Writing about letting go, especially at the end of the year and the beginning of a new one, is pretty cliché.

Out at the nurse’s station, the level of nervous activity and high-pitched chatter sounded an alarm in my head. “Twins born at home?” I asked the charge nurse. That wasn’t such a big deal. But her reply is what knocked me off kilter. “Yeah,” she answered, “twenty-three weeks.” My heart dropped, and my adrenaline surged.

Sounds obvious, but for me it recently rang especially true. I remember anticipating the day my youngest child would be graduating from high school and moving on to college. I believed that this would be my time of freedom

Recently, I went on a three-day silent meditation retreat. No talking, no communicating in any way, no reading, no writing – that is all part of noble silence taught in Buddhism. I loved not talking – no chit chat, small talk over meals; no explaining myself, or talking about myself; no being bombarded with a lot of noise coming at me or the din of 100 voices talking at once – just silence.

As a pediatric nurse practitioner, I’ve seen a lot in my 30+ years of practice. I’ve seen babies born, children get sick and get better, and I’ve seen children die. I’ve seen more of this than most people see in a lifetime, many lifetimes.