Tonight, I was reading bedtime stories to my boys. Tomorrow, they step into new beginnings, one into 4th grade, the other into 1st. As I looked at them tucked in, ready to drift off, my eyes filled with tears.
How did we get here so fast?
This is the silent battle so many of us mothers, fathers, founders, dreamers, carry in our hearts. Time feels like it slips through our fingers. Our children grow taller, wiser, more themselves every single day, while we wrestle with the guilt of not being “there enough.”
But here’s the truth: we were there.
In the way we knew how.
With what we had.
With who we were at the time.
And maybe that’s exactly how it was supposed to be.
As parents and entrepreneurs, our lives often feel like a constant negotiation with time. We stretch it, borrow from it, try to control it. And still, it runs. Yet if we pause for just a moment, we see what our children need most is not a perfectly orchestrated timeline, but us, being present in the moments that matter.
The story, the hug, the laughter, the messy dinner, the whispered “goodnight.”
Those are the moments that write themselves into their memory.
So tonight, as my heart softened watching my children sleep, I reminded myself of this:
We don’t need to ask “what if I had done it differently?”
It unfolded exactly the way it was meant to.
Time will keep moving. Our kids will keep growing. But what matters most is not how much time we had—it’s how much love we poured into the time we got.
And that, we always have control over.
With grit and gratitude, The Gritter
