My story was published on Grown and Flown! That's You, Grammy. That's Me, College Marni. Why I Happily Stand in the Middle of My Family and My Business.

https://grownandflown.com/grandmother-balancing-family-career-loss/

A Nest is Always a Home

Every parent who's ever stood in a dorm room doorway knows this feeling: you spend eighteen years teaching a person to leave you, and then the day comes, and you are somehow still not ready. You struggle between being excited for what is to come and the overwhelming urge to drag your child back to the car and say this has all just been a big mistake.

My oldest son went to school 20 minutes away. I bawled hysterically in the car on the way home - the kind of crying where you're grateful for giant sunglasses so no one at the next red light sees you sobbing. My husband thought I was insane.

"You know you could drive back tomorrow and see him," he said.

I wouldn't. I couldn't. It wasn't the distance I was crying about - it was the stage of life we were entering. Was I crying because he was so close he might never really leave, or because he was gone enough that he'd never need a home-cooked meal again? I couldn't even tell which fear was mine. Turns out, neither one was real.

My middle son went to school 11 hours away. Despite having done this once already, I wasn't prepared for our goodbye. He'd always been my homebody - the one who wanted to eat dinner as a family even in high school, who never rushed to Friday night plans, who liked being where we were. So when he chose a school 11 hours from home, I didn't understand it, and I definitely wasn't ready for it. I never once stopped crying on the drive back. Twice my husband asked if we needed to pull over because he thought I was hyperventilating. But distance was no match for that boy's attachment to home - we joked that he came back for 11 days at a time, while his brother, 20 minutes away, popped in for 11 minutes. Distance, it turns out, has almost nothing to do with how close your kids stay.

Then came my baby girl. Two down, one to go.

We spent months decorating not one but two dorm rooms, because she did Penn State's summer program before starting in the fall, and far be it from this mama to send her off in August with a slightly used comforter. We searched Dormify, Bed Bath & Beyond, HomeGoods. But this kid was a rebel - things needed to be unique, not trendy. I was out of my style league. It was the year of the tapestry, and we bought so many on Etsy, intending to return the extras and never did, that I now have a lifetime supply of picnic blankets. (I have used exactly one of these - but I digress.)

Move-in one: I cried, same as I had with the boys. My nest would soon be empty, and the five-hour drive home felt strange and disconcerting. What would my days even look like once summer ended?

Move-in two was chaos - hot, sweaty, and by then she was already comfortable at school. She didn't want me emptying her bags, making neat piles in her closet, hanging pictures on the wall. She scrolled her phone, ignored my questions about which drawer was preferable for her sock collection, and asked my husband if he wanted to hit up a local spot where he could grab a beer instead of hooking up her TV and building a shelf. She wanted to go find her friends, and she let me know it, sharp enough that it caught me off guard coming from my own kid. My normally wonderful daughter had been replaced by a pod version of herself. When we finally pulled away, I'm not ashamed to say I told my husband to floor it.

I learned eventually that this was her way of soiling the nest. Because after that, we spoke every single day. She was just ready to fly.

All three of my kids came back home for stretches after college - some commuted before finding their own apartments, some moved home during COVID (my all-time favorite era, when they were all here with significant others and puppies in tow), some landed home between one place and the next. If you build strong relationships with your kids, you don't lose them. They love coming home. You will love having them. And you'll also learn to love your space - not empty, but full: full of you, and them, and memories, and goals, and plans, and dreams.

My house still has closets full of clothes they never bothered to take, even though their childhood bedrooms are now a nursery and a toddler's room for our grandkids. My 32-year-old son came by to swim this weekend and asked his dad for a pair of boxers. I told him to check his top drawer. He found his own.

A nest is always a home. And your birds always come back to it.

So let yourself cry it out at drop-off. It's scary - you're separating from your baby, from their childhood. But here's what I've learned, both from my own three and from hundreds of other families I've walked through this with: wash your face, read a book, pour a glass of wine, play mahjong, call a friend, go on a date with your spouse. Take some very deep breaths.

You'll need all of that new alone-time energy anyway - for the insane hours they'll keep once they're back, the kitchen that'll look like a tornado hit it after a 2am snack that somehow required a blender, and the piles of laundry they'll drag home never having quite located the dorm laundry room. Every bit of that mess will mean they came back. I'll take that any day.

The nest begins chirping again, ready or not. Let it.

What 16,000 Episodes of General Hospital Taught Me About Senior Year

If your house has had a moment this month that felt like something out of a soap opera - a dramatic fight nobody saw coming, a phone call that changed everything, a kid who suddenly won't talk about the one thing you most need them to talk about - you're not imagining it. Senior year runs on soap opera logic.

I know this because I’ve watched General Hospital every day for 50 years. Guilty pleasure, fully embraced, no apology. Last week the show aired episode 16,000. I have seen every single one - I am not exaggerating, I am not rounding up, despite my husband’s skepticism - and somewhere around four thousand hours into my alternate life in Port Charles, I started noticing something. The plots repeat. Not because the writers are lazy, but because these are the stories that actually happen to families (on steroids of course - so we don't feel so bad in real life). Love, loss, betrayal, a kid nobody saw coming, a will nobody expected, a person everyone thought was gone showing back up at the worst possible moment.

