The Emotional Hangover Is Real

It’s been a week since my son Nick married his true love, and I’m still catching myself crying over things that have nothing to do with the wedding: an irritating driver, a task that’s harder than it needs to be, a random memory that surfaces while I’m folding laundry. I know it’s not really about the traffic or the task. It’s about the layers of feeling still working their way out of me, a week after the wedding.

The emotional hangover after the wedding is real.

The day itself was incredible: a beautiful couple, well matched, married in perfect weather at a venue that suited them completely. So much hope for what’s ahead. I wouldn’t change a single thing about it, and I’m still tired in a way that feels like getting run over by a truck, emotionally fragile in the best possible way.

I fought hard against the ugly cry that day, and I’ve gotten good at it. The water went out at our Airbnb that morning, and I went straight into emergency management mode—how to get the groom a shower, what the rest of us would do instead. I rapidly filtered through options and timelines without getting emotional. I just handled it (and thankfully, the plumber arrived in time to fix it before we really needed water.)

What I’d been bracing for was the walk down the aisle with my son, Nick. I was sure I’d lose it but mostly stayed composed, wrestling back a sob that kept threatening to surface. Then, at the reception, I thought my dad’s toast would get me. The emotion welled, and a tear started to break through. He has been the best grandpa and pseudo-father to Nick, and the two of them have always been close. So this moment was really sweet.

But it was the mother-son dance that finally got me. We chose “You’ll Be in My Heart,” the Phil Collins song he used to sing along to from the Tarzan soundtrack when he was little. I kept trying to hold it together so I wouldn’t wreck his suit or end up with mascara all over my face. In the photos, I can see exactly the moment before it happened and Nick’s hug during it.

It’s interesting because on the drive up to the wedding weekend, my husband and I listened to a podcast about how the highs only feel as high as the lows were low. I kept thinking about everything it took to get our family to that day, the genuinely hard decade we went through before we all landed there together: my son, my husband, my stepson, my ex-husband, his partner, and my parents. All of us there together, watching the man our son has become with nothing but pride. A modern family, built over some years, showing up fully for him.

I know I’ll be excavating so many layers over the next weeks and months. But today, the part I keep coming back to is how well the wedding weekend went, given everything it took to get us there.

And I know how to manage my face most of the time. I’ve had a lot of practice holding a situation together, catching myself before I fall apart in front of people. What I’m learning now is that the composure doesn’t erase the feeling. It just delays the output.

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This originally appeared (with images) on Substack.