Recently, my husband and I took the trip of a lifetime to Italy without the kids and it had our cups overflowing when we got back. The last time my husband and I took a trip, just the two of us, was on our baby moon when we traveled up the coast of California together before Marlie was born. This would be the first time I had been away from the kids for more than a couple nights.

After months of planning and prepping, the trip slowly creeped up on us and the mom guilt began to sink in. I started questioning if we should go, if the kids would be okay, if I would be okay, and I couldn’t seem to shake it.

The nerves for being such a long distance away. For being away. For releasing all control. For putting myself first. For walking away from the family life that has been all I have known for the last three years.

I knew the kids were in good hands, they had my mom, sister, sister-in-law and my aunt and uncle for a few days too! It’s not that I didn’t trust them, it was the fact that I was leaving them and as Mom’s, I don’t know what it is, but we just seem to carry guilt when we do things without them. Its like separation anxiety times one hundred.

Leaving our kids is hard. Really hard.

Leaving them hurts our hearts.

Leaving makes us feel like things are going to fall apart. Tears are shed and our hearts break a bit. It is such a weird feeling because I truly wanted to have time away to reset and take a “break”, but I found myself crying as I put the kids to sleep and kissed them each one more time, knowing I wouldn’t see them in the morning or for the next 7 days.

Funny story— on our flight from Dallas to Rome, I watched the movie “Five feet apart” and completely lost my cool, balling my eyes out. I am not a huge crier, but in my defense, I am pregnant, I had just left my babies behind and this movie was such an amazing story and had a lot of sad scenes. haha. The lady across the way, literally asked me when we got off the plane “what movie were you watching, because I saw how emotional you were and now I want to watch it “ haha I was so embarrassed and that just goes to show how much I really lost it.

But anyways, what I learned from all of this, is that while leaving them is hard, it is also really good. It makes us stronger. It makes our bonds stronger. It teaches them that they are okay without us and we will always come back. And it shows them that we take care of ourselves and our relationship. In the end, it could not have gone any better and we were so ready to come back and jump right back into life as a complete family!

While the guilt was still there when we arrived in Italy, I knew this was exactly what we both needed and it was time that we will cherish forever. We spent our first few days in Rome and while we thought about our kids often, we were able to truly enjoy the time with just “us” like it use to be from day one.

So I challenge you to plan a getaway, without your kids, and allow yourself to just simply enjoy the time! whether it’s a big trip, a small staycation or a weekend getaway, book it. As it turns out, our kids didn’t even notice we were gone haha