She's coming home

A few weeks ago I drove my middle child across states to try living with my sister. She lives in a small town, there's more family and my baby girl (I refer to all of my girls as "baby girl") has high anxiety so we all thought it might be a good thing for her. Yesterday she told me she wanted to come home. She said she feels "worthless." That broke my heart. I wanted to leave last night to go get her.

So why talk about that hear? My self talk immediately became that of my failure: "What have I done wrong that she struggles with so much anxiety? I should gotten her to therapy before she left. I should have done xyz." I also heard in her voice that she feels a bit of that failure vibe too. She's worried that she's disappointed the family there by coming home so quickly. 

Realistically neither of us should be considering failure at this point. We wanted to try something different, we did. We didn't know what would happen, we weren't sure if it would be a good fit or not, there weren't expectations. Okay, I think she had some unstated expectations, the expectations I had were confined to her learning to drive and coming home sooner than later. She didn't learn to drive but she did drive more there than she ever has here. She is coming home sooner than later, I just wish it wasn't breaking her heart so much.

I'm glad to have my baby girl back. I have a better idea of what I need to do to support her. Those are good things. We can give her some extra support and love so that she can fly when she feels ready. I think she feels like she should be flying now. She's seen most of her friends fly off to college and they seem great. She wasn't ready for that and that's okay. I hope she'll relieve herself of that pressure. If you have suggestions about how I can help her release that let me know. 

I want to help her release those expectations and fears and that feeling of failure so she can be free. I realize that I too need to release my own expectations and fears and feelings of failure so I do not infect her any more than what's been done. Perhaps we can learn to fly together.