The Road Not Taken

+ recipe for Rhubarb Barbecue Sauce

I wasn’t sure how I’d feel as the college graduations of my friend’s daughters started trickling into my Instagram feed. Just a couple of short years ago, our families were all on parallel paths. Then in the summer of 2023 a new journey began to unfold.

Isabella’s decision to take a permanent break from college is one I whole-heartedly agreed with, and still do. We’ll never know if Bennington was the wrong fit, or if college just wasn’t the right choice for her at that moment in time. Why the academic world insists on this rigid path for our children is a question for another day. What I do know is that the person she is today is so much stronger and confident, both emotionally and mentally, than the person who graduated high school 4 years ago.

I’m embarrassed to admit how blinded I was to how much she was masking and holding things together while living at home. Freshman year was when the grief she’d been carrying came barging through the front door. Her grief has many layers beyond the obvious ones. I can relate in some ways to the responsibilities she carried as the oldest sibling in a single parent household. She was expected to carry her weight more than her younger sister.