The Space Between Letting Go and Holding On

Today I drove to Orlando by myself.

It was a quiet drive, the kind that gives your mind room to wander and your heart permission to feel. We were going to sign the lease for my daughter’s apartment as she prepares to attend the University of Central Florida, known to most as UCF.

Twenty years.

That number feels impossible to say out loud.

For the past two years, she has been gently preparing me for this moment—talking about college, independence, and the life she is excited to build. I’ve smiled, nodded, and celebrated every step with her. But today, as I drove there alone, the reality settled in a little deeper.

My little girl is leaving the nest.

Signing that lease made it real in a way nothing else has yet.

On the drive back, my mind began replaying memories like little home movies. I didn’t want to hear the news on the radio or the podcasts I usually listen to. Instead, I found myself searching for old mommy-and-me videos.

Because once upon a time, everything in my life was about Ava.

Bottles.

Diaper bags that were bigger than she was.

Tiny socks that somehow always disappeared in the laundry.

There was a time when my company was all that mattered to her. She wanted to spend all her time with me. I was her world, and she was mine.

Then, slowly, as children do, she began to grow and develop her own life. Her friends became more important. She started going out more, spending time away, creating her own memories. I remember it took me a little while to adapt to that shift. It’s a natural part of growing up, but as a mother you feel it.

Still, we had our moments.

When she would come home, we would curl up and binge Netflix together. Those nights became our little ritual. We watched every episode of My Big Fat Fabulous Life. We watched the entire series… and when we ran out of episodes, we even started watching the reruns.

Those quiet nights together meant more than she probably ever realized.

And now here we are.

Today, while we were signing the paperwork and taking a tour of her new apartment complex, there was a moment that stopped me in my tracks. She looked over at me, gently touched my shoulder, and with the sweetest reassuring look said something without even needing many words.

Her eyes seemed to say, “This is going to be okay. You’re going to be okay.”

In that moment I realized something beautiful.

Somewhere along the way, the little girl I spent years reassuring… had grown into the young woman now reassuring me.

Motherhood is a strange and beautiful paradox.

We spend years teaching our children how to walk, how to think for themselves, how to become independent. We cheer them on as they grow stronger, braver, and more capable.

And then one day… they do exactly what we prepared them to do.

They step into their own life.

Today I felt so many emotions at once.

Pride watching Ava step confidently into this next chapter at UCF. She is ready. I see it in the way she carries herself, the way she dreams, and the way she moves through the world with curiosity and courage.

But I also felt that soft ache that only mothers understand—the awareness that a season of life is gently closing.

Not ending.

Just changing.

And in the middle of all those emotions today, another feeling rose up even stronger than the rest.

Gratitude.

A deep gratitude that I am here on this planet, in this moment in time, to witness this part of Ava’s life. To be present for these milestones. To sit in the car alone with my thoughts and realize just how sacred these chapters truly are.

Because life isn’t only made of the big moments like signing an apartment lease or sending your child off to college.

It’s also made of the small ones.

The quiet drives.

The unexpected memories.

The late-night Netflix marathons.

And the beautiful realization that love doesn’t disappear as our children grow.

It simply grows with them. ❤️