Letting Go with Love: Launching my (Neurodivergent) Daughter to College
I scrape off the half-peeled remnants of a glittery purple manicure, even though it’s my last tangible reminder of my days with my daughter Ellie. Three weeks after dropping her off at college two states away, I’m still fighting tears. Maybe I’ll keep these ugly jagged edges for a little longer, I think as I stare at my hands. With her bedroom cleaned and sterile, the door perpetually open like a mouth that has forgotten to close, I don’t have many other traces of my daughter’s presence in our home. Except for the reality that my phone lights up with her text messages all day long.
At first, Ellie sends hourly texts about her health: “mom i think im getting sick 😷 went to health center & they said no fever but i feel so hot/cold and exhausted. is that thermometer u gave me even working?? should i ask my prof for an extension on my paper? what if he says no and gets mad 😭”
I scramble between work meetings to soothe her while searching for the fastest delivery service for medicine in the middle of rural Ohio.
Soon after that crisis subsides, Ellie sends frantic messages: “My meds are missing - my adhd ones. i know i counted them & looked everywhere but some r def gone 😤 can u put more $ in my account for a safe? wanna lock them up. can u talk now? im freaking out.”
As soon as we work our way through that situation, she messages me again: “ugh couldnt sleep again last night. alexis came in late w/ guys again didnt even tell me & they had alcohol 🙄 i need a new roommate. she never locks the door either its driving me insane. idk what to do but i gotta get out of here.”
While my friends brim with stories of their student’s escapades with a newfound tribe, I have spent my daughter’s first month of college trying to coach her to break the isolation of her room. Over FaceTime, we review the entire list of clubs because she feels too anxious to attend the Activity Fair. I encourage her to build friendships, while her social anxiety whispers opposite messages. As my friends talk about how they wish they heard from their teens more often, I wrestle with dread as my daughter sends me daily, mile-long texts about how hard college life is, mixed with a strange relief that she still wants to talk with me.
*
Soon after Ellie began preschool, my husband Peter pulled me aside after filling out a school assessment.
“Ellie doesn’t make eye contact with us,” he said. “She plays by herself more than other kids.”
“You’re worrying too much,” I replied, rubbing my eyes. “What three-year-old has impressive social skills?”
“I think there’s something going on,” Peter said. “Let’s see what the school says.”
Within weeks, we sat in a bland office at the school district, where administrators shook our hands and used words like “IEP” and “social use of language” and “extra services.” I felt dazed. I had always considered my firstborn to be extraordinarily brilliant, impressively creative and objectively perfect. Acknowledging the possibility that her brain might function differently than other kids felt like jumping into an icy lake that you expected to be as warm as a hot tub.
Even though Ellie’s IEP only lasted a year, I couldn’t ignore the fact that her social struggles followed her in subtle ways during elementary school and in painfully obvious ones once she began junior high. Navigating social groups seemed to overwhelm her, although she enjoyed one-on-one interactions with friends. She built friendships through the safety of her phone more than embodied adventures around town. Often, she spent time alone or with our family.
As Peter snapped the “First Day of School” photos year after year, Ellie’s smiles seemed more and more half-hearted and forced. When she turned thirteen, I noticed the tendrils of anxiety and depression curling around Ellie’s heart and tried unsuccessfully to connect her with a therapist. Two years later, Ellie had a mental health breakdown that left her bedbound. Through the support of a gifted therapist and an eating disorder treatment center, she found her way to recovery. As she stabilized, our picture of Ellie’s brain moved from haziness into clear focus. We learned Ellie has ADHD and ASD (autism). Talking about our daughter’s brain felt like a trip through the alphabet with various acronyms and their matching numbers: three prescriptions, fifty milligrams, four clinicians, don’t count the dollars.
By junior year, when Peter took Ellie’s “First Day of School” photo, her spark had returned. She wore an oversized gray plaid skirt and white polo shirt monogrammed with her new Catholic girls’ school. She grinned with relief at not returning to the public school that had witnessed her breakdown. Eighteen months later, her graduation photos showed her beaming, honor cords gracing her neck as she held her boyfriend’s arm along with a single red rose.
Three weeks ago, Peter captured a final “First Day of School” photo in the college cafeteria before we drove home. In the picture, Ellie’s eyes glisten with anticipation alongside tears. None of us expected the transition to be so rocky.
*
During her senior year, manicures became Ellie’s favorite self-soothing strategy. What began as a splurge on special occasions became a daily activity. I could barely enter her bedroom, permeated by the acrid scent of acetone. Coming home from Dollar Tree, she would exult at finding a new polish color. She watched YouTube videos on making her own nail stickers and painted designs on Ziplock bags, which she cut into ovals and tried pasting onto her fingers. She researched nail care and insisted on certain brands of topcoats, rambling about the science of keeping polish unchipped. When I offered professional gel manicures as a going-away gift, she beamed.
“This will be so cool!” Ellie exclaimed. “It’ll stay fresh for two weeks! My nails will look great, as I’m meeting new people! And I won’t have to do them again for a while.”
