Stop Worrying

Hey Guys. Greg here! With three big hikes coming up this is pretty much my everyday look. Goodr Sunglasses. Light, cheap, polarized, cool. ROARK running/hiking shorts and Tshirt (so good!). Altra Lone Peak trail shoes (The best!), NADS underwear (Always!), Mountain Tough Socks (Super important!), Melin Cap, and AION Weight Vest (for when I want to safely add load to my training). Atwater Skincare Sunblock. Now, onto the Middle:

A friend of mine, older, further down the road, four sons to my two,  once told me over breakfast: "You're going to lose your kids for a while. Or at least feel like you are. Don't worry. They come back."

At the time my boys were fifteen and thirteen, and I was in it deep as a parent; puberty, girls, sports, middle and high school, the introductory years of sex, drugs, alcohol, music that doesn’t sound like music to parents, and the shift from them wanting to be with you constantly to barely tolerating you in the room. I didn't fully understand what he meant. I do now.

He'd already seen the movie I was describing to him. He had already watched two of his sons get years older, and a little wiser. They had made some mistakes. They had fallen down, and he was careful and intentional about if, where, and when he helped them up, so they learned to get up on their own. They graduated, became young adults, and started to realize (duh!)  that their parents actually had some value, some wisdom, some experience, and had actually been right about most of what they'd tried to warn them about. And maybe they weren't as uncool as they'd thought.

Eventually our kids reach a point where they actually want our opinions,  on business, relationships, working out, nutrition, life in general. Anything. Instead of rushing to get off the phone or letting your calls go to voicemail, things shift. They don't want to hang up so fast. They've got things they want to talk about; their day, their week, what's going on, usually somewhere in the middle of their commute home from work.

I'm experiencing this now, and I now know exactly what he meant.

Kate and I have been fortunate. We didn't totally lose our kids during that period, no real separation, no "jackpot" moments, as I call them, the kind you can't really recover from. But our boys were both home this weekend, and it landed with me all over again that every stage of parenting is great in its own way, but this one, having a 20-year-old and a 23-year-old becoming their own people, might be the best one yet. We haven't pushed them into anything. My approach has always been to share experiences, not hand out advice, and let them take what's useful from it and leave the rest.

My younger son is taking creatine now and lifting a few days a week. It just kind of happened one day. He just started doing it on his own. My older son and I were talking about switching his training splits from college "bro workouts" to full-body training a couple of days a week, since he's got work and meetings now, plus golf and pickleball and hiking out in Colorado — he's looking at things a bit differently. I teared up. 

Sometimes I just listen to him and say, "You're a real person now," and he looks back at me like, What have you thought I was all this time? We were all home together this weekend, which is rare, and we talked about clothes and went shopping together. They also raided my closet; which I take great pride in. They're ordering differently at restaurants — and yes, more expensively. And they're getting genuinely good at saying thank you, at telling me they appreciate me, at telling me they love me. Being conversational. Deeply conversational. It's a much more emotional time than I thought it'd be.

So if you're in that valley right now, if it feels like nothing you do is right or appreciated by your kids, if you're wondering where your sweet young boy or girl went and whether they're coming back, here's what I can tell you: