K was saying she really misses when her kids were little-and I hear that-I loved having babies and toddlers and little people. But I don't miss the broken sleep, and the endless snacks and sippy cups and buckling screaming, squirmy toddlers into car seats on hot days. It was so much tougher than I acknowledged at the time. It was what I wanted more than anything in the world, and I am so grateful I had an abundance of it, but man-exhausting. I have such happy memories of Friday night dance parties and Disneyland days and all of us trouping into Starbucks and holding someone on my hip at all times. But I also have a balanced view-parenting a determined toddler/preschooler/school aged child meant so much patience and creativity --and then intense guilt when I would invariably lose it all. I didn't like my mothering a lot of the time. I'm finding it so much easier to parent older kids (not that I don't yell/lose my temper/have regrets about what I say in the heat of the moment.) I had kids with motor and emotional challenges-there were years of OT sessions, and speech therapies, and "things to work on at home" and watching them be aloof or "different" than their same age peers was brutal in my head. The thoughts I would have, and the feelings I would try and buffer: Would they ever have "true" friends? Would they learn how to "fit in"? Would they be able to do the physical things that their same age group seemed to do with ease? What does their future hold?? Oh my god-it was so incredibly painful to watch them and worry and to not know and feel so fucking helpless. On the plus side, and so different than what K is working through now, I saw almost 20 years ago that you can't control your children or their actions/feelings/outcomes. Even when your baby is just a year old-and you're dressing them in cute outfits and picking their play group-you have ZERO control of their bodies and minds. But I tried to do that for years-and I let that weigh on me-literally weigh on me. I carried around 50 pounds of guilt/fear/stress. This was the year that not only did E grow up and acknowledge her own beauty and power-but I did too. I realize completely that she's just fine-and when she's not-she can figure it out on her own. I can't solve it for her. I can't solve it for any of them. And the burden is off-just like that. I can release all the need to try and hang on, and control, and the worry of how they will be or what they will do.  They will be fine-because it's their own journey, not mine, and it never, ever was.