I'm Loving This for You

Sep 10

5 min read

I’ve been thinking about something today.

Ashley — technically my stepdaughter, but really more like a friend/sister who also happened to pop us out a grandbaby — and her husband are making plans to move from Alberta to Australia, while still keeping some sort of home base.

Not next week. They have a one-year plan. There are still a lot of things that have to happen between here and there, and only a handful of people even know about it yet.

But naturally, one of the first reactions is the obvious one.

But we’ll never see our Squishy Cheeks.

She won’t grow up knowing us.

How could you move that far away?

And I get it.

I’ve had those thoughts too.

Clint and I were sitting here talking about it today, and he said something about how she’ll never really grow up knowing us, if they live on the other side of the world.

My first instinct was to go into full-on problem-solving mode, because that’s pretty much how I’m wired.

We can FaceTime. We can visit. They will still have a place at home to spend longer periods of time. Technology makes the world a hell of a lot smaller than it used to be.

Australia is obviously a little farther than an 1.5 hour drive.

But somewhere in the middle of that conversation, I stopped thinking about the distance.

I started thinking about them.

And really, if there was ever someone who was going to do something like this, it would be Ashley.

She has always marched to the beat of her own drum.

Ashley, thrilled about getting chickens for Christmas. Jordan… adjusting to the vision.

She moved to Australia at 18 for a couple of years.

She has travelled the world.

She is independent, strong, stubborn as hell when she makes up her mind, and one of the hardest-working people I know when she decides she wants something.

That has always been who she is.

So maybe this isn’t her suddenly changing at all.

Maybe this is actually her becoming even more of who she has always been.

And there’s another part of it I keep coming back to.

What an opportunity for their daughter.

To grow up seeing that there isn’t just one way to build a life.

That you don’t have to stay in the same place, follow the same path, or make the choices everyone expects you to make just because that’s what people usually do.

She could grow up with Australia as part of her childhood. Different places, different people, different ways of living.

And maybe even more important than the travel itself, she’ll grow up watching her parents make a big decision because it feels right for their family.

She’ll see that you can take a risk.

You can change direction.

You can build a life that looks different from everyone else’s.

You can decide what matters to you and work toward it.

What a thing to teach your daughter without ever having to sit her down and say it.

That there are lots of ways to live a good life.

And that she can do anything!

And then I started thinking about what it would feel like to tell the people you love that you’re considering doing something huge, exciting and probably terrifying — and immediately have to take on everyone else’s feelings about it too.

Everyone telling you what they are going to lose.

Everyone reminding you how much they are going to miss you.

Everyone asking how you could possibly take her so far away from us.

And probably a healthy dose of, But what if…?

And I realized this isn’t really just about moving away.

We do this to people all the time.

Someone changes careers and we ask why they would give up something secure.

Someone starts setting boundaries and suddenly they’ve “changed.”

Someone becomes more confident, travels more, wants something different, meets new people or changes their priorities.

But instead of asking whether they’re happier, we focus on how their change affects us.

“You’ve changed” can sound like such an accusation.

But aren’t we supposed to?

I hope I’m not exactly the same person at 47 that I was at 27.

I really hope not.

And I hope the people I love aren’t either.

Sometimes people grow in directions that make perfect sense for them and feel uncomfortable to us.

Maybe we miss the version of them that was more available.

Maybe their new boundaries mean things between us change.

Maybe their confidence changes the relationship.

Maybe their adventure takes them farther away than we would ever choose.

And none of that necessarily means they’re doing something wrong.

Sometimes another person’s growth feels like a loss simply because we were comfortable with who they were before.

That’s a hard thing to admit.

Somewhere in all of this I wondered:

Why are we so bad at simply being happy for people?

Why, when someone is happy about something, do we so quickly make it about how it affects us?

I picked up my phone and texted her.

“I’ve been thinking about you guys making that move and I really love this for you guys.”

That was it!

She replied:

“Thank you for saying that. It's been a really emotional afternoon for me, so this was just a really nice message."

And that hit me.

Because I hadn’t known she was having a bad day.

I hadn’t known she needed somebody to say it.

But I imagine when you’re making a big life decision, you’re already carrying enough of your own fear, uncertainty and what-ifs without having to carry everybody else’s too.

I wanted her to hear at least one voice saying:

Go.

Try it.

Have the adventure.

Build the life that feels right to you.

Change.

Grow.

Don't worry about us. We’ll figure out OUR part.

Maybe loving people isn’t always asking them to stay close enough that we feel comfortable.

Maybe sometimes it’s being willing to miss them.

Maybe it’s allowing people to become versions of themselves that we didn’t expect.

Maybe it’s accepting that their best life might occasionally be inconvenient for ours.

And maybe when someone we love tells us about an opportunity, a move, a relationship, a career change, a boundary, a dream, a belief — something that lights them up but changes things for us — we don’t have to make our discomfort the first thing they have to carry.

And as for missing them...

There will be FaceTimes, plane tickets and visits.

There will be new traditions we haven’t even thought of yet.

There will be first days of school we might watch through a screen, little appointments and milestones we’ll make a point of showing up for however we can, and probably some truly terrible time-zone math.

It may not look the way people expect family life to look, but that doesn’t mean it's wrong or that we can’t still be just as close.

There will also be lots of other moments in life when people I love change in ways I didn’t see coming.

I hope I can get better at asking one question before making it about me:

Is this making them happy?