It was 2005 when I started really writing. Prior to that, I would write longhand on yellow legal pads. That writing was more frustrating than cathartic as the words spilling out jammed and piled up in a lahar behind the damming slowness of my hand pulling pen across paper.

My children were babies still—Jeffrey was three years old, and Bean was one. Abby was yet unimagined. Not even the wildest fortune teller would have dared predict what was waiting, what choices would lay before me, what terrifyingly rapid rivers of agency, loss, sorrow, and change would need to be forged. There is mercy in not knowing.

Is it that way for everyone? Does anyone get the life they planned? I look around and I see people who seem to wrestle something that looks like control–but it also looks like it comes at a steep cost. David told me once that life simply is pain. We enter the world with pain, and every step of our lives, things must die for us to live–our food, our homes, our plans, each time we make a choice, one petal has to fall for another to bloom. We look away, because it’s almost too much to bear. But the truth remains. He meant it as a comfort, that we shouldn’t be afraid, that we can lean into it, as the kids say. I’m still trying to work that one out.

For almost two decades, the heavy matter at the center of my universe has been raising the children entrusted to me. Everything else radiated out in giant spiral arms from the gravitational pull of my personal galaxy, around which I built my entire adult life. Even in the midst of the dismantling years, the solo years, I was fortunate enough that I was able to maintain that core of stability around which all else revolved.

 This reality formed the core of my identity. (that’s big stuff)

Like the words that couldn’t flow freely onto the page because of my manuscript pen, I noticed a store of potential talents and desires quietly incubating and growing. I felt my need quietly rising to find an outlet as I’ve watched my children begin to build their own worlds, exert their will on their lives, and to forge ahead as their own competent people. It’s exactly perfect.

It’s also pain.

Because of course it is. Parenting is one of the things that if you do it successfully, you make yourself obsolete. Oh, of course my kids will still need me, but not in the same intense way. The boundaries of those relationships are fluid and we are moving from a parent/child dynamic towards an entirely different adult relationship.

This is why my starting law school this fall is such a big deal. I am willingly leaving the sphere I have so carefully protected and cultivated for most of my adult life. I am stepping back just a bit, and just a bit before I have to, in order to pursue something really big. I sought this out, studied, prepared, and pursued it—I am choosing this.

We made this decision as a family. Each of our kids has been involved in the process, and frankly, it’s been me who has been the most reluctant. Why? Because it’s change. It’s big. It’s scary. It’s allowing myself to trust that Jon and the teenagers have got this, and that they will function just fine without me at the center of the universe. It’s trusting that our family doing things differently will be okay, and that I will still have value, even as I let go of some of the boundaries that defined me for the last two decades. It’s imagining a future for myself that is wildly different than I ever considered before. It’s believing I am smart enough. It’s trusting that there is truth and beauty and value amid the pain of growth, as I gently set down one mantle to pick up another.

When I was agonizing over this decision, Jeffrey looked at me with a wry smile on his face, and said, “Mom? Stop it. We’ve got this. You’ve done a good job, and we’re ready.” He grinned bigger, “Besides, you’d kick my ass if I turned down an offer like you have. How is it any different for you?” He had me. Jon stood next to him, arms folded, nodding and smiling.

So. There it is. My own family holding up a mirror for me to see myself. They’re right. I’m sure it will be wilder, messier and, ultimately, better than anything I can imagine. It always is. Come along with me on a new ride?