Holding Both: My Baby Bird Goes To Kindergarten

Holding Both: My Baby Bird Goes to Kindergarten

My youngest baby bird is starting kindergarten.

I've dreaded this milestone since the day she was born.

She's a 2020 baby.

And you remember what that year was like.

Shock. Unknown. Fear. Chaos. Isolation. Division. Everything felt strange and surreal.

I couldn't teach yoga. My husband's clinic hours were reduced. School was barely in session.

Things just...stopped.

It felt like a time warp.

But quietly—and quite literally—inside of me, creation was at work.

My body was weaving together a ray of light so bright that she required almost all of my attention.

There wasn't much space left for me to worry about everything happening outside of us.

The only place to turn was inward.

Into my body.

Into my home.

Into my immediate family.

Into this new little life growing inside of me.

Creating a bubble of peace became my job.

And looking back, I think that changed something in me.

The Gift Inside a Very Strange Time

I want to be careful here, because I know 2020 held devastating loss, illness, fear and isolation for so many people. I don't want my experience to minimize any of that.

But my experience was different.

In many ways, I relished the slowing down.

I diligently practiced Hypnobabies to prepare my mind and nervous system for birth. I chose a birth center rather than a hospital. I was able to have my husband and doula beside me.

It was quiet.

Comfortable.

Free.

Sacred.

And afterward, we disappeared into our little nest at home.

We got our baby almost entirely to ourselves.

I didn't have to share her.

I didn't have to run around.

There were very few school drop-offs or activities.

Her big sisters got to experience life with a fresh newborn in a way they probably never would have otherwise—the snuggles, the quiet mornings, the ordinary intimacy of caring for this tiny new person together.

For me, that strange stop in time held an unexpected gift.

We got extra time.

And then, eventually, time started moving again.

And Somehow, It Started Moving Faster

Almost six years later, I wonder if I have forgotten some of the fear and mental stress of those years in the same way women somehow forget the pain of childbirth.

A new way of life emerged.

And sometimes it feels as though it has been accelerating ever since.

I've entered my 40s. "Midlife" is suddenly a word that applies to me.

And with it has come a growing awareness of mortality.

Life is so, so short.

Our time with the people we love is so precious.

And we can't control most of it.

We can't stop time.

We can't stop our children from growing.

We can't control aging, changing responsibilities, endings, beginnings, or what comes next.

But we can practice being present enough that we don't miss it.

Maybe that was the biggest gift of having my 3rd child during a global pandemic. All the other things faded so much so it required me to be acutely present with what was right in front of me and in my arms and home. A challenge for a former busy bee, but a healing experience for who I was becoming.

And now, somehow...

Here we are.

My last baby bird is going to kindergarten.

I Know This Grief

I remember sending my older daughters off.

After one particular preschool and kindergarten drop-off, I came home to an empty house and sobbed in my kitchen while eating potato chips. Like a deep, gutteral, ugly sob. 

I don't even know how long I sat there. The flood gates erupted with held anxiety, grief, and maybe part relief.

For years, I had had a baby attached to my breast or my hip like a little koala.

My experience of early motherhood had also been filled with stress, busyness, anxiety and survival. Looking back, I can see there were things happening within me postpartum that I didn't even have the space or awareness to acknowledge at the time. And things that prevented me from being truly present.

And then suddenly...

Silence.

Space.

The absence of a small body attached to mine.

It. Was. Deafening.

There was a sharp pain of grief in that transition.

And now I'm approaching it again.

Except this time, it's the last time.

I've been dreading it for 5+ years.

But I've decided I don't actually know how I'm going to feel.

So rather than preparing myself to fall apart—or telling myself I will* fall apart and it's going to be awful—I'm trying to stay open to whatever arrives.*

I'm trying to embrace the unravelling. Softly.

I'm going to give myself the whole day. Space to experience.

I'll teach yoga that morning because our community fills my soul, and that feels like a good place to be.

Maybe I'll take a bath afterward.

A little water ritual to soak up whatever tears need somewhere to go.

Mostly, I'm going to give myself space.

Because this isn't something I want to rush through.

Our society lacks value in holding space, honoring milestones with ceremony and ritual. We tend to slide right into the next thing - carrying the unprocessed grief with us.

I want to honor this transition. Even in small ways. Even if just with attention and intention of self compassion, unstructured time, and room to breathe through it.

Who Am I Without a Baby on My Hip?

There's one thought that keeps coming back:

I don't know who I am without a baby on my hip.

I got good at that.

I mastered motherhood with littles.

And now...

What is this?

A middle schooler.

An elementary schooler.

A kindergartener.

This version of motherhood requires a new way of being.

There is unknown here.

There is learning.

There is changing.

There is an identity shift.

There is that strange in-between—the liminal space where one chapter has clearly ended, but the next hasn't quite taken shape yet.

I feel a curiosity here instead of fear.

I meet so many of my coaching clients in spaces like this.

Retirement.

Loss.

Children leaving home.

Career changes.

Relationship changes.

Aging.

A version of themselves or their lives coming to an end.

Sitting across from them, I can hold space for the grief.

I can offer rituals for honoring what was.

And at the same time, I often can't help but see the little beam of light shining through the opening.

There is space here now.

Space for creation to flow in.

Space for exploration.

Space to rediscover.

Space to choose.

Space to participate in writing the next chapter.

And I suppose now I have to offer that same compassion and possibility back to myself.

Don't Skip the Grief

I don't want to rush into, Look at all the things I can do now!

Not yet.

Because there is grief here.

And grief deserves somewhere to go.

I've heard grief described as love with nowhere to go.

Maybe sometimes the invitation is to gently circle some of that love back toward ourselves.

To tend to the person who is standing at the threshold.

To offer ourselves tenderness.

Self-compassion.

Breathing room.

Ritual.

Rest.

And enough space to not know what's next yet.

The next chapter doesn't have to be written the moment the last one ends.

Holding Both

I've been thinking about all of the other 2020 moms right now.

The ones sending those pandemic babies off to kindergarten.

How much the world has changed since we held those tiny babies inside our strange little bubbles.

How much we have changed.

And perhaps, amid everything difficult about that time, some of us also received an unexpected gift:

A little extra time with our chickadees.

So I'm practicing holding both.

The sorrow of a mother watching another season end.

And the profound gratitude that I got to live it.

The grief of letting go who I have been.

And the curiosity about who I am becoming.

An ending.

And creation.

Both can exist at the same time.

Maybe that's what this final Summering Rest Note is really about.

Not clinging to summer.

Not rushing toward fall.

But allowing ourselves to linger for a moment at the threshold.

To honor what was.

To grieve what is ending.

To receive what it gave us.

And, when we're ready, to make a little space for whatever wants to come next.

I've created a meditation for the Rest Library called Holding Both—a practice for sitting with duality and making room for two truths, two emotions, grief and gratitude, endings and beginnings, all at once.

I hope it meets you wherever you are.

Whether you're sending a child to kindergarten, sending one off to college, grieving someone you love, changing careers, moving through a relationship shift, watching your body change, or simply feeling summer slip quietly into fall...

You don't have to rush yourself into the next chapter.

Pause here.

Let yourself feel the ending.

Let yourself feel the love.

And trust that creation can quietly be at work even when you don't yet know what it's creating.

Just like it was for me six years ago.

Rest.

Breathe.

Hold both.

And when you're ready...

turn the page.