Back to School Is a Weird Kind of Grief

You can be ready for the routine, grateful for the quiet, and still feel your heart ache when they walk away.

Every year, sometime around August, I reach the point where I am ready.

Ready for routine.

Ready for predictable bedtimes.

Ready for everyone to have somewhere to be that does not involve following me from room to room asking for snacks.

Ready to stop trying to balance work and kids and summer plans and appointments and the vague pressure that we should probably be making memories while I’m also just trying to keep everyone alive and vaguely entertained.

I love summer with my kids.

And by August?

I am ready for school.

Both things are true.

But then the first day comes.

There are new shoes and backpacks and pictures by the front door. We’re trying to get everyone where they need to be with all the things they’re supposed to have. Someone inevitably can’t find something we absolutely had five minutes ago.

And somewhere in the middle of the chaos, it happens.

I look at them.

And suddenly they look older.

Not yesterday older.

Not summer older.

Somehow, a whole year older.

And there it is—that weird little ache that shows up right alongside the relief.

Parenting is full of contradictions

There are a lot of messages about how we’re supposed to feel about motherhood.

Enjoy every minute.

You’re going to miss this.

They grow so fast.

And listen, they do grow fast.

But I refuse to pretend every minute is enjoyable.

Some of the minutes are terrible.

Some involve bodily fluids.

Some involve a child asking you a question while you are actively answering the exact same question.

Some involve discovering at bedtime that tomorrow is apparently the day your child needs a very specific item you have never heard about before in your life.

You can love your children more than anything and still desperately want everyone to go to bed.

You can miss them while they’re at school and thoroughly enjoy eating something without sharing it.

You can be excited for their independence and grieve that they need you differently now.

None of those feelings cancel out the others.

That’s one of the strangest things about parenting: the opposites coexist all the time.

Transitions make us notice time

Most of the year, I don’t actually notice my kids growing.

It happens too slowly.

One ordinary Tuesday becomes another ordinary Tuesday. Pants get a little shorter. Shoes stop fitting. Words change. Interests change. They need help with something until one day they don’t.

Then something like the first day of school puts a giant marker in time.

Here they were last year.

Here they are now.

And suddenly the difference is impossible not to see.

Maybe that’s why these milestones can hit so hard.

Because parenting is full of endings we don’t recognize as endings while they’re happening.

You don’t usually know the last time you’re going to carry your child into school.

You don’t know which morning will be the last one they reach for your hand in the parking lot.

You don’t know when they’ll stop wanting you to walk them all the way to the classroom.

Or when they’ll stop needing help tying their shoes.

Or when the first-day picture becomes something they tolerate instead of something they’re excited about.

There isn’t a little bell that rings and says:

Pay attention. This is the last time.

It just happens.

And later, you realize something that used to be part of your everyday life quietly disappeared.

Sometimes growth feels a little like loss

We tend to think grief belongs to obviously painful things.

Death. Divorce. Illness. Heartbreak. Major endings.

But grief can show up anywhere there has been attachment and change.

Sometimes we grieve things that are changing exactly the way they’re supposed to.

A child becoming more independent is good.

Starting kindergarten is good.

Moving into middle school is good.

Watching your child become more confident, capable, opinionated, funny, complicated, and entirely themselves is the whole damn point.

And still—

Growth asks us to continually say goodbye to versions of our children we loved.

The toddler becomes a preschooler.

The preschooler becomes a big kid.

The big kid becomes a teenager.

And eventually, if we’ve done our job, they build lives that stretch farther and farther beyond us.

We’re celebrating who they’re becoming while simultaneously losing access to who they were.

Of course that can hurt a little.

You don’t have to pick one feeling

We have a tendency to treat mixed emotions like a problem to solve.

Am I excited or sad?

Am I grateful or overwhelmed?

Do I want them to need me or do I want some independence back?

Yes.

Maybe the answer is just yes.

Some seasons deserve an and.

I’m ready for them to go back to school and I’m going to miss them.

I’m proud of who they’re becoming and I miss who they were.

I want them to become independent and part of me aches when they need me a little less.

I’m grateful for the life we’ve built and sometimes motherhood is exhausting.

I want room to be a person outside of being someone’s mom and motherhood is one of the most important parts of who I am.

I’m excited about what’s next and I wish time would slow the hell down.

We don’t have to talk ourselves out of one feeling to justify another.

Humans are complicated enough to hold both.

So, to the parents at drop-off…

Maybe you’re celebrating.

Maybe you cried in the parking lot.

Maybe you peeled out of that drop-off line like you were escaping a crime scene and drove directly toward coffee and silence.

Maybe you did all three.

There’s room for that.

Back-to-school season isn’t just about school supplies, schedules, packed lunches, and first-day pictures.

It’s another tiny transition.

Another marker in the passage of time.

Another moment when we get to meet the person our child is becoming—and quietly say goodbye to a version of them we’re never getting back.

So take the picture.

Let yourself feel whatever shows up.

Then go enjoy your quiet coffee.

You can miss them and be really fucking glad they’re at school.

Both can be true.

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If transitions, parenting, identity, or the complicated emotions that come with raising humans have been feeling heavier than you expected, therapy can be a place where you don’t have to tidy those feelings up first. At Empower & Embody, there’s room for the and.