• I’m a mom of four, and as my kids grow older, I’ve had to adapt my interests to bond with them.
• Things like allowing them to take over the car radio to play the music they are into connect us.
• I get to study new things with them and expand my own knowledge.

As my kids have grown up, I’ve tried to come to terms with the slow loss of them to the world.

While this is the natural order of parenting, it’s still hard to accept. They’ve moved forward, and I’ve mourned the loss of our time together. Evenings once spent watching shows or talking have become rare. They spend more time with friends than with me, and I’ve wondered how to remain a relevant part of their lives.

One of the best ways I’ve managed to maintain my connection with my kids as they’ve moved into middle school, high school, and college is by adjusting my own interests.

I care about staying connected with my 4 kids

Whether it’s allowing my high school daughter to take over the car radio or television or letting my middle school son pick an activity, I’ve had to be flexible and broaden my thinking. It’s opened me up to new music and genres. My youngest daughter’s obsession with Zach Bryan and Noah Kahan has become my own. I’ve learned every song, and we’ve started talking about going to her first concert at some point this year. Moments spent singing lyrics we’ve learned together on the morning rides to school have become a treasure.

I’m also well-versed in the vocabulary and trends of younger generations. I understand all the lingo from “huz” to “mid.” I’ve even managed to work it into my own conversations. While I don’t care about being cool, I do care about remaining connected to the four humans I brought into the world. Understanding how they talk and think helps. It also lets them know how invested I am in what’s important and relevant to them.

I get to learn along with them

Adopting their interests has let me discover hobbies — both new and old. When they were younger, I’d let many personal interests slip, even giving up reading for fun. There was no time or space for my own interests. Now, I’m glad to have that back. It’s a perk of their growing independence.

My other kids have also developed some really cool hobbies and interests. My 12-year-old son has developed an interest in space. With hopes of becoming an astronomer one day, we have borrowed our library’s telescope. I am learning to use it with him and also how to track down stars and planets. This past summer, it was an amazing way for us to bond and stay connected. We took pictures of the moon through the telescope and shared interesting articles about exoplanets and other interesting space lore.

My eldest daughter, who just turned 19, has cultivated her growing interest in true crime for most of her teen years. It may be due in part to having watched every episode of “Criminal Minds” together as she made her way through high school. True crime books lined her bookshelf. Now she is studying criminal justice in her second year of college with the hope of transferring to Arizona State to study forensic psychology.

This was once a dream of mine. While I never pursued it, I am now studying it alongside her, watching documentaries, reading, and exploring crimes she is learning about. I’ve also begun listening to true crime podcasts, which was always difficult for me as a visual learner with less-than-stellar auditory skills. This has become a favorite part of getting back into working out.

My renewed interest in working out has also helped me forge a deep connection with my youngest daughter, a freshman in high school. She has taken an interest in tennis and continues to remain interested in competitive cheerleading and fitness. Our shared interest has led to a new project. We are working on building a gym in the basement. We spend time searching our local Buy Nothing Facebook group to find things to add. We recently found a stationary bike and hope to find a treadmill. Working out in our home gym has an added benefit; it will help us make it through the long, cold New England winter.

Whether it’s working out at home, marveling at the night sky, or watching a true crime documentary, learning alongside my kids has been an unforgettable experience. It has allowed me to connect and grow with them, even as they grow up and away. My world has expanded just as their world has. I’m so grateful to be able to share their hobbies and interests. Instead of losing them, I’ve connected with them in a deeper and more meaningful way.

• In my culture, children are expected to greet everyone in the room with a hug and a kiss.
• My daughter didn’t like to and often screamed when relatives tried to hug and kiss her.
• I teach my kid that she has choices and can say no whenever she feels uncomfortable.

My young daughter wasn’t yet 1 years old the first time she shook her head and stretched her hands out to push away a hug from relatives. Everyone laughed it off, assuming she would grow out of it.

What they didn’t realize was that, even at that age, I was teaching her that she always has a choice — something I didn’t have growing up.

Every family gathering began the same way when I was a kid. I would open my grandparents’ front door, and the smell of tamales, turkey, rice, and the best of our Mexican-American world would welcome me at the doorstep. I loved the laughs, food, and family, but before I could settle in, I had to brace myself for the greeting ritual.

With my shoulders tight and my steps tiptoeing along the living room, I scanned the faces of new visitors who had made a pit stop at our feast. A polite smile and a wave were considered rude, but it felt strange to show affection to people I had never met.

