What It Really Feels Like to Leave Home at 12 – An honest conversation with my daughter Annabel.

By Amanda Ferrari

Over the years I’ve interviewed hundreds of parents, educators, boarding staff and former boarders. I’ve spent countless hours talking about homesickness, transition, resilience and what it means to send your child away from home.

But today I’m sitting down with someone whose story I’ve never really explored.

My daughter, Annabel.

Now, that sounds a bit ridiculous when you say it out loud. After all, Annabel is twenty-nine years old. She’s a paediatric occupational therapist, she runs her own business, she’s about to get married, and we’ve shared a lifetime of conversations.

And yet, as I prepared for this interview, I realised there are some conversations we’ve never actually had.

We’ve never really talked about what boarding school felt like from her side.

We’ve never talked about the uncertainty leading up to it.

We’ve never talked about the fact that my mother was dying in the year before she left home.

We’ve never talked about my last-minute decision to change schools.

We’ve never talked about what she was feeling while I was so busy managing my own grief, my own fears and my own determination to somehow get everybody through.

As parents, we often carry a version of these stories.

We remember the drop-off.

The tears.

The phone calls.

The holidays.

The milestones.

But what I’ve learned over the years is that our children often carry a completely different version of the same story.

So today, we’re going back.

Back to twelve-year-old Annabel.

A shy little country girl from Trangie who was excited to go to boarding school, terrified to leave home, and about to face one of the biggest transitions of her life.

And if you’re a parent preparing to send a child away, if you’re in the thick of it right now, or if you’re like me and occasionally find yourself looking back wondering whether you got it right, I think you’ll find something in this conversation.

Because what unfolds over the next hour isn’t just Annabel’s story.

It’s the story of what happens when a mother and daughter sit down eighteen years later and compare memories.

And some of what we discovered surprised both of us.

This is Part One of my conversation with my daughter, Annabel.

Listen on Apple