I didn’t set out to write about parenting. I thought those years — the intense, hands-on, all-consuming ones — were behind me. Children grow. Life moves on. You adjust. That’s the story we’re told, anyway.
But over the past while, something has been stirring. I’ve found myself sitting with women — good mothers, thoughtful mothers who are struggling with a quieter kind of pain. Not crisis. Not catastrophe. Just the slow ache of watching a young adult pull away, disengage, lose momentum, or stop sharing the parts of themselves they once did.Children leaving for college and drifting instead.
Hobbies abandoned.
Motivation dulled.
Conversations shortened.
Doors gently but firmly closed. And underneath it all sits a truth we rarely name: No one tells you how to parent — and no one tells you how to un-parent. We’re given guidance for the early years.
Advice for the teenage years.
Warnings about letting go. But very little prepares you for the emotional recalibration required when you are still deeply invested, still loving fiercely. Yet no longer central to your child’s world. This is a phase of parenting that isn’t spoken about honestly enough. There’s plenty of language around independence and freedom, but far less about the grief that can quietly sit alongside them. The identity shift. The helplessness. The uncertainty about where you fit now. I recognise this territory. I’m a mother to adult children and step-children, spanning decades. I’ve worn the t-shirt. I’ve sat with pride, fear, heartbreak, hope, and the long quiet stretches where you realise your role has changed… but no one tells you what it’s changing into. Increasingly, there’s another layer mothers carry — often silently: If I say the wrong thing, I could lose them. That fear shapes behaviour.
It silences questions.
It asks mothers, especially, to make themselves smaller in the name of “doing the right thing”.This writing isn’t about blame.
It isn’t about criticising adult children.
And it isn’t about clinging to the past. It’s about naming a transition that hurts — even when love is still present. I’m writing this as a place to reflect, to think out loud, and to offer language for something many women feel but struggle to articulate. Not advice. Not answers. Just truth, gently held. If you’re here because you’re navigating this season too, you’re not failing.
You’re not weak.
And you’re not alone. This is simply what happens when parenting changes shape.
and no one gives you a map.
More soon.
One step at a time.
