This weekend my three year old daughter got a ‘big girl bed’. She’d been anticipating it for weeks, and got in it with her new birthday doll and a huge smile, totally rejecting the baby she’s had for the last year. Of course my emotions were mixed. Alongside my happiness at her joy, I thought, “She’s not a baby any more!”
The constant change parents experience is an obvious place for mixed feelings. But, now more than ever as a society, we need good coping mechanisms for change. We are living in a world of change so constant, the older generations can barely keep up to give us advice. In France there is a saying I’ve heard for a bachelorette party, “l’enterrement de jeune fille,” which means “burial of the young maid.” It may be a bit old fashioned, but it does recognize that even with the joy of marriage comes nostalgia for the life of the single girls. To me that is so liberating. This sentiment highlights how simple acknowledgement of all sides of change can be one major tool in helping us let go and move forward.