This place I am in...

How did I get to the place where my emotions are so raw? I feel like my heart is exposed to the air, when it is suppose to be tucked neatly in my body. It would have been so much easier if I would have never become a mother. I could have remained numb rather than being exposed like a person who has had the sheet ripped off of them by someone they trust. I am a mother of small children and a mother of adults. I am still wiping bottoms, but helping my children pack and move. I have had children leave before it was their time to leave. I have been rejected and looked up to at the same time. I feel my children pushing against me to get away and yet wanting to still be safe in my arms. Tugging, pushing, tugging pushing. Do I reach or put my arms down to my sides to help them move on. I don't know how to do this, and there are no answers. It is just what I have to do. This is what I have to feel. There is no getting around this mountain I am facing, and it scares me. I don't know if I have the endurance to face it. It is too big. How can my feelings catch up with reality? How do I allow my roll to change without feeling like I am being ripped apart from the inside? How do I play all the rolls that are expected of me? How do I not feel guilt for my failures, but proud of myself for the things I have survived? How do I believe that they see past my mistakes and realize that I would stop breathing for them? That I tried. That I did my best. That they were and are everything to me. How do I face this next level of maturity? How do I stop crying? How do I grieve because I want to sit in the park and read library books to my little girls who are dressed in jumpers I made them with the smell of fall in the air and the sound of their innocent voices telling me they love me. How do I welcome the people they have become? How do I do this gracefully?