One more week until my one and only little bird flies away. He is going to be a university student in exactly one week’s time. On one hand I am so happy for him to have that experience but this mama bird has been having a hard time lately. It’s not been a great summer for me in many ways and I will be so glad when the summer of 2010 is only a distant memory.

In some ways I feel like the same over emotional woman that I was about this time 17 years ago as I cried when I saw pregnant women and literally bawled in prenatal classes when I saw the movie where the baby was shown being born. It’s a huge time of growth and change. Both are necessary but both are painful.

Where have the years gone? Is this the end of the era? I know that things must change as they are meant to but my heart is having a hard time adjusting to this new season in our lives. (yes I am crying as I am typing….and playing the Spa Channel with music being played in a minor key is not helping any either)

It’s true when they say that menopause often brings to the forefront those places in ourselves that haven’t been healed from our pasts. Well – what great timing, as I currently experience a lack of hormones and the emotional empty nest syndrome which all has me reflecting on my own sad experience of leaving the nest. But I was glad to leave my nest. No, the sad part comes with the lack of concern, care and love from the step parents that didn’t know how to parent when I left home, or when I was in the home for that matter.

So I guess it’s OK to cry out my tears not only for my son’s departure but for the residue of pain that I never dared the chance to experience when I was 18 as I traveled 2,200 miles all alone to start university and a new life in Toronto. I already had too much grief to deal with in my teen years. Interesting how God has a way of allowing us to be protected even from ourselves when the weight of pain at a particular time just might be too much for us to bear. So now as a mom He gives me the opportunity to stop and care enough for that young scared girl who entered a whole new world all on her own 34 years ago. And to love her.

I am proud of myself for having the God given healthy instincts and knowledge to be a loving, nurturing and caring mother who now has the wisdom to know it’s time for her son to fly…all on his own.