Letting go of what life is "supposed" to look like...

an update from Eloise

This guest post is written by Eloise, who I had the pleasure of interviewing for Ep 7 of conversations with stoic mamas, titled The courage (and consciousness) to change the things we can. Many thanks to Eloise for accepting my invitation to share with the SMP audience an update on her family! By finding faith in our selves and our loved ones, and looking for the lessons in the messiness Life offers us, “beautiful and unexpected” things just might happen. I think this is the perfect post to wrap up 2024 in the SMP. I hope you also find inspiration and healing ideas from Eloise’s update.

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Each December, as the year draws to a close, I like to reflect on the previous twelve months, thinking of all my family and I have done, the places we’ve visited, the things we’ve experienced, how we’ve changed and grown. It’s a time for expressing gratitude for what we have and where we’ve been, and also for looking ahead with hope and optimism to the new year and all it will bring. This year, despite the tests and difficulties of the past few years—or perhaps because of them—I’m especially grateful for all the ways my family and I have grown.

My daughter, now a senior in high school, recently finished the fall semester as a dual enrollment student at our local community college. She had a great experience, and I think she’s feeling confident and ready for full-time college next fall. She’s narrowed down her choices to two schools in our state, both with excellent programs in her chosen major. She’s already been accepted to both, and she’s spending some of her long winter break applying for additional scholarships. But mostly we’re just relaxing, enjoying the holidays with family and friends, watching movies, and baking!

It’s such a contrast with our son’s experience of applying to colleges back in 2018. He attended our local college-prep magnet school and was labeled “gifted” and “high achieving.” At the time, we were embedded in what I now refer to as the achievement model—the idea that the most reliable path to success in life is to strive, work hard, take as many AP classes as possible, get a high score on standardized tests, attend the “best” college, go on to the “best” grad school, etc, etc. Looking back at my son’s high school years, I think we just went along with what other parents were doing. What high school counselors advised us to do. What college recruiters said they were looking for in their ideal applicants.

It was an arduous, exhausting process. There were moments of achievement and celebration, to be sure. But those moments came at a cost. By the time my son entered his freshman year of college, he was exhausted and burned out. Then, in the middle of a grueling spring semester, Covid hit, the university shut down, and all the students were sent home to finish their classes online. Just like that, the bubble of the idealized college experience burst.

My son was relieved to move back home, but he struggled to adapt to online classes. Later that fall, when classes resumed but continued online, his grades plummeted. Over the next year, we discovered that he had undiagnosed ADHD and a sleep disorder that had quite literally prevented him from getting a proper night’s sleep for years.

Our “gifted” and “high achieving” son dropped out of college. Our family jumped off the achievement bandwagon. We focused on health—both mental and physical. We got our son the help and support he needed. We prioritized our family, our time together, and what each of us really needed—not just to survive, but to thrive.

Fast forward to today, and I’m happy to share that my son is doing great! At 23, he lives at home with us to save on rent while working full time remotely for his university’s IT department. He’s been promoted a couple of times, is making good money, and has even started saving for retirement. And as a state employee, when he’s ready, he can go back to college and finish his degree—for free. Most of all, he’s healthy, he’s happy, and he’s thriving. Maybe it’s not the usual path to success, but it’s his path, one he took with our full support and blessing.

When I look back over the past five years, I see so many ways that our family life hasn’t exactly turned out the way I thought it would. I could never have predicted the worst pandemic in a hundred years, or my son dropping out of college, or my daughter diving down the gender rabbit hole.

Photo by Adrian Trinkaus on Unsplash

Through it all, the twists and turns of the past few years have taught me many valuable lessons, but one of the best is this: When I let go of what life is “supposed” to look like, some surprising things can happen. There’s no denying there have been some dark moments, times when I was sad or anxious or truly frightened for both my kids. But by having faith in my children, in our family, and in myself, I created room for something beautiful and unexpected to grow.