As my daughter begins her third month of living, working and travelling abroad, I’ve found myself reflecting on the very different ways we each experienced our own rite of passage and our time working in overseas.
Her trip isn’t better than mine was. Mine isn’t better than hers.
It’s simply different.
For her, London is capturing a Matcha from Oxford Street, finding the latest viral Tokyo sandwich and happily queuing for an hour to eat it. It’s discovering a tiny nail salon, pop up garden cafe, vintage clothing stores, rooftop bars where the views stretch across the city, and the next cool place everyone is talking about.
It’s a London that exists in the palm of her hand. A London of TikToks, Instagram stories, Google Maps and messages sent home in real time.
And perhaps that’s what makes it feel so close, yet somehow so far away.
I remember watching her walk through the iconic passport control area at Melbourne Airport and feeling something shift inside me. I suddenly realised that she wasn’t simply going travelling.
She was beginning a life.
A life where she would meet people I will never know, visit places I have never been, make decisions without me and create memories that I won’t be there to witness.
And that is exactly what she should be doing.
When you are carrying your children, or pushing them out into the world for the first time, you never imagine that one day they might be starting a new life 16,900 kilometres from home. You don’t imagine that the little person who once needed you for everything will grow into someone who doesn’t need you in quite the same way at all.
You love them. You nurture them. You guide them.
And then, eventually, you have to let them fly.
Not hold them too tightly. Not keep them tied to your apron strings. But trust that everything you have given them will travel with them, even when you cannot.
I have felt such a mixture of emotions since she left. Overwhelming pride and happiness for everything she is experiencing, mixed with a deep sadness that she is no longer under my roof.
I miss the ordinary things. Her rolling her eyes at me. The grunt when she’s hungover. The completely unhelpful comment about what I’m wearing. The little conversations that happen without either of us really thinking about them. It’s funny what you miss.
I sometimes wonder how different this experience is for this generation. When I was her age, being away meant being away. There were no FaceTimes, no live locations, no constant stream of photographs. Phone calls home were expensive and time difference seemed unmanageable.
Now, in some ways, they are never really that far away. I can wake up and see a message from her. Sometimes it’s simply a goodnight message that has arrived while I was asleep. Sometimes it’s a photo of her dinner, something she saw that day, a glimpse of London or a story about her shift at work. And I love those little windows into her world.
But I am trying not to call. I am trying to let her call me. To give her space. To let her work things out. To let her experience the freedom of being somewhere where Mum isn’t just around the corner.
Because my role now is different. It is to listen, not judge. To encourage, not recommend. To let her make mistakes rather than rushing in to fix them. To let her take risks, make decisions and learn that she can navigate her own way through the world. I need her to know that I am always here.
But being here doesn’t mean being present in every moment. She is starting her own life. She is working a new job, meeting new people, finding her favourite places and creating stories that will become part of who she is. And I am not part of all of them. As hard as that can feel, that is the way it should be.
Perhaps this is one of the hardest parts of motherhood. Learning that letting go doesn’t happen once. It happens over and over again. A little more with the first day of school. A little more with the first sleepover. The first car ride without you. The first relationship. The first job.
And then one day, they walk through passport control and you realise that the biggest thing you can give them is the freedom to go.
I’m lucky that I don’t have to do this completely alone. I have a supportive partner beside me when I miss her terribly, and my own mum is only a phone call away.
I am now watching my niece with her first-born daughter has made me think about this even more. I watch her navigate the long, endless days and the restless nights. The exhaustion and the overwhelming love. The joy that can come from something as simple as a smile or a tiny gurgle from a happy baby.
She holds this precious little bundle close, perhaps unable to imagine that one day, in another 21 years, she too may be standing at an airport, watching her own daughter walk away.
Feeling pride. Feeling sadness. Feeling that ache in her heart that only a parent can understand. And perhaps she will think back to these days when her daughter needed her for everything and realise that this was always the destination.
To love them enough to let them go. To give them roots and then wings. To watch them create a life of their own.
And when they do, to stand back, take a breath and whisper to yourself:
As she should ...