I didn’t plan this….I should say that now. One year ago this week I was at the lowest point in my life. I was moving forward, reluctantly, with little plans for what I was going to do an hour from any moment, let alone where I’d be a year from then. I spent this week last year off social media, moving through life feeling quite numb…wondering what to do next….

Call me old fashioned but my mom made it clear when we were younger, she wasn’t our friend. She was mean, never let us stay out and drink with our friends, never let us have ice cream for dinner and never cared if we had cool clothes. She just insisted on us being warm, well fed and loved beyond measure. Ridiculous!!!

I had a similar approach to motherhood. I took every “You’re a horrible mom!” or “Why can’t you be cool like the other moms?” as a badge of honor. It meant they had boundaries. It meant they knew where the line was. It meant they knew right from wrong and who to talk to when that was hard to decipher. I’ve rocked this philosophy for 23 years and I’m pretty proud of how they’ve all turned out. (minus some stinky moments and an aversion to deodorant, which is a lot more recent than I’d like to acknowledge) Until this past week….I turned 51 and my daughter Brooke, aka Birdie, posted this picture to her IG story…

’m not sure we have a ton of forethought about our “End Game” when we raise our children. Sure, we all want to raise bright, happy, thoughtful, well-mannered children and when in the throws of motherhood (especially if there’s multiple kids) many of us go into “Full Mom” mode….

Did you eat?

Did you sleep well?

Are you safe?

Many nights I rested my head on my pillow, exhausted, but oddly content they were alive. Motherhood was exhausting and I was working on minimums.

I often look back and vacillate between wishing I could go back and eat their tiny toes and relish those big toothless smiles, to loving my life now, filled with sleep, yoga classes and late nights drinking too much Bourbon. Hot food is just too yummy, and I didn’t have many hot meals during those early years.

I say all this because the “hard” years…. the ones that started at 5:00 am and lasted til I put the kids to sleep and watched a dateline murder show until 11 pm (it was oddly calming) ….are behind me.  I thought having kids aged 23, 21 and 19 meant I could enjoy the fruits of my labor. I could sit back and silently laugh at their unrealistic philosophies of the world, endure their overuse of the word “aesthetic” and patiently wait for a wedding or baby shower to eventually crop up….to just enjoy being a cool grandmom one day.

But apparently there are these middle years I didn’t know about. The “I’m so proud of who you’ve become…. but you’re killing me” years.