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Big Feelings
My son is a graduating senior, and Big Feelings have taken me hostage.  His senior photos arrived in my inbox this week, and it proved to be my emotional tipping point.  If you ask me anything about Jake, I am apt to weep.  The ugly cry is always right below the surface, and God bless the innocent bystander who casually asks me about my son.  You have been warned.  I will emote.  
 
No one prepared me for just how pervasive the Big Feelings are that come with having a graduating senior, and it has taken me most of this past year to recover from walking through it with Annie.  Just when the effects of my Big Feelings for her have calmed and quieted, a new round is waiting for me, ready to walk me through another emotional hurricane.  
 
Big Feelings are the worst.  I hate how heavy and hard they are, and in my opinion they ask more from me than I consider fair.  They leave me undone and spent, weepy and red-eyed, torn up from the inside out, and they always always show up at the most inconvenient of times.
 
The worst part is I have no idea how to label the Big Feeling associated with high school graduation.  It is a tangle of beaming pride, stunning grief, exuberant joy, and unabashed delight.  It is a mess of confusion and celebration.  I'm sad, but not in a tragic way.  I'm happy, but I can't stop crying.  I'm want him to go, but I cannot stomach that he's leaving.  
 
The only way through, the only strategy for surviving and squeezing every ounce of life and love from this season is to feel it all and hold nothing back.  To welcome the Big Feelings, willingly invite them in, create space for what they require, and trust the change that will emerge.  
 
So I cry when I feel like crying, which happens a lot lately.  I drink in the photos, marveling that he was ever tiny enough for me to hold.  I weep over the memories, grateful for every minute we spent together.  I embrace the mess and acknowledge the beauty of having loved and lived alongside a little life for eighteen years only to let him go so that he too may find his way and build a life of his own.  
 
Some days I want a different reality than having to pay the cost that love requires.  I wish I could outrun the Big Feelings, outsmart them from showing up, side step their struggle.  But then, I look at my son, tall, talented, ready to take on his next chapter, and I remind myself that Big Feelings are the currency of loving deeply, and I will gladly feel them all.

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“A boy, his dad, and a completed Eagle Scout project.”
“Love comes in a lot of forms.  This week it took the shape of a tone-on-tone ivory tote, knowingly embroidered, accented with a floral scarf, gifted for no reason from the dearest of friends, tangibly reminding me that I am seen, loved, and belong.”
 

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