I started a Facebook group a few months ago.  I titled it Let it Go and its purpose was primarily to share my journey with some of my closest friends as I tried to declutter and organize my home and life around me.  I believed accomplishing those tasks would bring me back to a place of happiness that had gotten out of my grip.  Today, as I embark on a new year, it has become blatantly clear to me why these last few month have been so painfully difficult.  I have been grieving.

Now, before I go on, I do not in any way with my following words diminish the sorrow and anguish that one has endured due to the death of a beloved one.  That is pain that has not yet fully come my way.  I have lost ones I loved and felt that pain but not to the depth that its impact was nearly unbearable.  That is not the grief I am writing about today…I am talking about loss of “life as we know it”.

For me, that loss has come in the shifting season of graduating a high schooler.  For those who have made this journey before me, you know exactly what I am talking about.  In this joyous season of watching my daughter say goodbye to childhood days and embark on the life of an adult, my momma’s heart is a mix of happiness and melancholy.  With her each new step toward adulthood, my stark reality that a sweet season of motherhood has passed rushes back in.  I cannot go back, nor do I really want to.  Not because it wasn’t wonderful but because I want my girl to continue to grow and adventure and find her way in the world.

As I read through the stages of grief this morning on grief.com, so much of my recent months make sense to me now.  “Depression after a loss is too often seen as unnatural: a state to be fixed, something to snap out of” jumped off the screen at me as I read it.  I have been trying to find my way out of a fog that settled in. I still have a high-schooler at home but she needs me less and less academically with each passing day.  My identity as a homeschool mom has shifted.  No longer are the days full of field trips and piano lessons and lesson plans and curriculum purchases.  And…though I didn’t really realize it until now, I have been grieving that loss.

A dear friend of mine has always encouraged me to grieve the things of life that shift and move on. I can clearly see that unintentionally, I have been doing just that.  As grief.com explained the five stages of grief, an element of each have clearly been part of my recent season of life:

• Denial – “Life makes no sense”
• Anger – “…like being lost at sea: no connection to anything”
• Bargaining – “We want life returned to what is was”
• Depression – “We withdraw from life, left in a fog of intense sadness”
• Acceptance – “…recognizing that this new reality is the permanent reality. We will never like this reality or make it OK, but eventually we accept it. We learn to live with it. It is the new norm with which we must learn to live.”

So now, for me, it is January.  It is the first day of winter/spring semester for my eldest and the first day of the second half of my high-school sophomore’s year.  It is a bitter cold day outside but the sun is shining.  Life as I knew it has passed.  I have a grown daughter…this is my new reality. She has lots to learn, just like me.  She still needs her momma but not in the same way.  I am grateful for the clarity that this day brings…

For the new goals and plans that have been rolling around in my head while we enjoyed our long Christmas break.

For the laughter of recent days and smiles and spiraling out of a season that I was hard-pressed to understand or move past.

For the words of the delightful Dr. Seuss, “Don’t cry because it is over, smile because it happened.”

…and I am happy to share that I am smiling.