You Could Let It All Go

A discussion on the relentless worry of parenting a young adult

Preface: “We are deep in the narrator’s head,” was feedback I received on my memoir, and I never knew if it was positive or negative. These Substack posts feel like a deep dive into my mind. On one hand, I’m getting it out of my head. Breathe God in, Breathe Liz out. On the other hand, it’s self-centered, all Liz, all the time. I’m working on switching these posts up with maybe a guest writer or an interview. But in the meantime, “Here’s Liz …” 

If I could tell the world just one thing
It would be that we're all ok
And not to worry 'cause worry is wasteful
And useless in times like these
- “Hands,” Jewel

Last July, my oldest son Michael, who attends college in Vermont, decided to drive home in what is now known as "The Great Vermont Flood." I was desperate to get him to change his plans, so I posted on the University of Vermont's Facebook Parent page* to ask if anyone in the group was local and could give me a report on the weather in the Burlington area. "The roads are terrible," was the report, and I was able to convince my son to delay his drive home for at least one day.

A woman local to our Central New Jersey area recognized my name and privately messaged me to say her daughter was going to UVM in September. I welcomed her to the group and offered to answer any questions she may have.    

"I don't really have any questions right now — a lot of anxiety about my only child going to college six hours away ..." she said. 

"I hear ya," I DMed back. "The worry is intense and constant." 

To which she replied, "Oh, I was hoping to hear you say it gets easier, and the anticipation is the worst part …" 

I didn't know how to respond to that, so I didn't. I didn't have the heart to tell her that, in my experience, the worry doesn't get easier. One concern may go away, the black cloud dissipating, but it only reforms with a new concern, morphing into a new beast like some scary childhood monster. When my son Michael was a freshman, my worries ranged from "Would he find the cafeteria?" to "Is he addicted to drugs?" Each fear caused a pit in my stomach that I could fall into if I let myself. Now that he's a junior, I no longer worry that he will find the cafeteria, but I have other fears about him living on his own in an off-campus apartment. And the drugs, of course.     

The worry is relentless. 

Let me pause here to say I'm not talking about anxiety, which is a different beast altogether and something that should be treated with psychotherapy and/or medicine. I'm talking about your standard everyday worry that makes your mind buzz, your teeth clench, and in general, sucks the joy from your life. 

I've been thinking about worry lately, mostly because I'm over it. My kids are older now, 20, 18, and almost 16. They are fully-formed humans, and I want to be done with parenting (soonish). I know, I know, any older parents reading this are shaking their heads right now, saying you are never done parenting. If you're not worrying about your kids, you're worrying about your grandchildren.  

Ugh, I don't want to worry anymore.   

The other day, I was stressing about my middle son's trip to North Jersey for a concert. There wasn't a specific big worry, just a lot of minor things. Would he be okay in a strange city? Would his friends have a good time? Would they get the Uber okay? Would they be home too late to make it to school the next day? All day leading up to the concert, I was a twitchy mess and unable to concentrate. That night, I kept my phone plastered to my side. When Ray stomped down the stairs into the kitchen the next morning, he reported that the concert was great!, his friends had a good time!, and everything worked out with the Uber! "Bye," he yelled as he walked out the door to school. (Side note: Ray's baseline is upbeat.) 

Phew! That worry was over, and I swear to you, I could feel my brain click over to the next worry as if it was a gear turning, and it clicked from one worry notch to the next worry notch. Onto to the next kid and that worry. 

I relayed all this to my friend Kelly on one of our walk & talks at her lovely vacation home in VT.  

"I don't want to be like this," I whined. "In recovery, our goal is to be like a river flowing down the stream of life, effortlessly cruising over life's obstacles." I acted out this scenario by waving my arms gently and "flowing" down the dirt road we were walking on. Kelly (rightly) scoffed.

"Some worry is good," she said. 

"Hmmm, Is it?" I replied. "I'm not sure."  

Yes, "life favors the prepared," a phrase I read in the paper this weekend. I understand being prepared to prevent bad things from happening. Giving your teen driver an AAA card and one of those little hammers that breaks the window if they ever drive off a bridge and the car is sinking. But am I going to stress every time they drive over a bridge? Am I going to watch the dot in Find My Phone, willing it to safely pass over the Tappenzee? And realistically, would they even remember that the little hammer is there in the car's side pocket? 

Later that same day, Kelly and I bought 9-volt batteries for her vacation home’s smoke detectors. Worry or preparedness?

I should say that I'm relatively new to parental worry. When my kids were younger, from the baby stage to say around middle school, I didn't worry that much about the things that seemed to stress other parents. I didn't fret over breastmilk or formula. I chose whatever was easiest for me and the baby. I never worried that my child was going to get kidnapped riding his bike around the block. I didn't worry about them playing soccer on a field with yellow pesticide flags stuck in the ground. I'm not saying that I shouldn't have been concerned, maybe I should have. What I'm saying is that I didn't worry. Not when my kids were young. 

But the young adult stage is different.  

It was on the eve of my 9th birthday when I learned bad things can happen to young adults. My 21-year-old cousin died in a tragedy so horrific I don't feel comfortable writing about it. I can tell you my experience though which was, while I waited at my grandparents' pool for somebody to bring out my birthday cake, I could sense something was wrong because all the grown-ups were gathering in my grandparents’ tiny carriage house. Then, I heard the high-pitched wail of my aunt as she learned the news. That scream was like a knife cutting away the innocence from my childhood. From that point on, it was evident that horrible things can and do happen. A couple of years after that, my sister was hospitalized with an illness, and then my brother got sent away to rehab, and then my brother died when he was 21, and then my sister died when she was 29.    

My point is I have first-hand experience that the young adult stage is very, very dangerous. 

"My stomach is in knots," was something my mother often said during these troubled times. Did her constant stress save her children? No. Which leads me back to what good does worry do? It doesn't make anyone safe. And if it doesn't keep anyone safe, then how do I stop doing it?    

I have no answers, and I'm currently seeking solutions to keep my worry in check. If you have any, feel free to drop them in the comments. I know what my 12-step program would say to do. Tell the fear to someone else to get it out of your head and then turn your attention to someone you can help. And I do that sometimes. But maybe I get something out of the worry? If I do, what? And can I get that crutch from something else? For this post, I googled: "How to get rid of worry." One suggestion was to write your worries down in a journal. Maybe that's what I'm doing here. Writing it down to get it out of my head.

My son introduced me to the song "It's Called: Freefall" by Rainbow Kitten Suprise. I listen to it sometimes on my morning walk, and when these lyrics come on, "You could let it all go, you could let it all go. It's called: freefall," I raise my arms and imagine I'm a river flowing effortlessly over the rocks and sticks of life.     

* Have you ever visited a college’s parents’ Facebook page? If you have, then you know what a scene it can be. If you haven’t, well, let’s just say it’s a great resource, but it comes at a cost. In that feed, you can quickly see all the typical worries of a parent of a college kid.