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My son turned 14 recently and it hit me hard emotionally.
I did the “Time Hop” thing and looked at all his baby pictures.
He was bright blond in his toddler years. I let him grow his hair long. He would ask me for mini pancakes and frozen peas for breakfast.
Ugh, even thinking about that memory breaks my heart, like little arrows piercing me, and I frantically try to pull them out with psychological reasoning, but the barbs tear more on the way out than they do going in.
My mind then surfaced this saying: “Kids aren’t ours to keep.”
It all makes me wonder about grief and parenting, and especially time.
I am divorced and co-parent. I have for the last seven years.
At my son’s birthday dinner, I told him we only had four years left together, joking about kicking him out at 18 for college.
He immediately responded, “Well, two actually, since we spend half the time at Dad’s.”
Another arrow.
I meet with a lot of women clients in transitions like the one I am in—co-parenting, divorced, sadness and frustration with how little time they now have with their kids. The energy of loss tripled around us.
I try to comfort them while comforting myself. I can’t say that I am good at it yet.
Yes, babes, those arrows sting going in. And they rip our insides out worse when we start pulling on them.
I am familiar with the ache. I wonder if that helps me coach these women.
I desperately want to help them unravel their anger and give them some kind of peace.
Kids aren’t ours to keep.
And I wonder is it just that because some of us are coparenting we have wholly misattributed the loss to our ex’s selfishness instead of just the passage of time?
Anger loves to have a target. Blaming our ex feels good in the moment. It somehow relieves a pressure valve that may otherwise internally combust. And it indeed is partially true.
But are we pulling out those arrows and pulling back our bow, aiming at our ex, at ourselves, at anyone but time itself, in the heat of our pain?
If we are, at what cost to ourselves?
I think this quick retrieval—the yanking of them so fast so we can shoot the arrows outward, the fault-finding, the shifting to the ex as the only target—actually incurs more long-term wounding than having a bit more acceptance of impermanence .
I don’t like carrying around this forceful, righteous energy anymore. It feels like more arrows, yet heavier.
My grief would be sitting next to us here even if my marriage was intact.
Kids aren’t ours to keep.
Kids grow up, are adamant about growing their hair how they want, still eat frozen peas occasionally at 14 like they did when they were four, and oftentimes, unwittingly shoot arrows of their own at a birthday dinner.
These days, I let that saying hum alongside these losses.
I ask myself, would this sting so much if it was just him growing up or am I looking for a place to shoot?
The blame, resentment, contempt, and constant looping of pain doesn’t change our circumstance.
The resistance actually drains our spirit.
Knowing this helps me feel lighter. It helps not to put so much pressure on my son to make me be okay.
We finish the dinner, I cry, I write, I untangle. I sit with grief, time, and loss, like any parent would, divorced or not, not fully resolved, but just slowly letting go.
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