I'm sending you a book that you need to read this week too. ⬇️
That look.
I'd seen it before. Every first day in September.
And this week I've seen it again. At the drop-offs on my final workshops of the summer.
It makes me feel like the volunteer offering a chilled Evian at mile 100 of a desert ultra-marathon. Can it really be true that those beads of condensation will soon be in the runner's hands and the marathon will be over?
The relief is real.
But I know there are also the confused feelings. The guilt that you didn't love every minute of it. The disappointment that your summer looked different to the ones you're scrolling past. The frustration that you definitely lost it with the kids more than you feel good about.
You know what? You're allowed to feel all those things. And as Barry Sykes and I were chatting about with the workshop kids yesterday, everyone's experiences are different. The worlds we live in and create never look the same.
It's time to pat yourself on the back, know you did the best you could, and send them on their merry little way.
And speaking of merry little ways, this week's book is for the small people. But I'm glad you'll be reading it together.
Wobblysaurus by Rachel Bright
A little dinosaur gets her first bike. She's itching to ride off with her friends, but every time she sets off... she wibbles, she wobbles, she falls. By the third fall she's ready to chuck the bike in a hedge and give up on bikes FOREVER.
Enter Grannysaurus, who doesn't tell her to try harder or stop being dramatic (thanks Granny). She just says: "we're all on one big journey, not a race."
And it's exactly what I want to say to every parent this week… and to remind myself of.
Because your kid's first day back is their own wobbly bike ride. Some will trot happily off. Some will hold on to you tighter than a toddler who just nabbed a contraband ice-cream from the freezer. Some won't want to talk about it until the aftermath of an apparently random volcano eruption of feelings.
None of it means anything about how the year's going to go. It's not a race. It's not even really a start. It's just the next bit of the same long, wobbly journey.
Read it at bedtime.
And keep Grannysaurus's line in your head.
Love,
Becca