The summer after my only child had graduated from high school and before she was set to leave home for college, I felt an indecipherable combination of joy, sadness, mystery, longing, triumph and vulnerability. I was also newly remarried. And I had just begun a new career. I was surprised by how disorienting the moment felt, even though everything was “good.”

I struggled to name the sense of loss that came with my child leaving home. Many of my friends were talking not only about how to navigate parenting at this monumental inflection point, but they were also experiencing a low simmer of fear about the threshold they were walking through as mothers, as partners and as a family.

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I found writing was the only wa

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