If I weren’t eager to make my rounds, I would get a nudge on my back with an emphatic, urgent command from all the adults in unison: “¡Saluda!” That made the next step clear: hug and kiss every adult in the room as a gesture of respect.

As each year passed, my resistance became less about hugging people I didn’t know and more about realizing my boundaries didn’t matter. I want to teach my daughter differently.

The social reset that paved the way for new norms

In 2020, I became a first-time mom. As if postpartum chaos and sleepless nights weren’t enough, the pandemic hit and left us with isolation and an unexpected reset. I was relentless about not exposing her to risk as an infant, but she still babbled and smiled on FaceTime with my family. Their connection grew despite the limitations and distance.

After being apart for so long, we were all excited about our first gathering. I walked through the door, holding my daughter, and the kitchen was lined with my white-haired elders; their faces lit up as we entered. The day they could pinch her cheeks and smother her with kisses had finally arrived.

Arms reached out, smiles widened, and baby coo sounds filled the air. My daughter took one look around, gripped my hair in one hand, my collar in the other, and let out a startled wail.

There was an immediate and collective sigh of disappointment. The matriarchs and patriarchs of my family had never been challenged by a 1 year old. They stepped closer, hoping that proximity would encourage her to leap into their arms. She cried louder.

Their arms dropped, their smiles turned to frowns, and the bribery ensued: “I got you a pretty doll, and I’m going to be so sad if you don’t give me a hug.” Another aunt leaned closer and said, “Don’t you love me? I really love you!”

While I knew those statements came from a place of love and care, I looked my daughter in the eyes and said, “It’s OK, you can stay with me.” She released the grip on my hair and shirt, rested her head on my shoulder, and let out a sigh of relief.

I looked at my aunts and uncles, feeling both nervous and empowered. I reassured them that she would warm up to them on her own time and in her own way.

I took a chance and created a teaching moment

I started a conversation with my family that we never had before, and explained that what was considered disrespectful in their generation is now considered self-respect in mine.

The family gatherings continued. Sometimes my daughter would run to the door to greet them and hang on their neck with glee; other times, she would run by them, shouting “hi!” and go straight to the couch.

As the years have passed, their expectations have shifted, and their disappointment is no longer in the air. Comments have gone from “Are you going to let your daughter get away with not giving me a hug and kiss?” to “Okay, I’ll be here when she wants to play.”

Respect and love can now take on different forms. That’s a tradition worth passing down.

• My first husband died unexpectedly when we were both in our 20s.
• Becoming a widower taught me that romantic love is not the only kind of love out there.
• Getting married again doesn’t mean that I will erase my widowhood.

As I filled out the intake paperwork at my annual physical, I quickly clicked through all the standard demographic information, halting as I reached the marital status question. I hovered over the dropdown menu before clicking “widowed.” I realized that next year I would be clicking “married.”

Though I will consider myself both “married” and “widowed” after my coming wedding, the binaries that govern paperwork will not honor this joint identity, erasing a title that I have come to embrace in the past four years since my husband’s death.

I was a widow in my 20s

Eli died in an accident when he was 25. We were newlyweds, embarking on a life together and humming with excitement for all the future held. Overnight, that future we had spent years discussing and planning evaporated.

Many other young people I know who have lost partners have grappled with the title “widow” or “widower,” words that rarely conjure images of people in their 20s with potentially decades of life ahead. But, as I attended dozens of grief groups, sitting among others who had lost loved ones, I realized that partner loss is unusual in having a title I could claim.

There is no equivalent for someone mourning a sibling, a child, or a friend, no single word to signal the magnitude of that perpetual pain. Grateful for the terminology available to me, I quickly adopted “widow,” weaving it into my identity.

Widowhood has redefined how I live in countless ways, but three lessons have lit my path forward.

I say ‘yes’ more now

First, I have fought (and continue to fight) to let go of the pervasive culture of delayed gratification. I am haunted by the number of times I said “no” to Eli in favor of pursuing a future moment of joy rather than relishing the present.

I said no to spontaneous weekend trips because I deemed it more responsible to save for a bigger vacation later. I said no to small pleasures, such as theater tickets and late-night snacks at the bodega, because I was budgeting for future milestones and increasing my contributions to retirement accounts. I said no to quiet moments together at the end of long workdays because I was preoccupied with climbing a career ladder.

