There is a photo I take every year on the first day of school. I am walking behind them, my husband walking, with each of the boys separately for each photo, with their small hands tucked into his, both of them moving forward, away from me, toward something new. I never planned to make it a tradition. And yet every year, I have found myself in that same position, phone up, heart full, watching them go in full stride ahead. There is something about that image, the backs of them, the forward motion, the hands clasped, that says everything I can’t quite put into words, especially after a chaotic morning when someone is crying about their new shoes and someone else can’t find their water bottle.

We also started something this year with the kids’ teachers. At the end of this school year last week, we brought in a copy of Dr. Seuss’ Oh, the Places You’ll Go, that ridiculously perfect little book, and asked their teachers to sign it. The kids took this task so seriously. They carried the book in like it’s a treasure. They waited for the right moment to proudly ask their teachers. And when the teachers wrote their notes, the kids read them over and over again on the car ride home, asking me to read them aloud, then quietly reading them again to themselves. I watched their faces and thought: so this is what it looks like when someone makes you feel seen.

Because that’s what teachers do. That’s what anyone does, really, who shows up for a child with intention. They leave a mark because children are so porous, they absorb everything, like a sponge. A comment made in passing or the way someone says their name. Our kids are walking around carrying traces of every person who has moved through their lives, often without either party realizing it. The tired teacher who still laughed at their joke. The parent who gave them a hug after a large meltdown in the middle of Cheesecake Factory (true story of last weekend). The grandparent who always remembered to ask about their science project. These are not small things. These are the threads children weave into who they are becoming.

And here is the part that gets me, how we, as parents, are their whole world right now. We are their gravitational center and slowly that world will quietly, gradually, almost imperceptibly, start to shift as they get older. Other people begin to orbit closer, be it a best friend, a coach, eventually a partner, a community they chose entirely for themselves. We as parents are the ones who change their diapers right now, run to them when they call our names to wipe them after pooping for the first time on a toilet, are the ones that hold their hands after a rough day, and one day our number on their list of people to share a joy or struggle with will change. As the circle expands, we the ones who were once the entire universe, become one planet among many in that solar system.

What I’ve been sitting with lately is that this isn’t just true of our children. It’s true of all of us. We are always, at every age, in the middle of our own version of this, a slow redistribution of ourselves outward, into the world, into other people. Giving a piece of us to those around us in that phase of life. To a new colleague who sees us through a hard stretch at work, or to a neighbor who becomes family without any formal announcement, or to the person whose bus stop we shared for three years and told everything to, and then never saw again. We scatter ourselves constantly, and others carry those pieces forward when they go.

Which is why when our village shifted last week, this has landed so dearly. The person who has been in our home every day, who knows the chaos of our evenings, who saw our personal struggles daily, who has loved our children in the ordinary, unglamorous, real way, they are carrying us now away with them. They are so strong to be able to do that. They witnessed the versions of us we don’t curate, like those dinners that fell apart, the hard evenings when my husband and I had an argument, and the random Tuesday nights when everyone was laughing for no reason. Those moments live in them, as well as us. When life pulls us to different places, they take all of that with them, and we carry pieces of them too.

So when I watch my boys outgrow us a little more each year, choosing their friends, building their interior lives, needing us differently, I try to hold it as the same thing. It isn’t a loss, it is a distribution. We are teaching them, by loving them and then loosening our grip, that it is safe to scatter themselves. How they can hand over pieces of who they are to teachers and teammates and bus seat strangers and still come home whole. That the world is made of people carrying each other’s stories, and that is not a reason to hold tighter. It is the whole point of being human on this earth.

That’s the work. Healthy boundaries, for them and for us. Knowing when to lean in and when to stay in your lane. It is harder than it sounds. Especially when you can see it coming, the stumble as they take that first step forward (literally and figuratively), how that choice may not be quite right and you have to put your hands in your pockets and let them find their footing.

When they stand proud after a hard thing, a performance, a test, a moment where they dug deep and came through, the goal is that the pride lives in them, not borrowed from our eyes. I want them to feel proud of themselves first, and not have to search for our eyes, which is a realization that I have come to as I am realizing I am a classic people pleaser due to my childhood. When they struggle, when they sit with something really hard and search for the words to name what they’re feeling, the hope is that they find them, or find a version of the skills we spent years trying to teach them. That deep breath or that moment to take some space for themselves. And when they fall, and of course they will fall, they will know, somewhere beneath everything, that there is a place in us they can come back to, not to be rescued, just to be held. Simple truth always.

Change is terrifying AND change is necessary. The two things are both completely true. What I am trying to hold on to is that each phase is whole. It isn’t a preamble of what comes next or a loss of what came before. Each phase is a whole moment that should be appreciated. The picture I take from behind, watching them walk forward, is not me being left behind. It is me bearing witness to something truly magnificent.

The places they’ll go. I can’t wait to hear about them, from a little further away, in the way that is healthy, in the way that means we did something right.