A Shift in the Family

One simple act can change the course of a family in minutes: A death.... then a shift.

That one day, when something changes. You realize you are now part of the oldest generation of your family. There are no more parents or grandparents ahead of you. I am now one of the matriarchs of my family.

What was normal for me growing up made me assume that the next generation would naturally do what I did. I thought family traditions, expectations, and the way we showed up for one another would simply continue. But I was wrong.

I forgot something important: I am living my first life too.

What felt true in my twenties and thirties doesn't feel the same at fifty-four.

Knowledge, experience, practicality, grief, and life itself change us.

Our family is in a big shift.

The grandparents who quietly held standards and expectations together are gone. The older sister who deeply believed in family is gone.

Two sisters remain who are hurt, tired, and done. Done maintaining expectations. Done carrying relationships that often required so much energy just to survive that they never had a positive force in their lives anyways.

My sisters and I stayed close to our parents. We were raised to stick around. Because of that, our children grew up together. Cousins felt more like sisters. They spent endless time together and built memories without even realizing how special it was.

But if I am honest, there were times I questioned that too.

Sometimes staying felt limiting. Sometimes I wondered what life would have looked like if we had gone, explored, moved away, and built something different.

So when I raised my girls, I wanted something for them that felt bigger. I encouraged them to grow. To leave if they wanted to. To chase happiness, build lives they loved, and not stay because they felt obligated.

Go do your thing.

Go be happy.

Go build your life.

And they did.

Now I sit at fifty-four watching the shift happen in front of me. The closeness I knew growing up looks different. Life gets busy. People move. Families spread out. The very thing I encouraged became the very thing that changed everything.

This is my first time at life too.

Maybe family just changes.

Maybe every generation looks at the next and wonders where everyone went.

Maybe loving our children enough to let them build their own lives was never failure at all.

This is my first time at life too...

Maybe I did it wrong?