I've also spent eighteen years matching families to the right colleges, and those two worlds have more in common than you'd think. So this week, in honor of the 16,000th episode, here is application season mapped onto the storylines you already know by heart, whether you watch GH or not. Fill in your own favorite version of each character - you know your own Port Charles, Bachelor Mansion, Love Island, or Grey Sloan Memorial better than I do.

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August: The Custody Battle

Every GH custody storyline has the same vibe. The Qs want one thing, Carly wants another, and the kid in the middle just wants everyone to stop yelling in the living room. That's the college list conversation in almost every house during August. Everyone's arguing about the school on the sweatshirt, but the conversations that actually matter are beneath the surface: what it costs, whether the major is genuinely strong at that specific school, or the name is just doing the talking. And whether the list actually has balance - reach, target, and foundation - or it includes eight schools that are all highly rejective wearing different colors.

Nobody in this storyline is the villain. But somebody has to run the table read before the fighting starts. That's my job - part mediator, part Alexis Davis, minus the courtroom theatrics. Right fit over right name, wins every time in my book.

September/October: The Long-Lost Twin

Port Charles has never met a set of twins, doubles, or masked impostors it didn't love, and every single time, someone falls for the switch before they realize who they're actually looking at. Early Decision and Early Action are exactly that pair - Nathan and Cassius, nearly identical on paper. Both are early, both feel proactive, both come with a deadline in the fall. But one is a binding promise and the other is a flexible option, and a family that confuses the two can end up committed to something they never meant to sign.

October/November: The Amnesia Storyline

Drew Cain spent years walking around Port Charles completely certain he was Jason Morgan - no doubt in his mind, memories that felt entirely real - until the truth detonated and turned out to be nothing like what he believed. That's the "the essay is basically done" conversation, in the two weeks before November 1st. The kid isn't lying. They genuinely believe the draft is further along than it is - there's an outline in their head, a few strong lines they're proud of, and a real sense of momentum that hasn't yet turned into an actual finished essay on the page. My job ensures no one accidentally ‘forgets’ : I see the draft, not hear about it. I build the actual writing calendar backward from the deadline instead of trusting "basically done." And I make sure there's a real human other than the kid who's read the whole thing well before November 1st, not October 31st at 11pm when mom is pulling her hair out.

Mid-December: The ED2 Twist

Just when you think the story is wrapped up, GH pulls the rug out and brings someone back, usually Valentin, for a second proposal nobody saw coming. That's ED2. The student who got denied or deferred in round one and thought the door had closed gets a real second chance, weeks later, with a whole new set of odds. It's the plot twist that makes people gasp on a Friday, except this cliffhanger happens in December just when you're ready to chill over the holidays.

January/February: The Mob Boss Running Everything From the Shadows

This one barely needs translating. Sonny Corinthos has run Port Charles from behind a coffee cup for decades, and nobody in the room ever fully understands the math behind his decisions. That's the algorithm during decision season. Applications are in, the waiting has started, and something is deciding everyone's fate according to a logic nobody outside the admissions office can see. Maybe it's Sonny. Maybe it's Helena, back from the dead again - she's died and returned so many times at this point I've stopped keeping count, and somehow she's always got a plan too. All you can do is trust the story you built and wait for the email.

February/March: Presumed Dead, Actually Alive

If GH has a house specialty, it's this one. Someone gets buried, mourned, written off completely, and then walks back into the Metro Court looking better than ever. Every single year, I watch a family ignore their safety school as an afterthought in the fall and then open that offer in February and realize it's the most generous scholarship, an Honors program, sometimes even the best fit, of the whole list. Never bury a school too early. You don't know who's walking back through that door with flowers.

March/April: The Wedding Interruption

And then comes sweeps week. Port Charles has never once let a wedding go off without a crisis at the altar, going all the way back to Luke and Laura themselves. Just when a family thinks the story is settled, someone bursts through the doors right before the vows and changes everything - in this case, with a waitlist call in late March or April after the student says "I do" to someone else. It's the classic GH ending: nothing is final until the credits actually roll. And not even then. (I'm talking to you June and July offers.)

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Sixteen thousand episodes in, here's what I've learned that applies to both soaps and every college consulting Zoom I've done: the story always feels like chaos in the middle of it. But it's only chaos until someone who knows the plot points can tell you what's coming next. (I'd love to sit in GH's writer's room one day.) For the families I work with, that's my job - giving you the inside scoop, so you're not up at midnight in some parent Facebook group called something like "General Admissions," trying to guess what happens next. I'm writing this script.

I am the calm in the chaos.

Next fall: a freshman year plot twist nobody saw coming. A roommate storyline with more layers than the Cassadine family tree. A phone call home that changes everything.

Tune in.