Safe and strong: a journal entry

 I write all the time but not as much as I'd like. Sometime I even write on here and then don't publish it. I don't know why I do that. I think just like to write. I was thinking this morning about these words that I wrote some days ago and for some reason the feeling behind them are still with me.

Journal entry on 9/15/2020 (okay, it wasn't really a journal. I wrote it in the notes section on my phone but it is journaling)

Just dropped off my son at college. That sounds so simple. We live in Tampa. He goes to school in Seattle. It is so very hard. It is also what was right. We have lived all over- especially out west. 4 years in Washington, 4 years in Oregon and 3 years in Nevada. My boys don't necessarily think of Florida as home. I hope it is family. I hope is where they think of family.

I left my son for his sophomore year. As I did, I realized how very grateful I am that he could go where he wanted. I miss him. Sometimes I am afraid I miss the little wide eyed boy with glasses who like with adoration at me more than the 19 year old boy that is searching and becoming. It isn't true. I have loved him at every moment and stage. I am just hoping I gave him enough. I gave him what I had as I matured and grew as as a person and parent along the way, starting at 27. I was so young at 27. I could have given him more if I was the person I am now back when he was born. That's not how it works. I think I gave him all I had at every step. And I wonder who he will be and how my parenting weaves into it. I want him to be free to be him but I want him to be okay. Be okay. Safe and strong. I pray for that and for him. And that's just something you cannot control when your kid becomes an adult. That's just something that's hard to feel good about- even more as you are watching the clouds as you fly 2500 plus miles away.