I normally blog about the experience of being a mother to younger children and these posts are borne out of my past experience. While my daughter is now 26, I still vividly recall the highs and lows of everyday mothering.
One thing I don’t do much of though is talk about how it feels to be a mother to an adult child.
It’s a whole different ball game but with some overlaps. If you think about a Venn diagram, the overlap part in the middle would be that your adult child still needs you, as a mother, but in a different way.
So, there comes a time when your child no longer needs you to tie their shoelaces, make their packed lunch, or sign a school form at midnight.
They’re adults now — possibly living in their own homes, as my daughter is, and building their own lives.
But that tug of motherhood still is as primal as ever whenever something happens to them. Recently my daughter had a prolonged cold, only a cold mind you, but I fretted that I wasn’t on hand to give her medication or mop her brow.
How silly but at some point, in my chaotic mind, I had to step back and tell myself that she was more than capable of looking after herself.
Motherhood doesn’t really end. It just changes shape.
These days, I don’t hover outside school gates — I hover near my phone, waiting for a text. “Just checking in,” I tell myself, when really, I’m just making sure she is ok. The funny thing is, our children have learned to sense that too. They might roll their eyes, but they also know that this is love — seasoned, quiet, and ever-present.
There’s something beautiful about this next chapter of mothering. You no longer manage their world — you simply witness it. You listen more, advise less (well, mostly), and marvel at who they’ve become.
The bond transforms from a daily duty into an emotional thread that stretches across miles, moods, and milestones.
Sometimes, it feels like you’re the background music in their story now — steady, familiar, and always there when they tune in. However, It’s not all ‘Motherhood and Apple Pie’. Sometimes the frequency attributed to you is so low that you wonder whether they still need you.
Then they come back.
In the meantime, it’s a phase of motherhood where you are free to pursue your own interests whether it’s in your career or hobbies. The secret is not to sit around pining or waiting. Do role model later in life independence for them so they learn that growing older isn’t a barrier to carry on living a life worth living.
“It’s not only children who grow. Parents do too. As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do with ours. I can’t tell my children to reach for the sun. All I can do is reach for it, myself.” ~ Joyce Maynard
