Last weekend was the move-in weekend at my college. I'd been prepping for the day for months, and I thought I was ready. I had my clothes packed and my textbooks ordered. I had been talking to my roommates for months, and we had decided what appliances we would each bring to contribute to the room. I thought I had everything accounted for, except... I didn't.

I didn't account for how hard it would be to say goodbye to my parents, or, more specifically, my mom.

Of course, I'd been warned that leaving your parents is a hard and lonely step, but during the adrenaline rush of moving in, it wasn't hitting me that every moment I was spending with them was just another moment before we had to say goodbye. And after we had gone to the store to pick up extension cords, it still hadn't hit me. It didn't even hit me when we're actually saying goodbye in the parking lot.

I would say that it wasn't a tearful goodbye, in that while we were actually saying goodbye, my mother and I both were not crying. In the past, when I've had to leave for a while, we usually both do. But on move-in day, I just hugged my parents and told them I loved them and then got back into my car to drive back up to my own parking lot.

And that's when it finally hit me.

I was driving away, watching my parents in the parking lot, and I started crying. Saying goodbye had been relatively easy, but I was now feeling that goodbye more intensely than I thought I was going to.

My mom has been a major support to me my entire life. Whenever I have problems going on, or things that I'm excited to share with someone, she's always been the very first person that I go to. I was really worried that I was going to lose that support once I moved away, and that thought really scared me. But I shouldn't have worried about it so much.

My mom is still pretty involved in what I'm doing right now. She still likes when I call her and give her updates about what I'm doing here, and while I might be acting like a teenager sometimes, I definitely appreciate it. I appreciate her greatly. And I'm so grateful to have awesome parents who encouraged me to follow my dreams and are helping me as I go through college. I definitely wouldn't be here without them.

So, if you leaving for college has made you miss your parents a TON, don't be afraid to call them and tell them how much you love them! They're probably missing you, but not wanting to intrude upon your fun time at college (unless your mom is like mine and has no problem calling you all of the time).

While it may be hard to be apart from them, college is going to give all of us a wonderful chance to grow, and our families will still be there for us when we come back home.