“We are not the sun around which they spin. Not anymore” Mia Freedman Explains Being the Parent of a Young Man, Perfectly.

Sometimes, in just a few words, a wonderful writer puts says everything you have ever thought, ever felt, about raising a son into a few perfect words. And when she does that, when you see those words that seems to come straight from your own soul, well, prepare for the ugliest of cries.

Mia Freedman, is the co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of the Mamamia Women’s Media Company in Australia and you can’t help but love a woman who writes in her bio, “The wheels of her bus fall off regularly”.

Mia Freedman Writes About Her Son Growing Up

But it is her recent ode to her 22-year-old son, it is the recognition of the a moment had passed that made fans of us. Please read “Your son growing up will feel like the slowest break up you’ve ever known.”

There’s the newborn, the baby, the toddler, the pre-schooler, the primary aged kid, the pre-teen, the adolescent, the full-blown teen, the young adult and then the adult. They all answer to the same name. They all call you Mum. And you never ever notice the inflection point where one of those people turns into the next.

You never get to properly say goodbye to all the little people who grow up because you don’t notice the growing, the changing. Except when Facebook sends you those bloody memory reminders that invariably make me cry because it’s like showing me the face of someone I can never see again. Not in that way. Not at that age.

What grabbed our attention was the retelling of Mia’s wonderful piece by well-known Australian radio presenter Amanda Keller and radio co-host, Brendan Jones, who she also brings to tears. Here, Keller whose 18-year-old son just left school explains why this hits us so hard.