When my girls left for college, I saw the Facebook posts of those giddy parents who skidded out of the parking lot after helping their last child move into their college dorm. I smiled at their joyriding into this new chapter of their adult lives. My take was slightly different. In fact, some might even liken it to a one-car procession of the funereal variety. I followed my morose drive home with three days on the couch, grieving a part of my identity that was no longer appropriate or healthy to hold on to as a source of daily fulfillment.

Knock. Knock.

I’d answer with the proverbial who’s there, but I know very well that this is the knock of a solar salesperson. This is suburbia 2022. No one knocks unless they’re selling something and, in sunny California, during what I hope is the apex of global warming, there’s a 90% chance that it’s them.

1530 Ben Roe Drive is the unofficial fifth member of my family of origin. I say “unofficial” only because the therapists in my office might otherwise stop referring clients to my coaching practice, citing annoying evidence from their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. But between you and me, She’s as much a part of my family as anyone connected to us by birth or vows.