It wasn’t about the laptop

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Hey Spark Family,

This week we are on Spring Break.

On paper, it’s an exciting trip. We’re visiting incredible schools. Exploring new cities. Walking campuses that could shape Miles’s future. One of them is Duke, my alma mater, which makes it feel even more full circle.

And yet, if I’m honest, I feel sick to my stomach.

Not dramatic sick. Quiet, constant, in-the-background sick.

Because this trip is not just a trip.
​It’s a marker.

A reminder that in only a year and a half, our “normal” will change in a way I cannot quite wrap my heart around yet.

Simon leaving for Michigan was already one of the hardest transitions of my life. I remember the flight home feeling like I had physically left part of myself behind. The house sounded different. The energy shifted. I learned to adapt, but I never quite learned to pretend it didn’t matter.

Now we are standing at the edge of doing it again.

Miles is our baby. He’s a junior in high school now. The one who still sits at the kitchen counter and talks to me about everything and nothing. The one whose presence shapes the rhythm of our days. I love our family dynamic so deeply that sometimes I wish I could slow time down with my will alone.

And I can’t.

So I find myself holding two truths at once.

🔹 I am incredibly excited for him.
🔹 And I am quietly grieving what is already beginning to change.

This is what growth looks like in real life. It rarely arrives as pure excitement. It often arrives as expansion mixed with loss. Pride mixed with ache. Possibility mixed with nostalgia.

Neuroscience actually explains why moments like this feel so intense. Our brains are wired to protect continuity. Familiar patterns create psychological safety. When a big transition approaches, even a positive one, the nervous system registers uncertainty and starts scanning for threat. That scan can feel like anxiety or dread, even when nothing is wrong.

But mindset matters here.

Because the same moment can be experienced as something being taken away or as something meaningful unfolding.

Leadership is often about holding both.

Holding gratitude for what is. While allowing space for what is becoming.

I keep reminding myself that the goal was never to freeze our family in time. The goal was to raise humans strong enough to build lives of their own. That doesn’t make the transition easy. It makes it purposeful.

So this week, I am choosing presence.

Choosing to enjoy the college tours.
Choosing to laugh in the car.
Choosing to notice the small moments that are happening right now instead of only bracing for the ones that are coming.

This is a leadership practice as much as it is a life practice.

We all face seasons where something we love is evolving. A team dynamic. A role. A chapter of life. The instinct is often to grip tighter, to resist the change, to wish for the comfort of what has been.

But growth asks something different of us.

It asks us to stay open. To feel the bittersweetness without shutting down. To keep showing up fully while the future is quietly rearranging itself.

If you are in a moment like that right now, you are not alone.

The real skill is not avoiding the emotion.
It is allowing it while still choosing how you want to experience the time you have.

This week, I am practicing joy on purpose.
Practicing gratitude on purpose.
​Practicing the mindset that loving something deeply also means letting it grow.

Grateful,
​Jackie

P.S. If you have a mindset practice that helps you stay present during big life transitions, I would genuinely love to hear it.

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