Now, rather than living for a future that might or might not come, I try to say yes — to joy, to love, and sometimes to a touch of chaos, even when it feels impractical or risky. Celebrating the present is often a messy endeavor, but it is undoubtedly a way of living.

There’s more than romantic love

Second, I was raised in a sea of cultural narratives that centered romantic love as the ultimate love. And it was for me. But when it slipped through my fingers, I realized that what I missed most about our partnership was the love that had been nurtured and developed in our friendship.

After Eli’s death, the love that sustained me came from expanding the boundaries of connection — in the friends who could sense how I was doing by the tone of my voice, in the family that welcomed me for weeks on their futons when I couldn’t bear to be home alone, and in random strangers who understood my loss through their own experiences. Love is an unlimited resource that doesn’t subscribe to any hierarchy. There is so much to go around.

I live like any day could be my last

Third, I now live each day knowing it could be my last, or worse, the last for someone I love. Rebuilding my life after loss has meant learning to find peace in uncertainty and to hold both hope and fear simultaneously. Some days, the unknown feels paralyzing, and other days it sharpens my attention and makes the ordinary sparkle. As I look toward a future of getting remarried, the joy is tinged with my awareness of tragedy. Yet that discomfort makes love, in all forms, feel even more urgent.

I’ll be honest, for me, neither time nor new relationships have healed my loss. The grief hasn’t softened into something easier to bear. The sadness has shifted as my life has changed, but I don’t miss Eli any less than the day he died. If anything, I miss him more, devastated by all that he has missed these last four years.

I now walk through my life seeing all its fragile edges, the delicate seams that could instantly unravel and swallow me whole. But walking the tightrope, hand in hand with dozens of others, including my exceptional fiancé, has made the balancing act not only bearable but also beautiful.

Becoming “married” again is not an act of erasure, as I sometimes fear; instead, it’s an homage to my widowhood. I now realize that choosing love, living in the present, and acknowledging the magnitude of uncertainty is the truest way to find Eli’s wandering spirit in every corner of my life.

I am beyond grateful to be getting married again. And I am beyond grateful to be a widow for the rest of my life.

• Sanary-sur-Mer, a small port town, is one of my favorite places on the French Riviera to visit.
• I love watching yachts bob in the harbor, and enjoying the beauty of the pastel buildings and shops.
• It feels authentically French but doesn’t seem particularly well known or too crowded.

Though millions of people visit the French Riviera each year, many travelers set their sights on famous spots like Nice, Cannes, Antibes, and Saint-Tropez.

But since moving to the Côte d’Azur a few months ago, I’ve discovered a few lesser-known but, in my opinion, much better spots to visit in the area.

One of my absolute favorites is a small coastal town called Sanary-sur-Mer. I’ve been a few times now and have been utterly charmed by it each time.

Sanary-sur-Mer is a lesser-known gem along France’s south coast.

Situated between Marseille and Toulon, Sanary-sur-Mer is a port town along the Mediterranean Sea with a population under 20,000.

Many locals I’ve spoken to where I live half an hour away have agreed that Sanary is considered the nicest place in the area.

Though it’s popular with the French, it’s seemingly not on many international tourists’ radars. It can get a bit overshadowed by popular nearby spots like Cannes and Saint-Tropez.

When my husband and I have visited Sanary-sur-Mer, I didn’t hear any language other than French spoken around me, which is rare to find in the south of France during the summer (and a far cry from a September Sunday in Antibes, where I could barely move among British, Irish, and American tourists).

It’s surrounded by beautiful blue waters.

The town is based around a wide, clean-looking harbor full of bobbing yachts and other boats.

There may not be as many superyachts as you’d find further up the coast, but there are still plenty of huge ones to admire and imagine floating around in.

Some of the smaller boats are even available for visitors to rent.

Whenever we visit, the area feels quiet and peaceful.

On one trip, we walked along the port and up to a charming lighthouse and were surprised by how quiet it was despite being a summer Saturday afternoon.

There were only a few other people and some children splashing in the nearby fountains. It was refreshing compared to the more touristy spots that are always heaving with crowds.

There are also lovely pedestrian areas.

Lined with cafés and restaurants, the waterfront is so clean I thought I was on a film set when we first visited.

My husband and I especially enjoy getting ice cream in one of the cafés on the wide esplanade — a wonderful place to sit and watch the world go by.

I’m also pleased to say that we’ve found many public toilets in the area that are actually free to use and in decent condition.

We love taking in the beautiful buildings and boutiques.

