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The first time I realised I might be different from other mothers, we were standing in a driveway on prom night.
Our children were dressed up, awkward and beautiful, posing for photographs before heading off to dinner. I was chatting with another mum about university plans, where her son was looking, where my daughter was considering.
She mentioned a school in Florida her son was thinking about, a local community college her daughter might attend. Then she said, almost wistfully, “Honestly, I hope they both decide to stay here. I’d be perfectly happy if they never left home.”
I remember nodding politely and thinking, why on earth wouldn’t they leave?
I love my daughter. Fiercely. I am proud of her independence, her ambition, her willingness to move eight hours away and build a life entirely her own. But I have never quite understood the desire to keep her close simply because it makes me feel better.
When her final year of school approached, other mothers spoke about the coming emptiness as though it were a tragedy. They asked if I was ready. If I would cry. If I would miss her terribly. I smiled and said I would miss her, which is true, but I did not feel devastation. I felt readiness.
I have always believed children are meant to leave. Not because we want rid of them, but because we have raised them to stand.
When the time came, we drove her up, helped her move into her dorm, and drove home. She was happy. We were happy. It felt exactly as it ought to. She has since chosen to stay at university over the summer rather than come home, and some people seem to expect me to be heartbroken about that. I find I’m not particularly. She is building her life. That is rather the point.
I did not build my entire identity around motherhood. I did not centre my world on her schedule or her presence. Even when she was young, I encouraged sleep-away camps and independence. She thrived. So did we.
I sometimes look at mothers who struggle enormously when their children leave and find myself quietly wondering about them. Whether they have poured so much of themselves into their children that they no longer quite know what they are without them. Whether they don’t entirely trust their children to get on without them. And for those who are married, I find myself wondering quietly about their husbands. Surely an empty house has its appeal.
I don’t say any of that out loud, of course.
Loving your child and being ready for them to go are not opposites. They can exist quite comfortably side by side. Pride does not always look like tears. Sometimes it looks like dropping them off, driving home, and feeling nothing but glad for them.
— Kate
I used to assume that if I ever had a daughter, she would be like me. Quiet. Independent. Capable of sorting through her own problems without much fuss.
Instead, I was given a girl who feels everything.
She cries at sad films. At kind gestures. At disappointment. At things I would have simply swallowed and moved on from without a second thought. She talks through her worries. Replays conversations. Questions herself in ways that leave me genuinely tired just from listening.
For years, if I’m honest, I mistook our differences for weaknesses. Hers, not mine.
I didn’t understand the drama of secondary school friendships. I didn’t understand the tears over boys who hadn’t earned them. I didn’t understand the anxiety over marks when she was already doing well. At her age, my friendships were uncomplicated, mostly boys and very little emotion. I got on with things, and when I grew bored, I simply disengaged. Life felt rather straightforward. I assumed everyone found it so.
Hers does not.
She sets impossibly high standards for herself. All top marks or nothing. Certainty or failure. Love or rejection. Very little middle ground. I encourage her. I reassure her. I tell her she is more than capable. Sometimes she believes me. Often she doesn’t, and I have learned not to take that personally.
And somewhere along the way, I had to sit with something I hadn’t particularly wanted to admit: that just because I don’t experience the world the way she does doesn’t mean her way of moving through it is wrong. It is simply different from mine. That sounds straightforward enough written down. It took longer to actually believe.
She is in her second year at university now, eight hours away. Brave enough to build a life far from home. Strong enough to navigate things I never had to. Sensitive enough to care deeply when others might not even notice.
I am proud of her. Not because she is like me. But because she isn’t.
Perhaps that is the quiet work of raising a daughter, even for those of us who never quite felt the instinct the way others seem to. Not shaping her into who you would have been, but standing steady while she becomes who she already is. Still learning her, even now. And I suspect she is still working me out as well.
— Kate
Kate Alderwick 