This week, Evie is off to Chattanooga on the 7th grade field trip for school. They left yesterday morning and are supposed to be back this evening. Evie was very nervous about going - a lot of anxiety about who her roommates would be, how she would handle when they went to Chick-fil-a (she doesn't eat there because she doesn't like the food and she doesn't support their donations to anti-LGBTQIA+ organizations), whether she would have fun, etc. She asked me at one point to just let her stay home, but I think these are those moments where you encourage and push your kid to take a chance on something rather than letting them take the out. And she texted me yesterday that she is having the best time and is so glad she went, which of course made me feel so much better. There have been things this year that were too overwhelming for her and I did let her take an out (e.g., swimming, Latin class), but now that things are more stable and she seems to have more capacity and more coping skills, I felt that this was important to learn the lesson that even though something seems scary, good things can come from scary experiences.
Evie was telling me before the trip who she was hoping would be her roommates and who she planned to sit next to on the bus. I can't remember the girl's name, but she mentioned on classmate who she hoped she'd be with because "she's funny, she'll lighten the mood, and she keeps snacks on her all the time."
They had a choir and band concert the night before they left which my friend Shelley and her dad attended. Shelley's dad gave her his clarinet to use this year - he used to own a music store - so it meant a lot for him to come.
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