Becoming Selene: Elbows Touching, Heads Leaning In

Today’s post is less about mothering individuals and more about the change in dynamic when the children in your life are no longer little kids.

You know how they say an important part of parenting is parenting yourself? Those wounds from our own childhood can pop up at the most surprising moments.

We’d love to share your anonymous and anonymized story, too. Here’s the form.

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“So much has surprised me about raising children from tweens into teens into adulthood, but one of the biggest shocks of my life happened in the school drop-off line.

My daughter was in middle school. This was during the COVID years, so I can’t remember whether it was 7th or 8th grade. But it was a time when a lot of the girls had experienced radical growth spurts and body changes and had started really paying attention to clothes, hair and makeup. I think I missed a lot of this happening, because of the pandemic.

So, on this afternoon, I was pulling up and my child had not come out yet. There was a group of girls all squished in together. As they often are. You know the look, right? Elbows touching, heads leaning in.

Anyway, I pulled up and waited and it just so happened I was right there next to that group of girls. Mind you, I had known most of them since they were snaggly-toothed kids. Some for longer.

But these weren’t kids I was seeing anymore. And the crazy thing is, my body started to send me danger signals.

High school was awful for me. Truly terrible. I was bullied, I didn’t fit in and I don’t have any happy memories really at all. So when I saw this gaggle of new teen girls in that super familiar pose, I kind of started to quake.

I was scared of them.

I’m an adult. They were in no position to hurt me. But that did not matter to my body. My body that remembered the cruelty. The exclusion. The wide smiles hiding the poison tongues.

My kids are older now. I’m not scared anymore, necessarily.

But I am still wary.”