We cry because it happened-and it was good

On motherhood, tears, and the complicated grief of saying goodbye

Maybe I should have been more prepared for the emotional side of my book tour.

During my interview with

Christine Koh

for her podcast Edit Your Life a few weeks back, Christine asked me a question about the difficult feelings surrounding the transition from parenting young kids to being the parent of young adults.

I didn’t expect it, but her question made me well up, which set the tone for more tears throughout the conversation.

“This is gonna be a rough book tour,” I told Christine.

So I went in a little more ready (I thought) for my virtual tour on May 6. I held it together during my first interview, a mostly-lighthearted conversation with

Sarah Powers

, but my chat with

Sarah Stewart Holland

immediately put me in the danger zone.

I had to take deep breaths and dab my eyes at multiple points during our conversation, and throughout the day - and a total of eleven live interviews! - I found myself on the edge of tears many times: usually when the interviewer asked about the more challenging feelings that can come with letting go, shared their own feelings about letting go, or sometimes when they simply said the phrase “letting go.”

And all that emotion spilled over toward the end of the day, when I spoke with

Rachel Macy Stafford

- who read several emotional passages of my book out loud while I sat and blubbered openly.

On live video.

Is it cringe to cry when your own words are read back to you? In my defense, I’m prone to contagious crying: the minute I see another person’s eyes welling up with tears, mine well up in response. And as I age, I find myself crying more easily, more often, and more…vigorously at things that are not at all sad: children singing in unison, videos involving kittens, proud parents cheering on their competing Olympian children.

There’s something else to it, too: I’m finding that watching someone else cry, or listening to their voices choke up, as they read the words that came from some place deep inside me as I furiously typed away at my manuscript last year (certain parts of my book feel like they were written in a fever dream, as I told Rachel) gave me permission to access those same feelings in myself, something that’s not always easy to give myself permission to do in a progress-driven world that seems to just want us to march endlessly on from one milestone to the next.

It’s Mother’s Day, and I am not with my children. The three older boys are off living their adult lives - my eldest, Jacob, is literally boarding a plane for a trip to Japan right now - and the younger two are with their dad while I am in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan for a Mother’s Day-themed talk and book signing, by my own plan.

On first consideration, I want to say I don’t have any kind of feelings about this. After all, Mother’s Day is only a “holiday” in the most commercial sense and anyway, life as a mom of mostly-adults means that, more and more, I just don’t get to see them on every single special occasion. Everything about where we are today seems appropriate and right based on my kids’ ages and the trajectories of our lives. I’m not exactly sad about the way this day is going, but I still sort of want to cry.

Why is that?

I keep thinking back to Mother’s Days of fifteen or more years ago, when my kids were small and all under my roof. How it felt to sit up and bed and have the kids deliver me lukewarm tea and under-done toast with rumpled bedheads and faces full of pride. How everything about our lives as a family felt different, special, singular in those days: there was more of the bad stuff, sure, the chaos and mess and noise and difficulty. But also more of all the good stuff; the tickle fights and tender moments.

Just…more.

Two things can be true: I can recognize that things change, and that where my children and I are on this Mother’s Day morning is right and necessary for all of us. And I can also recognize that our lives fifteen years ago were also deeply right for that stage of life, and joyful and wonderful while we lived them.

Those lives are behind us now, and the mother I was then is cocooned inside the mother I am now, wrapped up in the layers of living that have happened over the years. We couldn’t have stopped time even if we’d wanted to. And I didn’t want to.

For us to get from there to here, things had to change. There’s no small amount of grief wrapped up in that. But, to quote my own words from my talk with Christine: “The fact that we’re feeling the grief means it happened, and it was good.”

We cry because it happened. We cry because it was good. Wherever you are on Mother’s Day and whatever emotions are hitting you this weekend, I hope those words give you a little bit of peace - and permission to feel it all - today.

Virtual Tour Recap and Replays:

SO many thanks to everyone who graciously agreed to interview me live for my Virtual Book Tour last week to celebrate the release of The Last Parenting Book You’ll Ever Read: How We Let Our Kids Go And Embrace What’s Next. It was truly a whirlwind of a day! Below find links to the replay, with a short summary of each conversation (although a few words was definitely not enough to capture the richness of each chat; truly, they are all worth watching!)

• Sarah Powers and I discussed the idea of ‘coming home’ again as adults and what it feels like to watch young adult children re-experience their hometown. Watch the replay here.

• Sarah Stewart Holland and I talked about how hard it can be to let go (but why we have to learn). Watch the replay here.

• CJ | A Well-Read Tart and I talked about the process of writing a book proposal, finding an agent and getting published. Watch the replay here.

• Jennifer L.W. Fink and I celebrated the joys of watching young adults become their own people, and riffed a little on the worst age for teenage boys. Watch the replay here.

• Stacy Bronec and I discussed the earlier “arms full” stage of parenting and how things change - as well as chickens! Watch the replay here.

• Asha Dornfest and I chatted about the loneliness in raising teens and young adults - why I call these the “loneliest years” and how to seek and find support. Watch the replay here.

• Lindsey DeLoach Jones and I discussed uncertainty in parenting and how owning up to our regrets and admitting we don’t know can be a superpower. Watch the replay here.

• Deborah Farmer Kris and I talked about rediscovering awe in ourselves as our kids grow, and experiencing awe through the eyes of teens and young adults. Watch the replay here.

• Meghan Splawn and I discussed “feeding ourselves” - figuratively and literally - as mothers of older kids and midlife women. Watch the replay here.

• Rachel Macy Stafford and I talked about all the big feelings and identity shifts that come with letting our kids go (okay, she did; I mostly cried.) Watch the replay here.

• Ashley Fenker and I discussed the book-publishing landscape and living the life of a mom writer. Watch the replay here.

Whether you’re a mom of young kids eager for a hopeful peek at the future, or are going through the “long goodbye” of letting older kids go, like me, I think the above conversations are a great way to let yourself feel it all. Please share with a friend, too, if you think one of the conversations might speak to them.

I hope you have a peaceful day full of celebration, solitude, sentiment, or whatever else it is you need today. I’ll be back with more book launch news soon!

Warmly,

Meagan

My book, The Last Parenting Book You’ll Ever Read, is now out in the world! You can find it online or at your local independent bookstore. If you’re reading it, I’d love to hear what you think - leave a comment or respond to this email.