I sit at the table, all nerves and anxiety. I am eating—or preparing to eat—my main meal. I am an anorexic in recovery, currently in the integration phase of post-traumatic growth. This time of day is most difficult for me.
Coincidentally, outside my window, my son is preparing to bike to school.
My heart tightens. At this point, the urge to press the Quit button, to just give in and just not eat, is strong. Instead, I hit Pause. Stop!
I will name, bracket, and label this exact experience: what I am experiencing right now is a rite of passage for both me and my almost adult son.
I am letting go. He is exploring. We are facing the distinct challenges of our developmental needs alongside each other. I am becoming the mother he needs me to be, the mom of a grown man.
He kicks off and bikes away. There is absolutely nothing I can do about it.
I might as well sit back. There is an ancient parable of a man trapped at the bottom of a well, a giant snake below him, waiting to strike. He is holding on to a vine whose roots are being gnawed by two rats. Honey drips from the same vine. He tastes it instead of worrying about his fate or his assumed fate. Like this man, I will eat that honey, because that parable concludes with an open ending, just as this scenario does. I must accept the open end. I acknowledge, fully and soberly, that there is no 100% safety when my son bikes away to school.
There is no safety. There is only temporality. There is only the here and now.
What to do with my what-if scenarios? Like what I advise my psychotherapy clients, throw them in the What-if Thoughts Trash Can.
I can anchor myself with the hard data.
The facts are clear: his route to his school is well-monitored, highly populated, and a short 10-minute commute. Statistically, him biking to school is actually a lower-risk option than him riding a motorcycle taxi like Angkas or MoveIt. I notice the irony in my own brain: when he rides MoveIt, I mentally let go and trust a complete stranger to get him to his destination. Why can’t I trust my own son’s driving abilities?
My son is kinesthetically gifted, manually dexterous, and trained in Jiu-jitsu. He has proven himself as a capable commuter. He has come home alive and intact from navigating the city since he was fourteen years old. He has a track record; he is a responsible kid. Moreover, he may become a pilot in training in a few years’ time. Concretely, and more oriented in the immediate present, he will actually start driving a car in about half a year’s time. His car is already in the garage.
According to Erik Erikson’s stages of development, a male approaching eighteen requires autonomy to build his identity. I want to be a good mother for him. At this stage, he does not need a gilded cage; he needs my trust and respect. He needs his mother’s blessing.
By expanding my distress tolerance—by sitting with the discomfort of letting him go—I can build my trust, respect, and confidence in him. And parallel to that, I sense that this is the season of my life to build more trust, confidence, and respect for myself.
The twin narratives of my childhood—“While you are enjoying, I am suffering” and “I suffer so that you can enjoy”—terminate right here, today. These narratives sour a child’s pleasure, innocence, and happiness, saddling them with a crushing emotional debt. I refuse to pass on my father’s poisonous, narcissistic personality disordered legacy to the next generation. Rohan will not bear this toxic inheritance, and neither will my daughter, Alexa.
I will not make my son walk on eggshells around me. Foisting the burden of my emotional well-being upon my children is unfair. My dad gave that poison to me, but it stops here.
Another anchor for me: To survive this transition, I will implement a single, moderate, structured check-in for this daily biking scenario. If the mother of a deployed soldier sat with the active, vivid imagination of what-ifs all day, she would break down. I will not break down. I will not give in. I am a warrior’s mum. Like my son, I am a fighter too! I will survive!
My strategy for survival is precise: I will allow myself a specific time window to check for news AND feel the fear, but outside of this window, I will gently reorient my mind back to the now. I will execute the check-in using the analog phone approximately ten minutes after he starts his commute. If there are no messages or calls, I will assume everything is fine.
During those ten minutes of waiting, I grab my Japa mala beads. I chant quietly, “Om Mani Padme Hum,” calling upon the archetype of the great mother, Guan Yin. I am an atheist, but this chant works for me because the rhythm of the syllables is effective in silencing the ruminative thoughts.
As a psychologist, I follow the Jungian orientation. So, I recognize both Guan Yin and Mama Mary not as deities, but as profound emanations of the Mother Archetype.
I picture the statue of La Pietà. In it, Mama Mary holds her left palm open—a universal symbol of being open to possibilities, open to life. I choose to combine this openness with my palaban attitude. I look at the uncertainty of the world and say, “Bring it on.”
Then, in my mind, the open palm transitions into a clenched fist. This movement is how I end my meditation. At this point, the practice becomes a secular prayer, a rally, and a call to arms. I must fortify myself.
My last anchor is the most important: my self and my body. I am the primary source of my psychological safety. I am my home.
To fortify myself, I look back down at my plate. I must line my stomach. I reframe this meal not as a struggle with an eating disorder, but as tactical fortification.
If Scenario A happens—a mishap—I must be energized to secure the physical energy required to act as a crisis responder. If Scenario B happens—normalcy—I must eat to fuel my daily mommy duties. I have another child, my daughter. I am needed, I am wanted, and I have multiple roles to play. If I have no energy, I won’t be able to show up for them because I will be blank on the inside. If I can’t do it for me yet, I must do it for them.
Finally, I accept that things are transitory. What am I suffering for? What am I struggling for? Everything changes. Easy come, easy go. Here today, gone tomorrow.
There are multiple truths and multiple universes. Rohan’s world and mine intersect and interact, but my world is my territory, and his world is his. Sometimes I initiate the interaction, sometimes he does, and sometimes it just happens without explanation. This randomness is how the world works. I don’t need to understand it or map it completely to accept it.
My life does not hover on my son’s existence. I am not a dog waiting with its tongue out for its master. I am a separate entity with a sovereign territory. I am practicing healthy boundaries—the very boundaries my father failed to implement.
I will model healthy, appropriate parent-child boundaries to my children. Again, and for the rest of my days: Generational trauma ends with me. I am a cycle breaker.
