Dear parents of 2023 grads: If you’re melancholy or worried, you’re in good company

I opened my notebook and turned to a clean page as the Moms’ Planning Committee sat down for our first meeting at a local coffee shop. Our task? Organize one large high school graduation party for our five sons.

These kids have been friends for years. They grew up together in classrooms, and on ball fields and courts. They have had sleepovers and spent hours sitting in their cars in the school parking lot talking about whatever teenage boys, flush with the freedom of a driver’s license and half of tank of gas, talk about.

Despite being on the same path in the same schools and teams for years, each has his own interests, strengths and unique plans for the next chapter of his life.

As I looked around the coffee shop table, I was socked in the gut with an emotion that threatened to bring tears to my eyes: We moms had also grown up together — not from our childhoods, but as parents. Despite our different ages and occupations, we’re friends who, years ago, had first bonded over our kids, those very boys who are now graduating high school.

Another realization hit me: We, the parents and adults who raised the class of 2023, are graduating, too.

No one is going to ask me to give a commencement address any time soon, so I’m going to grab the opportunity now to give one to the parents and adults who raised the class of 2023.

Take a long, honest look at that person you’ve raised. If you’re like me, a flood of memories will wash over you like an ocean wave you probably shouldn’t have been playing in. You’ll tumble through the youngest years that were such hard physical work, and then get smacked by the later ones that were such hard mental work. Your memory montage will show their tiny faces full of cake, then full of tears, and, eventually, full of eye-rolls.

You’ll have a moment when only good memory photos will swirl around you: pictures of sleeping babies, first days of school and smiling victories as they mastered skills.

The next wave might be a swell of guilt over your missteps as a parent. As you surf these images, maybe you’ll remember losses of temper at the very worst time, the irretrievable words that flew out of your mouth in anger or exhaustion, and your utter failure to honestly fill in the grade school weekly reading logs. You’ll remember the times you were at a complete loss for what to do or say to make it all better, and the times you forgot it was picture day and sent them off in whatever they picked up from their floor.

As your head gets above the waves and your feet touch the ground, you’ll realize that you cherish those Sponge Bob T-shirt and messy hair school pictures because they show exactly how your child looked that year. And the other mistakes? They’re painful but they showed your kid that you mess up just like they do and that you learned from it. You modeled how to apologize and do better next time.

Our kids changed with each year, but we’ve changed, too, as people and as parents. We’ve gone from parenting in theory to parenting newbie and on up the raising-a-kid-ladder of changes, challenges and growth. And, like our graduating kids, we also might be having a bit of a freak-out about what comes next as we leave this familiar chapter.

My hope for you, just as it is for our children, is to know that it’s OK to not know where your next step will lead. Simply choosing and beginning a path is exactly what all of our stories need.

Graduating parents and students, it’s time for all of us to turn the page.

Susan is a Kansas City based writer and podcaster. She co-hosts the long-running, award winning women’s history podcast, The History Chicks.