The First Child Going Off to College: “A Hole in My Heart”

It is September, a time of new beginnings for college students and new endings for their mothers.

When my daughter Elizabeth went off to college in September of 2005, we grieved the painful gap in our family circle. For me personally, her loss felt like a hole in my heart, and the end of the mother-daughter relationship we had known.

I knew that Liz’s departure was what Judith Viorst calls a “necessary loss”, one of those times when in order for growth to occur, there must be loss.

But knowing that I needed to let Elizabeth go did not make the pain any less.

That September I wrote the following poem, to capture both the pain of loss and my hopes for our future relationship.