There’s a paradox to parenting I’m experiencing to a greater degree in the wake of dropping my youngest at university last weekend. It’s loving someone so fiercely you’d stand between them and every hurt, take every blow, absorb every loss. And yet, knowing that if you did, you’d rob them of something essential.
The small disappointments of childhood become the heartbreaks of adulthood, and each one leaves a mark. But those marks tell a story. They are the proof that they have lived, endured, grown.
It’s the strangest kind of love; one that aches to protect, and yet steps aside. Not because you care less, but because you love enough to let life do its work.
I love my daughter enough to step aside. But oh, how it aches.