As stated a few days ago, the baby boy graduated from High School on Monday, June 3rd. With him being the baby, I do have an older daughter. I’ve been through this rodeo before with the graduating from High School. Unfortunately, the daughter graduated in 2020, the year of Covid. She didn’t have the luxury of having a graduation party, let alone a 2nd half of her Senior year. Like the rest of the world, during what should have been her time, we were all worried about infecting everyone and their mother. That took our attention and I didn’t have the ability to “mourn” the first born starting this new phase of her life.

With the baby boy, I had all the time in the world to feel everything. The anxiety, the worry, the excitement. All the feels. I felt them all. I worry about what his path will entail, how he will handle being on his own, does he get it. Then at the same time, I’m so fucking happy and excited for him to figure it all out and make his own path. For those of you that have gone through this, it is easy to get swept up in the sadness or what I call the loss of the childhood. It can be overwhelming and make you think and rethink things about whether or not you have done enough, prepared enough, etc. The reality is, my kid accomplished what is required of him. He did this. I raised him. Now he gets to fail and succeed.

I’ve always told my kids, make mistakes. Fuck up (within reason) and learn from it. That is what teaches you to be a successful human being. It isn’t what I’ve sheltered him from, what I’ve warned him of, it’s not that. I want him to try something and fail. I want him to not do anything and fail. I could be nuts with this, but that is really what I want him to do. Why you ask? This is the why. When we are uncomfortable we learn the most. We experience emotions, consequences and reactions. We can learn that we don’t like them, we want to know what caused them so we don’t experience them again. Period.

So yeah, I want my baby boy, who by the way, is one of the most amazing humans that I know, to fail and succeed.

With this end of an era, of me being a parent, I now find myself going, “what now?” I don’t have to make sure kids get up for school, paying off the school lunch balance and taking random calls from the school. I’ve been doing this for 22 years and I don’t have to do this anymore. THAT is a little overwhelming and something new to me (obviously). Am I going to sit around and stare at the hubbie all night? I think he’s handsome as hell, but I really don’t want to do that. I’ve already started this blog, and will continue with this for the next 10 months for sure. So that’s a start. But I do know that where there is a will, there is a way. I’ll get there.