My daughter is newly planted in San Francisco, settled into her dorm and doing better than ever. It was an uneasy transition—would she go? Would the last minute be me wrangling her away from her summer bliss, she kicking her very long legs as I pressed her into the loaded truck?
Coming into adulthood is no easy feat. Our brains are a morphing, reaching, expanding, crystallizing, uncontrollable mess as we enter adulthood—the somewhat imaginary line of independence. As a parent, I am in awe of my own stamina to bear the weight of anchoring a young person to this planet while they are taking shape. Many days, I am not sure if I am qualified, strong enough, or resilient enough to carry on.
I got the feeling last night when I was driving home. Home. Unplugged. It happened as I rounded the corner onto Harkness, a few blocks away from my nearly empty place. We had to leave a few things that didn’t fit into the truck, and the cat who wouldn’t come out of hiding when the moving truck left. I felt the pop—when you pull the cord out of the wall and the light goes off.
I recently watched the new film Everything Everywhere All at Once and cried throughout the whole end as I watched Michelle Yeoh’s character physically pull her daughter from the abyss that threatened her existence. It was too close to home. Three years ago, that’s exactly what I was doing with my then 14-year-old daughter. What started out as my attending the South Bay Families Connected Parent Chat to talk about the seemingly typical challenges I had with my daughter—too much screen time, the plummet of self-esteem in front of social media, peer influence—became a lifeline over the following year as I rose to the challenge of having a child dysregulate to the point of attempting her own life.