Narrow cobbled streets full of chic boutiques snake up from the harbor, dotted with tropical palm trees and pastel-colored buildings with blue and green shutters that offer traditional Provençal charm.

Sanary-sur-Mer is also packed full of little stores selling chic clothes and interesting homewares — I’ve treated myself to a plant pot in Maman & fiston and some linen trousers in Serendipity.

There aren’t big designer shops like you’d find in Cannes or Nice, but Sanary feels all the more authentic for it. The town is less fussy and certainly not pretentious at all.

I’ve already made a mental note to come back here before Christmastime.

The area is rich with history, too.

The “regular” buildings in Sanary-sur-Mer, like most of Provence, are beautiful, but one building that stood out to me was the cinema, Cinéma A.b.c.

Dating back decades, the building’s retro facade features striking and beautiful pastel colors. Although it has been updated to better function as a theater, its exterior has changed very little.

The town also has walking tours for visitors who want to learn more about the local history. For example, this coastal town was a refuge for German and Austrian authors and artists who fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

Little beaches offer perfect swimming opportunities.

You don’t have to go far out of Sanary to find large beaches, such as Plage de Portissol, a big white-sand one that curves around the coast.

I especially enjoy the areas with staircases right by the harbor. I don’t love getting sandy, so being able to go straight down some stairs from the rocks and into the clear blue water is my idea of heaven.

All in all, I already can’t wait for my next trip to Sanary-sur-Mer to experience more of it. I’d definitely recommend visiting if you want to authentically experience the south coast of France.

• I spent many years traveling the globe and have been to more than 70 countries.
• Experiences with wildlife and diverse cultures inspired have inspired my approach to parenting.
• Motherhood, like adventure travel, requires courage, adaptability, and a sense of wonder.

I’ve given baths to elephants in Nepal, played tug-o-war over pancakes with a monkey in Guatemala, and spent sleepless nights on roach-infested buses through Brazil.

I’ve been humbled, amazed, and tested on my travels, at times wishing I could just go home and other times feeling more alive and overjoyed than ever before — kind of like a day in the life of a mom. After all, if you are a mother, perhaps you, too, have bathed an unwieldy, toddler-sized elephant, tussled with tiny monkeys over pancakes, and had your share of brutal sleepless nights.

In my mind, moms and other dedicated caregivers are true adventure travelers, even if they barely leave their neighborhood. I should know. Over the last 27 years, I’ve traveled through more than 70 countries across five continents, and motherhood is the wildest, most wondrous adventure I’ve ever known.

I gained inspiration from gorillas

Before I had my daughter, I worked seasonal jobs in ski towns and national parks to save up for months-long backpacking trips all over the world. This itinerant life led me to a career as a writer and editor for national travel magazines.

Then, the once-in-a-lifetime chance to see a wild mountain gorilla mama and her twins in Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park inspired me to want a different, deeply primal adventure — something that I couldn’t get to on a plane, bus, or train. Instead, I longed for the meaningful, internal exploration of life as a parent.

Good thing my husband, Mike, was also up for the trip.

There are overlaps between adventure travel and life with a baby

The first days after my daughter came home from the hospital, the experience of early motherhood felt familiar, but only because I’d been that bleary-eyed, overwhelmed, and at the same time absolutely enthralled before — in India. Riding an old-fashioned yellow taxi through Kolkata on our first day there had exposed me within minutes to more desperate poverty than I’d ever seen, but also more beauty, humanity, and the mind-blowing knowledge that this other, intense way of living went on every day, all the time, despite my ignorance of it. So goes life with a newborn.

As I navigated those first months of motherhood, I felt the same sense of adventure, fear, wonder, and excitement I had while traveling alone to the Mayan ruins in Mexico, whitewater rafting amid crocodiles in Zimbabwe, and climbing the cable ladder up Half Dome in Yosemite. It took the same kind of courage and tenacity to get through it as well.

But the fierce love I felt for my baby journeyed beyond any place in my heart I’d ever known.

My new travel partner helps me see life with fresh eyes

By the time my daughter was a toddler, I’d come to see her as my pint-sized travel partner, transforming everyday events into fresh adventures.

Hunts for ladybugs and snails were our safaris. Chats with the diverse crew of nannies and parents at a local park became intercultural exchanges. Trips to the zoo were rainforest hikes, filled with macaws and monkeys. Wherever we went, she helped me explore the world anew through her eyes.

Along the way, when things fell apart or I felt like a failure, I remembered how many times I felt the same way on my global journeys.

