Sometimes I look at Cullin and Cooper and have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that these two grown men are the same little boys who once filled nearly every minute of my day.

To everyone else, they are simply who they are now. Grown men with their own personalities, responsibilities, relationships, plans, and lives that no longer revolve around me. And that is exactly how it should be. I look at them and see all of those things too, and I am incredibly proud of the men they have become.

But I don’t think a mother ever sees only the person standing in front of her.

When I look at my sons, I can still see the little boys underneath.

Cullin and Cooper are only ten and a half months apart, which meant I spent a lot of their childhood feeling like I was raising twins who happened to be born in different years. There wasn’t much of a break between babies. I had two little boys needing me at nearly the same time, growing through the same stages right behind one another, fighting one minute and playing together the next.

Back then, I wasn’t thinking about how quickly any of it would go. I was young, tired, busy, and trying to keep up.

I was also trying to raise them while living inside a body that had already been through more than most people experience in a lifetime. By the time I became their mom, Crohn’s disease, major surgeries, and an ileostomy were already part of my story. There were more surgeries and health problems as they grew up, which meant illness became part of their childhood too, whether I wanted it to or not.

Then, when they were still so little, their dad died.

There are parts of those years I can write about now and still wonder how we made it through them. I was grieving Trevor while trying to help two little boys understand a loss that I couldn’t even understand myself. I was their mom, which meant I didn’t have the luxury of falling apart completely, even during the times when I probably wanted to.

Life kept moving because children make life keep moving.

They still needed breakfast. They still needed baths and clean clothes and bedtime. They still needed someone to make them feel safe when the world suddenly didn’t feel very safe at all.

When I look at them now, I think sometimes I see those little boys because I remember everything they had already lived through before they were old enough to fully understand it.

They Grew Up While I Was Growing Up Too

Writing my memoir has made me look at those years differently.

For a long time, I thought of myself simply as their mom. I rarely stopped to think about how young I was while all of this was happening. I was raising two boys, managing a complicated medical history, losing my husband, rebuilding our life, and eventually allowing myself to love again.

Looking back now, I realize I was growing up right alongside them.

Nathan came into our lives when the three of us had already been through something enormous. Loving him and eventually building a life with him didn’t erase what came before, nor would I ever have wanted it to. Instead, our family grew around everything we had already survived.

The boys grew up with a story that wasn’t simple.

They had a dad they lost, a mom whose health sometimes changed plans without warning, and later a man who stepped into our lives and loved all three of us. There were hospital stays and surgeries mixed in with school, sports, birthdays, vacations, Christmas mornings, laughter, arguments, and all of the ordinary family moments that somehow become the ones you miss the most.

That is the part that strikes me now.

When you’re living those years, you don’t know which moments will become precious.

Sometimes the moments I miss aren’t the big ones at all. They’re the noise. The mess. The boys talking over each other. The constant coming and going. Hearing them somewhere else in the house and knowing they were both home.

I think parents of grown children understand this in a way we couldn’t have understood when our kids were small. Back then, a quiet house sounded wonderful.

Now there are times when the quiet feels very different.

Motherhood Doesn’t End. It Just Changes Shape.

One of the hardest parts of having adult children is learning how to be their mom without trying to mother them the way you did when they were little.

When Cullin and Cooper were young, my role was obvious. I made decisions. I worried about where they were, what they were doing, whether they had what they needed, and whether they were okay. If something went wrong, I was supposed to fix it—or at least try.

Now they have their own lives, and sometimes the most loving thing I can do is stay out of the way.

That does not always come naturally to me.

I still worry. I still want to fix things. I still sometimes have to remind myself that they are grown men who need the freedom to make their own choices, including choices I might make differently.

Motherhood at this stage requires a different kind of trust.

You spend years teaching your children how to walk on their own, and then one day you realize your job is actually to let them.

Maybe you are in this season too. Your kids may not need rides to practice or help with homework anymore, but that doesn’t mean the instinct to protect them disappears. You simply have to learn what to do with all that love when your children no longer need it in the same ways.

