A BIG day in our house.

This is a big weekend in our house as my daughter packs her Converse, Mac makeup and heads up the motorway to Manchester to start University.

I never understood the grief my own mother must have suffered as I left for University and a life full of adventure, fun, independence, and life’s steep learning curves ….until today.

Nothing really prepares you for the day your last child finally flies the nest. It’s a big moment in their lives and in yours too as things will certainly change and never be quite the same.

I have written many times about how bringing up a child is ALL about how we handle change yet the personal changes I have gone through in the last year have been quite dramatic as I now find myself alone for the first time in 22 years as I am also currently going through a challenging divorce at the same time due to my  husband having a mid life crisis.

I’m excited for her –  Manchester Metropole was her first choice and she has managed to get super accommodation and I know the Primark is fab for shopping trips when I visit !

But it’s with nostalgia, memories and tears that I send her off into her new life and while of course she’ll pop back from time to time and spend the l-o-n- g  Summer holidays at home she will return changed, grown and shaped by experiences I will only know 2nd hand.

I’m enormously proud of both of my children – they are both fine young people with integrity, tenacity, determination, compassion and enormous humour – this is all about new beginnings, celebrating and marking this rite of passage and embracing the future but boy, am I going to miss her !

It’s only now that I really get this quote by Elizabeth Stone

“Making the decision to have a child – it is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. ”