The Bittersweet Beauty of Letting Go: Watching My Child Come of Age

This weekend, I sat in a sanctuary and watched my child stand tall and speak with a confidence that shook something loose in me.

He was taking part in his Unitarian Universalist Coming of Age ceremony, a rite of passage among Unitarian Universalists. But more than that, he was taking a step I didn’t prepare him for. I didn’t edit his speech. I didn’t help him write it. I didn’t even know what he was going to say.

And that’s what made it so beautiful, and so hard.

We’ve been attending our UU since he was just three years old. I’ve worked in the nursery for over a decade, helping with other people’s children while mine grew up alongside them. I blinked, and suddenly he was up there, sharing a piece of his soul in front of our whole community.

He did it with two other youth he’s known most of his life. These kids, who used to play tag in the social hall, now stood poised and self-aware, each talking about how they’d been shaped by the congregation and their own beliefs about religion. These weren’t generic speeches. They were deeply personal declarations of identity and meaning. And they were stunning.

I am a staunch agnostic. My child is an exploring pagan. That alone says something about the space we’ve found in Unitarian Universalism, a group that honors personal truth, spiritual exploration, and is respectful of curiosity. It’s not a religion of answers so much as it is a religion of questions. And it’s in that space that my son has grown.

But here’s the part that’s sticking with me: I wasn’t part of this process. Not really. The mentors, the program, the community—they held him through this. He did the work. He became himself without needing me to shape it.

And that’s the point, right? That’s what we’re supposed to want as parents, for our children to grow into capable, curious people who don’t need us in the same way. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.

There’s a grief in realizing your role is shifting. That you’re not the one holding the flashlight anymore. You’re just sitting in the dark, hoping you lit the path well enough while they were small.

I felt more pride than I knew I was capable of. I also felt something like heartbreak. Not because anything was wrong, but because everything was right. He’s growing up. He’s growing away. And that’s both the goal and the loss.

This is the sacred ache of parenting.

And I’m so grateful to have witnessed it in this way. In a community that sees my child not as a project to complete, but as a person to celebrate. In a ritual that marks this messy, beautiful in-between time. Not a graduation, not a confirmation, but a moment of pause to say: You are becoming.

He’s still my kid. I’ll always be his parent. But today showed me just how fully he’s stepping into who he is, and how little he needs me to do that anymore.

And honestly? That’s everything I ever hoped for.