There’s a specific kind of silence that settles over a house once your children have grown and moved on.

It is a sound I am still trying to get used to.

It is not the peaceful silence of a nap time, nor is it the soft, late-night quiet of a household that is finally at rest.

No. This is a far heavier silence than any I have ever known. This is an echoing stillness that makes you realize just how much of your identity was wrapped up in the beautiful, chaotic noise of being needed.

Once in a while, that stillness becomes so great that it seems as if it stretches clear down the hallway and finally settles into the corners.

The other day, I don’t know how or why but I found myself standing in the middle of my sons’ old bedroom.

It is a room that now stays suspiciously clean and smells faintly of dryer sheets.

The game systems are gone. The hamper is empty.

The desk where homework was once heroically ignored sits untouched.

Loud music no longer escapes through the walls.

As I stood there in that stillness, a line from Herman Hesse came whispering into my mind.

“Some of us think holding on makes us strong. But sometimes, it is letting go.”

That is such a hard truth for us to realize, isn’t it?

As a parent, holding on is practically stitched into our DNA.

We pride ourselves on our stubbornness, on our loyalty, on our refusal to quit.

But as I stood there, staring at that empty desk, I realized that maybe, just maybe, my definition of strength needs a little renovation.

For more than 20 years, I believed that strength was measured by how tightly I could keep our family bound together.

I thought being a strong mother meant being the glue.

I thought it meant that I was their safety net.

I believed I was the permanent navigator of every storm my children ever encountered.

As parents, we white-knuckle our way through their teenage years.

We grip those reins so tightly that our knuckles begin to turn pale.

We are convinced that if we can just hold on a little tighter, a little longer, then we can protect our children from the world. And from themselves.

But there comes a Sunday morning — maybe for some of you that Sunday will be today — when you realize that the grip you once called “protection” has begun to feel a lot like “restriction.”

We imagine ourselves to be the pillars of gold for our families.

But sometimes, we are just the anchors keeping them from catching the wind.

And this isn’t just about our children leaving home.

It is about that exhausting, lifelong pursuit of being perfect.

How many of us are still clutching a version of ourselves that doesn’t exist anymore?

We hold onto the pristine house, the flawless career, the polished image we present to neighbors in the grocery store aisle.

We think that maintaining the facade proves our strength.

But the truth is, it takes infinitely more courage to let that image crack. To admit that we are tired. To say how the house is a mess. To confess that we don’t always have all of the answers … and we never did.

Letting go of the “perfect” parent — or the “perfect” Julie — is the only way to make room for the real one.

There is a unique, painful grief in releasing a season of a life you truly loved.

Whether you are mourning a loved one who has died or simply mourning the version of your life where your children still lived under your roof.

The temptation is to clutch those memories so tightly that we cannot feel the moment we are presently living in.

And we constantly are telling ourselves that if we stop grieving, if we stop worrying about our adult children for even five minutes, we are being weak or disloyal to them.

However, Hesse was right. The strength is not in the clench of holding on … it is the release.

It is in the brave, trembling act of opening your hand and trusting that even if you are not the one who is holding everything together, things might still turn out all right.

I am learning that my children do not need me to be their manager anymore. They need me to be their witness.

And I do not need to be the woman who has it all figured out. I just need to be the woman who is present in her today … not in her yesterdays.

So as you move through this weekend, perhaps you can take a quiet moment to notice exactly what might be making your own hands ache.

Is it a resentment? Is it a memory? Is it a standard of perfection which no human being could ever truly meet?

Whatever it is, I hope you will try loosening your grip … even if it’s just a little.

You may find you won’t fall apart after all. You may find that for the first time in a very long time you are finally no longer left with that feeling of being weighed down.

Perhaps you might even feel light enough to begin moving forward instead of standing in the middle of a room where no one depends on you anymore.

(Stenger is the community editor of the Herald-Star and The Weirton Daily Times. She can be contacted at jstenger@heraldstaronline.com.)