There is no way to get an “A” grade in motherhood, just as there is no way to ace traveling through a complex, unfamiliar place. You will get lost and make mistakes. You will also depend on the generosity of strangers and the friendship of fellow travelers or other parents traveling through their own wild, amazing, unmapped terrain. You can only do your best, guided by your own internal compass.

Now that my daughter is 12, it’s clear to me she already possesses a traveler’s mindset of courage, curiosity, flexibility, and kindness. Wherever life takes her, she’ll be ready for the adventure.

• I took 12 weeks of parental leave, and months after returning to work, my position was eliminated.
• It’s been almost a year, and I’m still looking for my next full-time role.
• I can’t afford childcare until I have a steady job, so I work from home as a freelancer.

It’s no secret that when you become a parent, a massive shift in identity occurs.

My whole world had changed, and no matter how much I had prepared for it, I could never truly understand until it happened. Suddenly, you can’t take a shower without announcing it.

When that identity shift for me came with a layoff, I had to reorder my entire life twice within a span of a few months.

I was laid off months after coming back to work

I gave birth, and 12 weeks later, I came back to work. A couple of months after my return, I was told my position would no longer be funded at the end of the year. I had three months’ notice to find work during the holiday season and an election, but wasn’t able to secure a new gig.

I celebrated the new year knowing that I had no idea what would come next. Still, I remained hopeful. It’s been almost a year, and I’m still searching for full-time employment.

For many people, jobs are just a means to pay the rent, which is a valid and healthy perspective on employment. But my parents are both people whose careers held a lot of personal meaning for them and made up part of their sense of identity, so I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I sought out work that gave me a sense of purpose as well.

I always saw myself as a working parent

When I envisioned myself as a parent, even before I had decided it was right for me, I saw myself as a working parent. There was never a part of that dream that allowed for a version of me that didn’t have the financial stability and identity that my work gave me. My mom always emphasized, as well as modeled, financial stability and independence for me, and so did other women in my life who parented their kids as single moms.

Work allowed me a clear way to see my contribution to the home. I made a higher income than my spouse. Finances were still tight, as they are for so many families, but I knew that even on a day when I didn’t do as much laundry as I planned, I still earned a paycheck to help us pay the rent and afford diapers.

Now I have to recalibrate my identity outside and as part of my relationship to my child. I can’t afford childcare again until I have full-time employment, and although I earn freelance payments, they’re not enough to cover the vast majority of our needs.

There’s value in my unpaid work, too

I choose to understand and value the unpaid work I do as a parent who is home with my toddler most days, even if society largely doesn’t, both financially and socially.

I can’t define myself by my smaller paychecks. When I show my child how to say certain words or encourage imaginative play, I’m doing something important for my family. My household labor is essentially 24/7 and allows my spouse to do their paid labor.

My days are packed with work as a stay-at-home parent, which I didn’t fully understand about stay-at-home parents’ days before I experienced them. The mental load of fulfilling and adapting to your child’s ever-changing needs, while managing housework, freelancing, and searching for full-time employment, is enormous.

My spouse is a very involved and loving dad, but the practical reality is that I’m the person our kid sees most, and certain responsibilities have fallen to me as a result. We care about resisting strict gender roles in our family, but circumstances have made it so that we have to work extra hard not to fall too deeply into them.

I have flexibility, but sometimes feel isolated

Then there is the fact of social isolation. I have to work even harder to find social interactions with adults outside my home. Occasionally, I reach out to parent groups, attend a library story time, or prioritize asking my mother-in-law to watch my toddler so I can get some time away to see friends or try to make new ones. It isn’t always enough, but it helps me keep a sense of self, and it gives my child other people, and sometimes kids, to develop strong bonds with, which is good for them.

Of course, my life isn’t all strain and struggle. I have more flexibility to take my toddler to the dentist and play fun games with them between naps. All of those things are magical experiences, and I know that whatever comes next, I’ll look back on this time and cherish the memories I shared with them while they were so young. However, I still want my child to know me as someone who loves them dearly but is also independent, with hobbies and a career, so that they understand that such a life is possible for them.

As a family, we will continue to find ways to see beauty and community in life, despite hardship, and value each other’s labor, whether paid or unpaid, and be empathetic toward one another. I also value the work of stay-at-home parents more than ever, and I wish I had understood the load they carry much sooner in life. These lessons will be valuable for me even when financial circumstances — hopefully — change.