There’s a marked moment in parenthood when we intuitively know that our children are ready to experience the world a distance away from our watchful eye. At the beginning, it’s the distance between the park bench and the monkey bars, then it grows into the first solo walk home from school (“I can do this, Mom!”). Then, at some point, the distance may become such that we are tied to them by an invisible thread, connected by phone calls, dinners on the weekends, and visits during the holidays.

In this continuum, I am somewhere between the park bench and the solo walks from school. Last week, my husband and I dropped off our eight-year-old daughter at the bus that drove her and about 40 other girls to a spot in Maine that holds a special place in my heart.

While in Maine last summer, visiting her older brother who attends a boys camp not too far away, our daughter had the chance to see the camp where I spent nine of my coming-of-age summers, cheering by the lake and laughing at inside jokes that only made sense to us campers.

Walking the grounds was like going back in time. With nostalgia and faded memories slowly returning, I tightly held onto our daughter’s hand as we walked through buildings relatively untouched by modernity, echoing the camp’s 1911 founding and unchanged from my 1990s summers.

I bit my tongue and let our daughter explore in her own time, doing my very best to see this special place now through her eyes. I wondered if I ever imagined back then that I might return to this place with a daughter in tow. What was my eight-to-sixteen-year-old self imagining my 40s would be like? I’m not sure I ever did such pondering. By the end of that visit last summer, she said to her dad and me, “This is where I want to go next summer.”

This is the first summer when both our children will be seven weeks and 337 miles from home. Our daughter is now the exact age I was when I went to sleepaway camp for the first time.

When I told another mom at school about our plans for the summer, she gave me a look of alarm and amazement. “Isn’t she too young to be away for that long?” the mom said with a gasp. “I wouldn’t be able to do that to my baby.”

I likely would have that reaction, too, if I didn’t have the benefit of hindsight.

I still remember what it felt like to be that eight-year-old. I carried so much fear and anxiety in the weeks leading up to camp: What if I can’t make friends? What if I miss my parents? What if I want to come home? These questions occupied so much space in my head at that age that it did not surprise me when our daughter asked me the same ones in the days and weeks before leaving home.

In these moments of doubt, I held her close and consoled her with words of encouragement, treading carefully not to impose my own positive experiences of camp onto her while also being mindful not to burden her with my parental anxieties.

I told her that, at her age, I shared the same worries of the unknown and that transitions and change are hard (and they continue to be for me). It was not until the third or fourth week of camp that I found my footing, where camp became another “home” of sorts, a place of belonging for me among loving counselors and campers who became the best of friends.

I don’t remember if it was during that first summer or over the course of many summers that I developed a newfound sense of freedom at camp that allowed me to find my voice and truly blossom. I now recognize these years as key markers in nurturing my independence, courage, and confidence — all characteristics I know our daughter already possesses and more.

I told our daughter, too, that camp is where I was able to test boundaries and try new things, like judo, water skiing, metal smithing, and archery. I learned how to do a canoe t-rescue and resolve conflict between bickering bunkmates. I learned the lyrics to an inordinate number of musicals and had my first experiences performing on stage in front of hundreds of people.

What I remember most fondly are the friendships I made. We sang songs in harmony by the bonfire and cheered for each other for every big and small accomplishment. We made up new handshakes and swapped friendship bracelets. We carved our names into the rafters of our cabins, next to the many girls who came before us and ahead of the many who would come after us. Our group of girls returned to Maine year after year, with each summer filled with thick rituals and an unwavering camaraderie that far surpassed anything I experienced during the other ten months of the year.

I reminded our daughter that, while it may not feel like it right now, camp is an opportunity to safely explore the world outside our family, learn songs and rituals that she and I will now get to share, and build new friendships that we hope will last a lifetime.

We had a version of this conversation almost every night for a month leading up to her departure. Hearing the shakiness in her voice as she wiped her tears broke me in half. Half of me was ready to call the camp director to apologize that we wouldn’t be coming this year, that we would defer for just another summer. The other half of me, grounded in experience, advised me to take deep breaths and stay the course.

The truth is, I have been emotionally preparing myself for these seven weeks since our visit last summer. I know it will be incredibly tough for my husband and me not to see both our kids rummaging through the fridge and pantry, running up and down the stairs, and laughing at each other’s silly stories upon coming home from work.

The house will be eerily quiet, and the demands on our time navigating all the logistics surrounding our kids’ activities will evaporate. Our friends have been asking what we will do with ourselves. In this first early test of empty nesting, I am looking forward to dating my husband again. And, I already know that some of our activities together will include maniacally refreshing our phones for camp updates, zooming in on every photo, and interrogating facial expressions and body language for signals that our children are doing well and having fun.

I also know that, while our kids might be homesick and while we will miss them dearly, this is an opportunity for them to spread their wings on their own terms. For our daughter’s first sleepaway camp experience, I’m sitting with the difficult feelings that she might be lonely during these first few weeks, but she will be surrounded by adults who will love and care for every camper as those before them did for me. She might be scared, but she will find her group of friends who will cheer her on. She may even encounter her limits, but she will learn that she can, in fact, do hard things.

In time, she will find her voice and her footing, amid the boundless gifts of freedom and independence alongside the predictability of meaningful ritual and a caring community.

Part of this experience, too, is about widening the web of relationships that she can lean on in moments of struggle. Our daughter’s camp “big sister” called a few weeks before school ended: “I will be waiting for you at the bus the moment you get to camp to give you this stuffy,” she said while holding up a cute stuffed animal. “I will visit you at your bunk every night, so you don’t miss home too much. You will love it here!” I cried with tears of relief as I heard this caring twelve-year-old take our daughter under her wing.

There is a time in parenthood when we realize our kids are ready to expand into greater facets of this world. I know deep in my bones that summer camp is a soft landing pad for our daughter to take this next big step, just as it was for me. Years from now, when she looks back at this summer, I hope she remembers camp as a place where she got to dip her toes in, expand her horizons, and cultivate the seeds of responsibility, camaraderie, and compassion for others.

In the meantime, I’m counting down the days until visiting weekend when I get to hug and kiss each of our kiddos. I am especially looking forward to telling our daughter how brave she is and how proud we are of her for doing hard things.

As we head into summer, I wish you endless moments of joy and wonder, alongside moments of letting go of all that’s heavy and difficult, in the hope of stretching the imagination of what is possible.

Jenn Hoos Rothberg leads Einhorn Collaborative. Learn more about our work and more about Jenn. Sign up to receive our monthly newsletter and be the first to read Jenn’s blog posts.