Us parents. We’re so busy raising our kids that we kind of lose ourselves in parenthood. We forget that we’re also a daughter, a son, a sister, an aunt. Our identity solely revolves around our kids.

Our days are dictated by nap times and divided between school drop off and pick up. We’ve made shopping lists from the bleachers at the tball field and have perfected shaping ham and cheese sandwiches delicately into hearts.

We’re magic makers and mess cleaners. We have a bandaid that could heal any boo boo when sealed with a kiss and we have just the concoction to contend with even the most aggressive of grass stains.

We’re a little person’s safe space where they can indulge in the comfort of our unyielding love. We’re the keepers of the best bed time stories and nearly always the winner at tickle fights.

This season of our life is fleeting. Before we know it, we’re no longer packing dinosaur lunch boxes and scraping play doh out of the floorboards. Our kids have grown independent of us and suddenly we feel as though we have lost ourselves.

In time, we begin to connect with who we are again. We begin to remember who we were before we had kids. We slowly settle into this new version of ourselves as we navigate our lives as a parent with grown children.

We linger in this period of time for a little while before suddenly our identity shifts again. It feels a lot like parenthood in the way that we are loving and caring for the most important people in our lives, but this time it is our parents.

Suddenly, our lives have become centered around doctor’s appointments and physical therapy. We’re doing christmas shopping from the armchair of a lonely hospital room and the melodies of children’s toys have been replaced by the haunting sound of a heart monitor.

We’re still drawing hearts on paper bag lunches and making meals with the same love and attention that we would for our kids, but this time, we’re abiding by dietary restrictions and other limitations. And we find ourselves relishing in that familiar sense of accomplishment when they finish their entire meal.

We become magic makers and mess cleaners again. We begin to understand the capacity of our healing powers, just by spending time with them. We clean messes dutifully and with grace. We used to sort legos and organize matchbox cars and now we’re filling pill containers and changing bed pans.

We remember how overjoyed we were when our kids took their first steps as we guide our parents to relearn how to walk. We realize that our kid’s ABC learning walker wasn’t much different than the sterile hospital grade one that our parents are now tethered to.

It is at this moment that we feel our two identities collide. We are a dad and a mom, but we are also a son and daughter. We raise our kids to become independent of us in just enough time to take care of our parents. It is a cycle of life characterized by profound parallels. We learn of the delicacy of then and now.

We sit in this period of time, grasping desperately for the silver linings and plus sides. But the truth is, the only plus side to watching your parents get older, is watching them get older. You acknowledge that it’s a privilege, but it doesn’t negate the pain of watching Age slowly strip your parents away.

Eventually, we find peace with this indisputable aspect of life. We accept that this is a part of life with the knowing that the cycle continues with our own kids.