Nobody warns you about the goodbyes you have to make as a parent.

They warn you about the sleepless newborn nights. They warn you about the terrible twos and the teenage eye rolls. They give you books about discipline and development. What they do not give you is a heads up about the moment your child doesn't need you the way they used to, and the confusing, slightly embarrassing, but very real grief that follows.

Not only that, the goodbyes start earlier and happen more often than you expect.

The goodbyes start earlier and happen more often than you expect.

The first time a child walks into school without looking back. You, of course, looked back. The summer they leave for overnight camp and you realize they thrived without you for four whole weeks, while you were home obsessively refreshing the camp photo website. The car ride home from moving them into their college dorm, when you accidentally drive 45 minutes in the wrong direction because your body simply refuses to go home yet. (My husband did this, yes.) The Sunday when they don't call, not that you were waiting, of course you were. The holiday when they call to say they're going to their girlfriend's family for Thanksgiving, and you say “of course, that sounds great!” in a voice that does not sound great at all.

These moments elicit actual grief and loss which unfortunately tends to show up sideways. It can manifest as hovering or overcontrolling. The night before one of my 20-something sons officially moved out to launch his post-college life, I insisted 15 times that he take a key chain for his car key even when he told me 16 times that he was good without it. Why did I need him to take a key chain? Because I didn’t know how else to mother him at this stage. Maybe you text so excessively your kid starts responding in one-word answers because what else can they say. Or maybe your grief looks like throwing yourself into work, or food, or a calendar so packed with commitments that you physically cannot feel your feelings, which was, let's be real, the point.

The Designed Goodbye
You don't just have to survive these moments. You can design them.

You don't just have to survive these moments. You can design them.

In the Human Better coaching framework, we talk about the difference between driving from the driver's seat versus riding in the passenger seat. Most of us, when we hit a transition like this, slide into the passenger seat without realizing it. Life is happening to us, the kids are growing, the calendar years are flipping, and we're gripping the door handle, wondering why nobody equipped us for this.

But what if, before the next goodbye, you got intentional? You plop yourself right behind the steering wheel and start driving the direction you actually want to go.

What if you asked yourself: Who do I want to be in this moment? Not the version of you who ugly-cries in the Target parking lot after buying your daughter a shower caddy. (Completely normal, no judgment.) But instead the parent who communicates calm even when they don't feel it. The one who says the important thing, not just the easy thing. The one who makes the transition feel like a launch, not a loss.

What if you asked yourself: Who do I want to be in this moment?

Think about the first drop-off at sleepaway camp. You could spend the drive home spiraling that they're not drinking enough water even though you reminded them three times before leaving. Or you could decide in advance what you want your child to carry with them: your steadiness, your pride, a specific thing you want to say that they'll remember long after they have too much fun to write you back. Think about move-in day at college. You could let the enormity of it ambush you somewhere between the mini fridge and the extra-long twin sheets. Or you could arrive having already sat with your grief privately, so that what you offer them is presence and potential.

In coaching, we often have clients visualize or name the person they want to be. For years I have said to myself that when it comes to my kids, I am a Big Ass Tree. Nice language, Casey, but for me it resonates. I am not rigid, not pretending I feel nothing, my branches sway broadly in the wind. I am not going for Navy Seal here, I am going for being rooted enough that my kid can lean into me as they need, knowing I won't topple. Kids take their emotional cues from us. When a parent is visibly devastated or anxious at a goodbye, children often mirror those very same emotions. When a parent is grounded, warm, and clear, the child gets to leave freely. That is one of the greatest gifts you can give them.

The Things Worth Saying
Designing a goodbye also means deciding what you want to communicate, and saying it on purpose, not in a rushed, slightly unhinged monologue at the curb while they're trying to get their duffel out of the trunk.

What do you want your kid to know as they walk into this next chapter?
What truth about them do you want them to carry?
What do you believe about their capacity that they might not yet believe about themselves?
What's the sentence (if you only got one) that you'd want echoing in their head when things get hard?

Most parents think and feel all of this deeply. Few say it out loud, because the moment arrives and suddenly it's loud, chaotic, someone needs a parking pass and even though you had a whole speech, now none of it is coming out right. Get ahead of it.

The Drive Home
Here's what we've seen, again and again, with clients who come to coaching in the middle of any transition: the grief is real, and it is also a doorway.

the grief is real, and it is also a doorway.

The parent who cried the whole drive home from move-in day? She discovered she had put her own dreams on pause for so long she'd forgotten she had them. Not because she regretted a single moment of raising her kids, but because she loved it that much. Coaching helped her figure out what she loved that much outside of them, and how to build toward it.

The couple who discovered, two weeks after their youngest left for college, that they had spent two decades using their kids as the primary subject of every conversation. They had, in effect, been co-workers whose shared project had just wrapped, staring at each other over pasta going: so now what? Coaching helped them design their next chapter together.

Saying goodbye to children can feel like loss, or it can feel like reclamation, and which one it becomes depends almost entirely on whether you're approaching it from the passenger seat or the driver's seat. You raised a human who can leave. That's the whole job. Now let’s get you the keys (and key chain) to your next well-earned chapter.

Saying goodbye to children can feel like loss, or it can feel like reclamation

Let Us Help You Design Your Goodbyes

It’s your choice: You can stay in the passenger seat and watch your life flying by through the window, or you can take the first step in shifting to the driver’s seat and taking the wheel. You don’t have to do it alone! Book a (short!) Discover Call today to see what a Coach might bring to your life.`

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Designing Goodbyes