The Art of Letting Go

Four years ago, my son moved to New York City. In a few days, my daughter will board a plane for another country and be gone for longer than I can picture.

Letting them go is an ache braided from loss, admiration, and the thrill of their next horizon. It means losing the daily rhythms and the easy friendship all at once — the closeness of being under the same roof, and the moments you don’t plan for but can’t imagine life without — the offhand jokes, late-night talks at the edge of the bed, "want to go for a walk?” 

We miss the simple things — things that hold an unassuming kind of magic.

And yet, alongside the ache, there’s deep admiration. For their courage. Their curiosity. The way they keep stepping into the world on their own terms.

Being a parent has never been about making them in my image — it’s about giving them room to become who they already are.

This is, at its heart, the same work we do in design and branding: tending to something until it’s ready to step into the world without us. We think it through, shape it with care, and make sure it’s ready to meet the world — knowing it will cross paths with people we’ll never know, be interpreted in ways we can’t control, and, through the lives it touches, grow into its fullest expression.

Good design, like a good human, carries the truth of itself wherever it goes. We still show up — in how we live, in the work we keep doing — but we don’t need to hover. We trust that what’s there — the care, the truth, the steadiness — will hold.

I step back, and it carries itself into the world.✦

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