I am down for the count today, and it is giving me a taste of how hard it’s going to be to let go. This has been a year. Covid started just months after I started taking serious steps to let go and get Kiran out into the community – and into others’ care.

Now, he has been in my care for the majority of the time for over a year. And I am having to learn to let go again. To trust others with his care.

He kept looking for me this morning, while Eric gave him his breakfast. It’s going to be an adjustment for him, too. And now, he’s on a walk with his Nana so Eric can mow, and I can continue to rest.

Similar to that newborn, brought into this world during flu/cold season, with a serious unrepaired heart defect, I am so good at placing the bubble around him. It is my strength. Protecting him comes easily to me.

But where I grow? That’s where the bubble gets stretched and expanded and eventually, popped. It’s the harder work of helping him achieve his own place in this world – his own community, friends, personhood.

And because it’s harder, I think it’s more rewarding. I know we will get back there, to a place where we are both comfortable not being physically next to one another all the time.

It’s important work. Both the protecting and the nudging. We’ve got this.