On My Way Home

August 24, 2026

Last night, I couldn’t settle down.

I was tired. It had been a full few days in Colorado with my sister and Desiree, getting Desiree moved into her room and spending time together before I headed home.

I knew I was going home today.

I knew what was waiting for me there.

An empty house.

For the first time in my adult life, none of my children would be living there.

But I don’t think I had really let myself feel what that meant yet.

Instead, my brain wouldn’t stop.

My thoughts bounced from one thing to another, mostly things that had absolutely nothing to do with what was actually happening. I could feel an uneasiness in my chest. I was anxious. Restless. I had trouble sleeping. Tears kept sitting right at the surface.

I knew I was feeling something.

I just didn’t know what.

This morning, I packed my things and we headed for the Denver airport.

As the airport got closer, whatever I had been feeling started getting stronger.

The pressure in my chest.

The uneasiness.

The tears.

Something in my body seemed to know exactly what was happening even though my brain hadn’t caught up yet.

And then we got to the airport.

It surged.

All of those strange feelings from the night before seemed to rise to the surface at once.

And finally, I understood.

I was sad.

I was going home.

Alone.

For the first time in more than two decades, I was getting on an airplane to go home and none of my children lived there anymore.

I was going home to an empty house.

Over the last couple of weeks, I drove across the country with Jack and moved him into his college dorm. Then my sister and Desiree joined me in Colorado, and we spent the next few days together before helping Desiree get settled into her room for another year of college.

One by one, my children had gone back to their own lives.

Exactly as they are supposed to.

And now I was the one leaving.

My sister was still with me at the airport, so once I understood what was happening, I talked to her about it.

At some point, I asked her to tell me something I apparently needed very badly to hear.

Tell me I did a good job raising my kids.

She told me I did.

And I thanked her.

Because my sister has been an integral part of their childhoods. She has loved them, supported them, shown up for them, and helped create the family that surrounded them as they grew.

And there is something particularly meaningful about being able to have that conversation with her.

My sister and I share a particular kind of pain from our own childhood.

We know abandonment.

We know trauma.

We know what it is like to grow up not really knowing whether you are loved, whether you are worth caring for, whether you are worthy at all.

And standing on the other side of raising my own children, we could recognize something extraordinary.

My kids don’t carry that pain.

Not because I was a perfect mother.

I wasn’t.

Their childhood wasn’t perfect either.

But my children know they are loved.

They know they matter.

They know their mom shows up.

They know they have a family that is interested in their lives, celebrates them, worries about them, annoys them, helps them, laughs with them, and loves them fiercely.

Then my sister told me something.

Each of my children, separately, has told her that I am their favorite person.

Well.

That didn’t exactly help with the tears.

But maybe the tears aren’t something that needs helping.

Maybe this is what it feels like to arrive at the end of something beautiful and realize that you did it.

I raised three children through my own pain and mistakes and enormous life changes, mostly on my own.

I couldn’t rewrite my own childhood.

But I could give my children something different.

I could make sure the pain my sister and I carried wasn’t simply handed down untouched to another generation.

And I did.

That realization brings a kind of pride that is difficult to put into words.

Pride in the people my children are becoming, certainly.

But also pride in myself.

There is so much excitement in what comes next for me.

I have been waiting for this chapter. I have plans and dreams and possibilities. There are things I want to build, places I want to go, and parts of myself I am excited to discover when motherhood is no longer organizing the rhythms of my everyday life.

And today, I am sad.

I am going home to a quiet house.

I haven’t even walked through the door yet, and already I can feel the absence of the lives that once filled it.

There is nothing I need to do with that feeling.

I don’t need to talk myself out of it because I am excited about what comes next. I don’t need to turn the sadness into gratitude or remind myself how lucky I am.

I can just be sad.

Last night my body knew that before I did.

Now I know, too.

And I also know something about feelings that I didn’t always know.

They come.

I feel them.

I recognize them for what they are.

And eventually, they pass.

This one will, too.

But right now, I’m sitting at the Denver airport, waiting for my flight.

And I’m sad to go home.