The Tiny Griefs of Growing Up
End of another school year. How can that be?
I don’t even have kids graduating this year, and still… I feel it in the air.
Groups of seniors out and about, celebrating their “lasts.” I’ve seen them gathered in packs at restaurants, dressed up, laughing louder than usual, soaking in the finality of this strange threshold between childhood and whatever comes next. Last football game. Last dance. Last lunch period. Last walk through familiar halls. Last ordinary Tuesday before life changes shape.
A dear friend’s son is graduating fifth grade and leaving the elementary school that has held him for years - his safe, familiar home base. An ending.
And also, of course, a beginning.
Middle school. New classrooms. New teachers. New parents to meet. New friendships. New rhythms.
It struck me recently how full of contradictions these moments are.
It’s grief and joy. Excitement and sadness. Pride and nostalgia. A beginning and an ending all at once.
I notice myself holding the “both/and” a lot these days.
Maybe because life keeps reminding me that meaningful experiences rarely arrive one feeling at a time.
We tend to think emotions should come neatly organized. Happy or sad. Excited or grieving. Proud or nostalgic.
But real life rarely works that way.
A child growing up can feel like: I am so proud of you. Please slow down.
Summer arriving can feel like: Ahhh, freedom. Also… wait, how are we here already?
A milestone can feel like: Congratulations. I’m going to miss this version of us.
And maybe that’s the human experience - holding joy in one hand and grief in the other.
I’ve been thinking lately about tiny griefs.
Not the life-shattering griefs, though of course those exist too. I mean the quieter ones.
The end of a school year. Moving homes. A friendship shifting. The last time your child reaches for your hand without thinking. Packing lunches for the final week of school. A routine you once complained about quietly disappearing.
Tiny griefs.
The ones we often rush right past.
Because culturally, we are very good at celebrating beginnings. Graduation parties. Promotions. New homes. Weddings. Summer vacations.
Forward motion.
What we are not so good at is pausing to honor what just ended.
To say: This mattered. I loved this. I’ll miss this version.
And I wonder sometimes if that’s why so many of us quietly feel anxious, restless, irritable, emotional, or strangely “off” during seasons of transition.
Not because something is wrong.
But because change is happening and we haven’t slowed down long enough to acknowledge it.
Our nervous systems notice.
Even joyful change is still change.
And maybe this is where my own comfort with grief comes in.
I often joke that I’m very comfortable in grief space (occupational hazard? personality trait? death doula life? 😂), while many people are understandably less so. A somatic coach once gently reminded me of this, that not everyone instinctively pauses to feel endings the way I do.
And maybe that’s true.
But I still wonder: What if we celebrated endings more?
Not in a dramatic, heavy way. But in a reverent way. A slowing-down kind of way.
What if, before rushing into the next thing, we paused long enough to honor the chapter that just held us?
To bask in what we survived, learned, built, loved, endured, accomplished.
No matter how ordinary. No matter how small.
As I write this, I realize I’m standing in one of these “both/and” seasons myself.
Next month I’m taking my almost-17-year-old son and his friend to Indonesia for a surf trip - something that feels equal parts meaningful, terrifying, beautiful, and stretching.
Beneath the travel logistics and nerves, I think there’s another quieter thing happening too.
We are both changing.
He is stepping further into himself - into adventure, independence, uncertainty, becoming.
And I am changing too.
Learning how to loosen my grip a little. Learning that motherhood keeps asking us to evolve. Learning that loving our children sometimes means tolerating our own discomfort as they stretch toward who they are becoming.
There is joy in watching that happen.
And also, if I’m honest, a tiny ache.
A tiny grief.
Not because something is wrong. But because this version of motherhood, this version of him, will never quite exist again.
Maybe this is part of growing up - theirs and ours.
And maybe grieving tiny things isn’t about becoming sad or getting stuck.
Maybe it’s how we metabolize change. How we soften into what’s true. How we fully receive what mattered.
Maybe grief, in these moments, is simply love acknowledging:
This mattered.
So as summer arrives, maybe we slow things down for a moment.
Maybe we ask:
What are we proud of this year? What are we leaving behind? What surprised us? What will we miss?
And maybe (even for just a moment) we let joy and grief sit beside each other.
Not opposites.
Just two old friends, sharing the same table.
If this season feels unexpectedly tender, overwhelming, emotional, or simply “a lot,” I recently shared a gentle video reflection on why transitions can affect our nervous systems more than we realize.
In it, I talk about the emotional weight of endings and beginnings, why even joyful change can feel dysregulating, and how we can offer ourselves a little more grace during seasons of transition.
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