Helmets, Baseball Bats, and Broken Glass
Motherhood and Rage Rooms
Sometimes love looks like holding on.
Sometimes it looks like finally letting something break.
Today, my daughter and I went to a rage room.
Yes. A real one.
Protective face masks and gloves. The whole dramatic, ridiculous, perfect thing.
We did not go because we’re angry at each other. We went because she’s leaving for college soon and neither one of us has figured out how to say that out loud yet. So instead of sitting across from each other trying to find the right words, we put on gear and destroyed things to a soundtrack of Kaytranada and SZA.
And somehow… that worked.
We laughed harder than we have in weeks. We yelled. We startled each other. We knocked years of accumulated feeling loose one shattered TV at a time. At some point I looked over and she was mid-swing, grinning like she was twelve years old again, and I thought, “This is what we needed.”
Not a conversation. Not a plan. Just this.
Here’s what I keep coming back to: motherhood doesn’t end. It just asks more of you in quieter ways.
You don’t raise a child into independence and arrive somewhere clean and resolved. You break yourself open again and again, and you rebuild into whoever they need you to be next.
The woman I was before she existed. The mother she needed at five, and again at fifteen. And now… this version. The one still figuring out how to love well from a distance I’ve never had to hold before.
Nobody really prepares you for this particular ache. The celebrations are loud. The letting go is quiet. And most days you’re holding both at the same time, trying not to drop either one.
Today reminded me that I don’t have to hold it gracefully.
Sometimes healing is loud. Sometimes it’s a helmet and a baseball bat, and your kid doubled over laughing while you’re both covered in safety gear, standing in a pile of glass, completely out of breath.
That’s what I’m taking into this Mother’s Day.
Not a tidy ending, and not perfection either.
Just gratitude for the mess of it, for the laughter inside the hard parts, for every version of us that figured out how to keep going.
Happy Mother’s Day to every mother in the middle of a season she didn’t fully expect. The ones releasing and the ones holding on, sometimes within the same breath. You are exactly where love asked you to be.
Still growing. Still lifting as we climb.
Wow! Thank you for sharing. I'm sure both of you have pent up angst about what the future may or may not look like and a rage room was definitely suitable. Perhaps now, each one of you can allow your nervous system to relax and think more clearly about the things you want and need to say. Of course there will be things you forget and later remember but that's how it normally goes. I'm sure you have equipped your daughter well and she probably hopes she's showing you that you indeed have prepared her. As I write this, I think of how emotional I was with each of my daughter as they went out on their individual journeys. Take solace in the fact that for every mistake you think you've made, your daughter still admires you and sees you as her ideal of what a mother and woman is. Mama, you and baby girl both will do fine! Blessings to you both.