To Be A Good Parent, Become Obsolete
The cruelest irony of parenting: spending years teaching our children they don’t need us, then feeling broken when they believe us.
This is what nobody told me about that “success.”
For years, I thought I was different. I would roll my eyes at empty nesters and think to myself, ”Isn’t that the whole point? To raise independent kids?”
As a widowed father raising three kids through grief, I believed our unique bond would somehow exempt us from the typical empty nest syndrome. We weren’t just a family–we were survivors, teammates, and each other’s emotional lifelines.
Grief taught me that it’s hard to be vulnerable in life and even harder to be vulnerable with my children.
But after Ariana died, I chose not to hide my pain and to show my vulnerability.
There was one night in particular, while lying on my bed, that my anxiety began to rise. I tried all my techniques to calm down, but nothing helped. Eventually, I started shaking and hyperventilating.
I curled into a ball, grabbing my legs and squeezing them into my chest. Rocking back and forth at one final attempt to self-soothe. The air still failed to reach my lungs.
Worried I was going to pass out, I reached for my phone. Out of desperation, I managed to get a single text out; three words to my daughter, “please come here.”
I heard her footsteps walking towards my bedroom. She quietly opened the door to find me sprawled out on the bed. Still shaking and still struggling to breathe.
“I am so scared. I am so scared. I lost mommy. She’s gone. I am so scared.” I shouted through my sobs.
My daughter ran to the bed. Climbed on top. Placed her hands on my back and said nothing. She laid there with me until I was able to calm down. She knew what she had to do because she knew what she would need.
I refuse to hide my emotions from my children because I don’t want them to hide theirs from me. I am trying to show them they have permission to break down, not just tell them.
But now I am realizing that teaching children emotional courage means they’ll eventually have the courage to leave me. And nobody prepared me for how much that success can feel like a failure.
The emotional complexity of letting your children grow and form a new team
My kids are beginning to form a new team.
Their own team.
Apart from me.
They are becoming their own entities.
It’s beautiful.
Natural.
Healthy.
But it hurts to watch my team dismantle as each one is moving towards free agency.
This is a new kind of grief.
The grief of loss takes all these natural, universal moments of emotional shifts in our lives and adds a bit of pressure and pain on top. It twists it ever so slightly. It is the eyelash that you can feel but can’t seem to find.
So you are constantly blinking, agitated, and frustrated, but you keep going about your day.
In these moments, there are three steps to shift from loss to growth:
I sit with the discomfort. Close my eyes and just feel everything that comes up physically and emotionally.
I reach out to my support system to vent, learn, and find reassurance.
I connect with my children where they are in life. Their futures, the lives they want to build, and the growing adult-ish experiences they are having.
It’s important to approach each step with curiosity.
And no judgements.
Coping Strategies for Evolving Family Roles
We are all figuring out our new roles and how to balance involvement with autonomy.
And while I am adjusting to their growing lives, they are also learning to adjust to mine.
My relationship with my grief has evolved. Who I am has changed. There has been a categorical shift from being stuck in my grief to a focus on building an expansive future.
So, while they are thinking of their future, I am thinking of mine.
We move forward together but separately.
Alone but together.
I look for new ways to connect with them by:
Finding shared interests and prioritizing those moments of engagement
Stopping what I’m doing and asking about their thoughts when serendipity finds us all together in one room.
Ask them about the boundaries they want to set with me, and respect them.
Our love keeps us connected, and the pain we have all endured together has formed a bond that is not easily broken. We will still run to one another’s side when grief pushes us to the ground.
The difference now is that we are all moving towards a future and not remaining stuck in the past.
Life evolves. It happens, and we get to choose whether we will evolve with it.
We need to stop waiting for permission to move forward because it is never coming.
Our children are their own entities.
Our job is not to tell them who they are, but to help them discover it.
We need to let go of controlling their every move.
Give them opportunities to learn by experience.
Evolving is painful, difficult, and crushing. It is ultimately our choice whether we will let our grief expand our lives or shrink them.
Choose the pain of expansion over the pain of staying small.
- CJ
One last thing: If this resonated with you, you're not alone.
I've written about that first brutal year after losing Ariana - the panic attacks, impossible decisions, and small victories that taught me grief isn't something you "get over," but something you grow around.
It's the raw, unfiltered story of how three kids and their broken dad learned to build something new from the wreckage. No inspirational bullshit. Just truth.
If you're navigating your grief journey, this book was written for you.
The hardest part isn't the grief itself. It's giving yourself permission to feel it fully and still choose to expand.
Have you experienced this grief? What have you done that has allowed you to shift the narrative and grow in these moments?
If you enjoyed this read, the best compliment I could receive would be if you shared it with one person or restacked it.