What My 13 Year Old Son Taught Me About Permission

My thirteen year old son Sam is in a period of big change right now. He's really becoming his own person and it's honestly one of the most beautiful things I get to witness.

He has different passions and interests than a lot of other kids his age. He likes a slower pace, just like me. He needs more time to himself than most boys his age seem to want. He'd rather go deep on the thing he loves like music and movies, than spread himself across everything everyone else is doing.

And this Summer, I noticed myself trying to push him toward being something else. I was trying to get him to be more social, to get outside more, to put himself out there more. Closer to what I thought thirteen was supposed to look like, closer, if I'm honest, to what I thought a happy, well-adjusted kid was supposed to look like from the outside.

Then it hit me, the way these things tend to at 10pm when I'm falling asleep: there's no certain way a thirteen year old boy should be. He's happy. He's doing what he loves. Isn't that the whole point?

And if what he loves is more space and more time alone, that's literally what I need too. So why was I trying to make him be something different?

I spent decades doing the same thing to myself that I was doing to him.

I pushed myself to be more social than I actually wanted to be. I said yes to things I didn't want to do. I chose pushing and hustling over resting, again and again, until pushing just felt like who I was. I followed the shoulds and the expectations, I made myself more available, more agreeable and somewhere along the way I started performing a version of myself instead of living as her.

Have you ever felt that? That pull to be more of something you're not, because somewhere along the way you decided that's what you were supposed to be?

If you're in this changing season of your life, kids growing up, leaving home, quietly asking yourself for the first time in years what you actually want, that’s exactly where you’re meant to be.

My youngest is exploring who he actually is, in real time, right in front of me. And instead of just witnessing it, I caught myself trying to steer him away from it, toward something more familiar, more expected, more acceptable, easier for other people to understand.

Watching Sam take up space exactly as himself, with zero apology, was the mirror I needed. He's not doing anything wrong by being different. He's not too quiet, too slow, too inward. He's just uniquely beautiful him.

And neither are you or I doing anything wrong by being the same way.

There's no certain way a woman in midlife should be No script that says how much space you're allowed to take, how much rest you're allowed to need, how much of yourself you're allowed to keep for yourself instead of handing it out to everyone else.

Being a good mom was never about sacrificing myself so Sam & Ben could thrive. My boys don't need a perfect mother who has it all figured out. They need to watch me lead by example, to see a woman who's learning, in real time right alongside them, what it looks like to stop performing and start living as herself.

So I'm giving Sam permission to be exactly who he is, without apology, without a timeline for when he should "come out of his shell" or want what other kids want.

And I'm giving myself that same permission. Not someday, once I've earned it but now.

If you've spent years following the shoulds, being more social, more available, more agreeable than you actually are, ask yourself: what would it look like to stop performing that version of yourself, even just a little?

You don't need to become someone new. You just need to stop abandoning who you already are and become the woman you were always meant to be.

Mel x