Why This and Why Now?

A very good friend and I were sharing over the Internet the other day. Actually, she was providing me with a bit of friend-therapy as I was feeling hopeless about where my life is going these days.
You see, I'm struggling through a part of my mothering experience where I'm having to let go of my adult children emotionally while still having them around physically.

Shortly after the New Year, my oldest son and I found ourselves in almost constant conflict. I realize now it was growing pains and that it needed to happen so that he would move on into his independent 22-year old adult male life. After a particularly painful argument, I ended up telling him that he needed to leave my house. I know now that I only wanted him to be scared enough that he would pay attention to the rules that I had in my household and be more respectful of my wishes. I really didn't think that he'd go. But he did.

I was inconsolable. He wasn't speaking to me and I didn't know where he'd end up. Turns out it was a pretty positive experience as he found out that he was able to secure a place to live on his own, obtain roommates, and support himself. With all those experiences, our relationship revived (albeit in a different way) and morphed into something more comfortable for both of us.

Soon, my 19-year-old son was asking to join his brother outside the house. This I was not prepared for or encouraging. However, I couldn't help but remember when I was 19 and approached my parents to move out on my own. They shot me down in flames, told me that I would never be able to make it work and that the door "only swings one way"...so there was no going back if I found out it was more than I was ready for. With all these things in mind, I realized that I had to let him try out living on his own. Within 2 months, I found my house of 5 reduced to a house of 3, with only my 13-year-old daughter left.

This is how 2009 began as a year of many changes, many learning experiences, many emotional tugs and pulls and a transition that is still taking place for me. I am trying to make sense of who I am in this changing atmosphere and my friend suggested that blogging about it might be both a release and an enlightenment. I hope it becomes both those things, but I also hope that I will find that what I'm going through is not unique and that there will be others out there who will share survival techniques, tactics, and anecdotes with me that will help me move through this passage to a place where I can truly say "Que sera, sera....whatever will be, will be..."