Turns out, hovering isn’t a love language

A story about choice, slow cooking, and stepping back.

Hello again to my favorite Wonder Seekers…

Come sit with me for a minute.

I want to take you back in time, not to a dramatic moment or a big blowup, but to one of those quiet turning points you don’t realize is important until years later. The kind that doesn’t announce itself, but changes the way everything unfolds afterward.

This one started when my son Steven was fifteen, and I was doing what I thought was loving him really well. Which, if I’m being honest, mostly looked like hovering.

There’s a particular kind of tension that sneaks in when you love someone deeply and you’re also convinced it’s your job to make sure nothing goes wrong. It’s subtle. Efficient. Very well intentioned. It shows up as reminders, check-ins, gentle nudges that are not actually that gentle, and an ongoing internal soundtrack of, If I don’t stay on top of this, who will?

Steven was a teenager with a full life ahead of him. I was a mom with a full nervous system and a strong belief that my involvement was helpful. I cared deeply. I paid attention. I tracked deadlines. I hovered… beautifully. One afternoon, I realized something wasn’t working.

No explosion. No fight. Just a quiet awareness that I was tired, he was tense, and whatever I thought I was supporting wasn’t actually creating ease for either of us.

So I called him into my room.

I remember my heart pounding, which felt a little dramatic given the circumstances, but something in me knew this mattered. He stood there, all long limbs and teenage uncertainty, and I said, “Hold out your hand.”

He looked at me like, Okay… what are we doing here?

When he did, I placed invisible keys in his palm.

“These are the keys to your life,” I told him. “If you go on to graduate highschool, go to college and follow your dream of becoming a doctor, that will be because of your choices. If you don’t, that will also be because of the choices you made. I have your back and will be proud of you either way”

And something shifted.

Not in a cinematic way. No tears. No speech. But his shoulders dropped. His breath changed. I could feel the energy move, not disappear, but move, from me back to him, where it belonged.

To be clear, he tried to hand those keys back more than once.

There were moments of hesitation. Moments of, Are you sure? And moments where I had to actively resist the urge to grab the keys and say, Okay fine, I’ll just drive for a bit.

But slowly, genuinely, he took the wheel.

Fast forward ten years.

Steven is twenty-five now. He’s in a doctorate program. Fully inhabiting a life that is unmistakably his. And somewhere along the way, I had to learn a different kind of support.

Because here’s the part no one really prepares you for: letting someone choose doesn’t mean stepping away completely. It means learning how to contribute without over-functioning, without controlling, and without disappearing yourself.

That realization didn’t arrive during a deep conversation or a coaching moment. It showed up last week very practically, standing in my kitchen, staring at my counter, asking myself a simple question. How can I support him in this season… and still include me?

He is busy. Studying. Managing life. On a budget. I wanted him to have ease with food without spending a ton of money or energy, and I also knew I didn’t have the time or desire to perfect recipes or make this another thing I needed to get right.

So I pulled out the slow cooker. One afternoon, I just cooked. I layered lasagna. Let Italian chicken penne simmer. Rolled sausage and cheese burritos. Added a spicy chorizo batch that filled the house with warmth, garlic, and that unmistakable smell of something being taken care of.

The kitchen felt alive. Steamy. Comfortable. Unrushed.

Steven walked in, present-day Steven, twenty-five years old, stopped short, and scanned the counter.

“Mom,” he said, “you don’t have to go to all this trouble.”

And I realized, in that moment, that this wasn’t trouble at all.

“It’s not trouble,” I told him. “It’s contribution.”

He exhaled, the kind that comes from somewhere deep. His eyes got glossy. And he hugged me, not like a teenager being polite, but like a grown man who felt supported without being managed.

That hug said everything...not because of the food, but because of what it represented.

Ease.

Allowance.

Support without control.

The slow cooker taught me something I hadn’t been able to think my way into.

We don’t need to target perfection to choose contribution. We don’t need to stir constantly. We don’t need to perfect the process for something nourishing to emerge.

Sometimes, the most generous thing we can do is choose what is ease… and allow it to unfold in its own time… very similar to setting the crock pot on low heat for 4 hours and walking away.