I Miss Her Already

This morning, I woke up and walked into my daughter Greta’s room.

Her window was open, and the blind was up just enough that I could see the light was keeping her from sleeping. So I walked over, shut the window, adjusted the blind, and tried to make the room a little darker for her.

Such an ordinary thing.

And then it occurred to me:

This might be the last morning I ever walk into her room and do something like that.

I leave for Burning Man tomorrow. While I’m gone, Greta is expected to move out of our home.

And suddenly, it hit me like a brick wall.

She’s leaving.

My last child is leaving home.

I don’t think I had allowed myself to really feel it until this morning.

There have been plenty of ways I’ve tried to make this transition into something positive. Maybe the distance will be good for us. Maybe living apart will give us room to find each other differently. Maybe this is exactly what is supposed to happen.

All of those things may be true.

But today, my heart hurts.

Today, I miss her.

And if I’m being completely truthful, I feel like I have always missed her.

There has always been something complicated about trying to connect with this woman who is, in so many ways, the closest woman in the world to me.

All I have ever wanted to do is love her.

And yet love between mothers and daughters isn’t always simple.

As I sat with the reality of her leaving, my mind immediately began traveling backward.

What could I have done differently?

What could I have done better?

Could I have been more present?

Could we have been closer?

There is something almost cruel about motherhood in hindsight. When you’re in the middle of raising children, so much of it is exhausting. There are meals to make, emotions to regulate, places to be, arguments to navigate, laundry to do, and a thousand invisible things being carried at once.

And then one day, you would give almost anything to have one of those ordinary days back.

I find myself missing even the difficult years when both of my children were little.

Of all the memories I have, one of the simplest is also one of my favorites.

Nap time.

I would lie between the two of them while they slept.

At the time, I probably thought about everything I needed to do once they woke up. I couldn’t possibly have understood that someday I would ache to be back in that bed, with two little bodies beside me, when my entire world could still fit within the reach of my arms.

Maybe that’s one of the quiet heartbreaks of motherhood.

We don’t know when something is happening for the last time.

The last time they crawl into our bed.

The last time we carry them.

The last time they reach for our hand without thinking.

The last time we tuck them in.

The last time we walk into their childhood bedroom and close the blind because the morning light is keeping them asleep.

And beneath my sadness today is something even more vulnerable.

Fear.

After all the personal work I have done, there is still a part of me wondering:

Will she want to come home?

Will she want to visit me?

Will she want a relationship with me when she no longer has to have one?

Not a relationship based on obligation. Not something transactional. Not because I am her mother and therefore we are supposed to be connected.

I want her to let me love her.

And underneath even that is an old, familiar question:

Am I lovable enough to be chosen?

It amazes me that after all these years, all this healing, all this awareness, we can still find ourselves standing at the doorway of some ancient wound.

Maybe healing doesn’t mean those places disappear.

Maybe it means we can finally recognize them while we’re standing inside them.

Today, I can recognize the frightened part of me that wants reassurance that my daughter will come back.

And I can also recognize the mother in me who knows that my job was never to make her stay.

It was to help her leave.

That may be one of the most painful contradictions of motherhood.

From the moment our children are born, we begin preparing them to need us less.

Their first steps carry them away from us.

Their first day of school takes them a little farther.

Then driving.

Graduation.

Adulthood.

Moving out.

We celebrate every milestone while quietly grieving what it replaces.

I don’t think we talk about this enough as women.

There is grief woven throughout motherhood.

Not because something has gone wrong, but because something has gone right.

They grow.

They become themselves.

They leave.

And we are left holding both extraordinary gratitude and extraordinary grief.

Today, my life is beautiful in so many ways. I have so much love around me. So much to be grateful for.

And still, today I am deeply sad.

I miss my children.

I miss her.

I miss the little bodies beside me at nap time.

I miss the years I once thought were exhausting.

I miss versions of them that no longer exist.

And maybe, in some ways, I miss a version of myself too.

The mother whose children still fit within the reach of her arms.

Tomorrow, I will leave for my own adventure.

And Greta will begin hers.

Maybe there is something fitting about that.

Two women stepping into something new.

Two women learning who they are outside of the familiar roles we’ve occupied with one another.

And perhaps my work now is not to hold on tighter.

Perhaps it is to love her with an open hand.

To trust that leaving isn’t the opposite of loving.

To trust that distance doesn’t necessarily mean disconnection.

To trust that our relationship isn’t ending.

It is changing.

But this morning, I don’t need to turn that change into something beautiful yet.

Today, I can simply let my heart hurt.

Because my last child is leaving home.

And I miss her already.

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Lillie Cortes LPC

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