This Time Tomorrow...

Tomorrow is a big day.  My beautiful daughter comes home from her time, studying abroad at Pembroke College in Oxford University. She has been gone 9 months.  She left 7 weeks after we moved into our new condo.  Barely enough time for it to feel like home to her.  Barely enough time to make memories together.  

But this time tomorrow, she will be on a flight home.

This time apart was needed.  This time last year, we were days away from moving out of the only home she has ever known, to my father's place where everything either of us owned got stuffed into a garage. The next 40 days we weren't even sure where we would live because the narc I was married to was holding the proceeds from the sale hostage...a means of control to  punish me.  Less than 48 hours before closing on my place, a judge ruled in my favor and the funds ordered to be released.

We closed. And moved a second time that summer and barely got the place unpacked and settled when it was time for her to board a plane and fly across the ocean to a place where she would live and learn for 9 months without home visits. 

Instead,  she traveled to Switzerland,  Germany,  Poland, and France.  She experienced different cultures and somewhere in Berlin, lost an ear bud.  She went to the Louvre to be enlightened and to Auschwitz to feel fear.  She saw the Alps and strolled the streets of Paris. She saw a play in London and met a boy. 

She is coming home a different person than when she left.

But she is coming home to a different mother.  One who doesn't cry every night.  One who isn't  wondering why she still exists.  One who smiles and laughs again and one who has become OK with her life.  She will find her mother is stronger and more resilient than before and is able to find happiness in the little things again.

The separation was good for both of us as we have both found who we are out of the chaos we were mired down in last year.

It's amazing how much has changed in a year.  How much we have both grown and healed.  For this, I am grateful.  

But, this time tomorrow...

🥰