I grinned as we entered the salon. “I don’t think I’ve ever had a no-chip manicure before,” I said. “It’ll be fun for me too. A way to remember each other.”
After Ellie quickly picked out her color, I asked her to help me choose mine. We both ended up with sparkly purple, the glitter making me feel younger than the mother of a legal adult.
Days later, we rolled Ellie’s suitcases into her dorm room and plugged in her new fridge. We made countless trips to Walmart, agonized over the perfect place for her toiletries, and pressed Command strips all over white cinderblock walls.
We moved in early so that Ellie could join a pre-orientation for neurodiverse students. In the afternoon, all of our families sat together in a light-filled classroom, hearing stories from the staff team and student leaders, who named challenges such narcolepsy, ADHD, anxiety, and left others unsaid. I worked quickly to befriend other parents, all of us weary, bonded by the camaraderie of trying to figure out how to fill prescription medications and find spaces for telehealth appointments.
That night, Ellie returned from orientation, bubbling about a scavenger hunt for tiny plastic ducks. At the end, the student leader held a duck in her palm and confessed that she struggled to take her meds. But she wanted to care for her ducks, so she added the ducks to her medication bottles. She took them out to “feed” them, which helped her take her meds. Ellie’s eyes glowed with relief. She’s found her people, I thought.
Two days later, I thought it strange when Ellie rubbed the gel manicure off before we left, mumbling something about how it wasn’t good anymore. She pulled out a new color, applying it a few hours before we hugged her goodbye.
As our family drove away, I felt lost. It felt too hard to face the fact that we had just left our daughter, who had rarely left my side for the past eighteen years. All I could do was listen to an audiobook and rub the smoothness of my own intact polished nails over the seven-hour ride home.
Weeks pass, and Ellie’s texts diminish in frequency and intensity. The last remnants of nail polish fall off in the sink as I wash dishes for our family of four, minus Ellie. I supervise my team at work, ask my son about his physics homework, and laugh with friends over a potluck dinner.
When people ask how Ellie is doing at college, I say that she is finding her way, which feels vague enough to mean just about anything. Perhaps it’s more that I am finding my way as I navigate the shift from devoted caregiver, anxiety coach, and chief overseer of the treatment team, to the stark simplicity of Mom.
I ask myself a similar question. How am I doing with Ellie’s absence? On the one hand, I am filled with an almost-constant sense of anxiety, like a low, rumbling thunder in my gut, that never quite leaves. My daughter, my beloved firstborn, whom I nursed back to health from a mental health breakdown, is struggling hundreds of miles away. That realization leaves me in a mess of biting lips, frantically emailing therapists, and trying to remember how to breathe.
I miss Ellie with a fierceness that surprises me. Because of her struggles, Ellie has always clung to me. Serving as her caregiver in the hardest months of her eating disorder recovery connected us profoundly. Our bond feels both strong and especially tender in her absence.
But there’s so much to celebrate. Each time Ellie takes a step forward, I name her progress. When she advocates for herself with a professor, I remind myself that she could barely talk with her teachers three years ago. As she finds spaces to bake gluten-free bread on campus, I remember the kid who struggled to feed herself. Almost seamlessly, she has taken over tasks I have always done: filling prescriptions, shopping for groceries, navigating new places. When she nervously approaches another student on campus, I cheer her on.
There’s also celebration as I realize I have permission to release my role as caregiver. When I’m tempted to save Ellie from her latest disaster, I take a deep breath and sink into the reality of my limited influence. I am hundreds of miles away, and Ellie is now legally an adult. Beyond offering emotional support, I am virtually powerless to change anything. My best contribution lies in coaching Ellie to find her own solutions, with the resources in her community. While that realization is terrifying, it’s also freeing. I try to remember that natural consequences are the best teachers and none of Ellie’s issues are as serious as they feel in my body. Letting go feels wildly uncomfortable but also exhilarating.
Six weeks into the semester, I visit Ellie at college. She surprises me by leading me on an extended stroll through a forest preserve. “Since when do you take long walks?” I ask, biting my tongue before I add, “since you didn’t do this at home.”
Ellie shrugs and asks if we can go shopping.
Later, we perch on her bed and watch a required movie for her Spanish class. I ask to borrow a nail file, but she can’t find one. I realize suddenly that her nails seem plain. The nail polish bottles, usually positioned on her desk like guardians, have disappeared.
Hours later, when we hug goodbye in the dark, my eyes stinging from exhaustion, she doesn’t pull away. I hold her head in my hands and tell her I love her. She smiles and asks if she can teach me gluten-free baking during her next visit home. She says we can make bagels from scratch together.
I agree readily. Somehow the image of the two of us, flour-dusted and sticky-handed in our kitchen, makes it easier to pull my car away from the sight of her waving hands and trust that we will both make it until then.
-Serena Menken
Serena Menken is a senior leader in a nonprofit where she leads a gifted team and serves as editor of a company website. When she’s not writing, she plays board games with her three teens, snuggles with her crazy labradoodle, and bikes through forest preserves with her husband. Check out her work at https://serenamenken.substack.com.