Adrian Chiles column on child leaving home

[ColouringPencils]

This article and the lovely comments below the line really moved me today www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/commentisfree/2021/sep/23/proper-sobbing-and-perspective-what-i-learned-when-my-younger-daughter-left-home

Not too many years left before I will be in a similar position, I think of it regularly. And about my parents, whose sadness I never understood at the time.

I dont even really remember anyone being around, I just got in my car & drove off

Did it feel sad doing it alone @HandlebarLadyTash, or just normal for the time?

I remember the strangeness of passing her tidy unoccupied bedroom, DH and I eating meals alone, not being able to check if she'd arrived safely home after a night out......It felt so odd.

I even stand in my DD's empty bedroom when she goes away for the weekend! I genuinely worry how I will cope, I have really built my life around them.

Have a look at the latest post on www.midlifechic.com - very movingly encapsulates this moment

ColouringPencils it was normal for my family, my mum has been living her 'best life' for many years. It's not that she dosent love us she just had many interest & hobbies & freelanced.

I'm 45 & will be gutted when mine leave the eldest is 14 so it's possiblty not even that far.

After all, unless you’re tied to a train track with a freight train approaching there is always someone worse off than you.
I just love that. I feel like I’m the one tied to the train track actually mumbling ‘there’s someone worse off than you.’

Anyway… that’ll be me this weekend, being pulled away from DS’s hall by a snot rope attached to my own wailing wall.

My eldest left much younger than expected, 18, and into a dangerous job working abroad no less. Everyone kept asking if I was ok and that made it worse