going through. Years of unlearning the part of me that used to ask — what does this mean about me? What kind of mother does this make me?
I’ve done that work with him. Deeply and intentionally.
But I hadn’t done it yet with my older two.
This Mother’s Day was my invitation to begin.
To untangle my worth from my oldest son’s choices. To release the expectation that love has to look a certain way to be real. To allow my boys — all three of them — to spread their wings, to grow into the men they are becoming, to pull away in the ways that growing up requires —
And to let none of that mean anything about the mother I have been and continue to be.
Because here is what I know:
When your children leave — when they pull away, when they push back, when they show love in ways that don’t match what you expected — that is not evidence of your failure.
It is evidence that you gave them everything they needed to go out into the world.
The goal was never for them to stay small and close forever.
The goal was always for them to become.
And they are becoming.
And so am I.
I’m sharing this because I know I’m not alone in this season.
Maybe your children are grown and the distance between you is something you carry quietly. Maybe you’re in the middle of watching them leave and wondering what it means. Maybe you’ve tied your worth to someone else’s behavior — a child, a partner, a parent — and you’re exhausted from the weight of it.
This is the work.
Not the Reiki. Not the sessions. Not the programs.
This — right here. The untangling. The releasing. The choosing to let love be what it actually is rather than what we need it to look like.
That’s the remembering.
And it’s available to all of us. In the middle of the mess. In the tender places. In the Monday morning meditations where we fall apart before we find our way through.
You are not alone in this. 🌿
If this resonated and you want more writing like this — I send letters straight from my heart to my email list every week. No fluff. No strategy. Just real. I’d love to have you there.