I am still figuring that out.

I Can See Every Version of Them

There are moments when one of the boys will laugh a certain way or make a particular expression, and suddenly I don’t see the adult standing in front of me.

I see him at five.

Or ten.

Or sixteen.

It happens so quickly that sometimes it catches me off guard.

That may be one of the strangest gifts of being a parent. Other people meet your children at one point in their story. We get to carry every version of them.

I remember the little boys they were before they can remember themselves that way. I know what their voices sounded like before they changed. I remember their fears, their funny little habits, the stages they grew out of, the things they loved, and the things I thought they would never stop doing until suddenly they did.

Now I watch them move through adulthood and see new versions appearing.

There have been graduations, careers, relationships, big decisions, trips, changes, and moments when I have had to remind myself that their lives belong to them.

Cooper’s high school graduation still feels recent enough that I can picture all of us together that day, yet life has continued moving forward at a pace I sometimes wish I could slow down. Cullin has grown into his own life too, making decisions and becoming more of the man he is going to be.

And now I am a grandma.

That one still gets me.

There is something almost surreal about watching your child become part of another generation’s story. Loving Amara has made me think even more about the years when my own boys were little. I look at her discovering the world and sometimes realize that once upon a time, Cullin and Cooper looked at everything with that same wonder.

I was so deep in motherhood then that I couldn’t see how quickly it was passing.

Now I know.

The Things I Am Proud of Have Changed

When children are young, we celebrate milestones. First steps. First days of school. Birthdays. Sporting events. Graduations.

As my boys have grown older, what makes me proud has changed.

Of course I am proud of their accomplishments, but I think I care even more about the kind of men they are becoming.

I notice how they treat people. I notice their loyalty. I notice when they show up for someone they love, when they handle something difficult, and when they find their way through situations I cannot solve for them.

Sometimes I see pieces of their childhood in those moments, but I also see how much life has shaped them.

They have had their own hurts, losses, disappointments, and struggles. Some I know about. I’m sure there are others I don’t.

That is another strange adjustment as a parent. When they were little, I knew almost everything that happened in their world. Now there are pieces of their lives that are theirs alone.

And that is okay too.

I don’t need to know everything to love them completely.

Maybe We Never Stop Seeing Our Children as Children

I used to wonder why my own parents could sometimes look at me as though I were still a kid even though I was clearly an adult.

I understand it more now.

It isn’t that I don’t see Cullin and Cooper as grown men. I do. I respect the lives they are building and the people they have become.

But I also know what it felt like to hold them when they were tiny. I know what it felt like to worry about whether I was doing any of this right. I remember trying to create stability for them during years when my own life felt anything but stable.

I know how much of my heart has been wrapped up in those two boys since the moment they were born.

Maybe your children are still little and your days feel endless right now. Maybe you’re reading this while surrounded by toys, laundry, backpacks, sports schedules, and kids calling your name every five minutes.

I’m not going to tell you to cherish every second. I remember those years too well to pretend every second was magical.

Some of it is exhausting. Some of it is frustrating. Some days, you are simply trying to make it to bedtime.

But I would tell you to notice it.

Notice their voices from the other room. Notice the shoes by the door and the way they climb into the car and immediately start telling you something. Notice the silly little things they do that drive you crazy because, strangely enough, some of those may become the things you miss.

And if your children are already grown, maybe you know exactly what I mean.

You can be incredibly proud of who they have become while still missing who they used to be.

Those feelings don’t cancel each other out.

When I look at Cullin and Cooper now, I see two grown men with lives that belong to them. I see everything they have already lived through, everything that has shaped them, and so much still waiting ahead.

I see two of the people I love most in this world.

But I also see the two little boys who lived through some incredibly hard things with me, who made me laugh when I wasn’t sure I remembered how, who gave me a reason to keep moving when life fell apart, and who grew up while I was busy trying to hold our lives together.

They probably don’t know how much they gave me simply by being there.

Maybe someday they will.

And no matter how old they get, I have a feeling that somewhere underneath the men standing in front of me, I will always be able to see my boys.