It’s that time of year: the kids go back to school. For some, its a period of rejoicing and rekindled marriage, and for others, it marks what they fear might be the end of their life’s usefulness. They wander listlessly from room to cavernous room, desperate for something to clean, something to yell at. Are you one of the latter? Loading up the minivan with dorm room essentials and weeping as your babies disappear into the sinful, corrupting world of higher education? Carin Rubenstein was, until she realizes that “most of us will learn not only to live with our children’s absence but to love it.”

Rubenstein continues on in her newest book Beyond the Mommy Years, “Our time with our children is borrowed, leased, rented out to us, and there comes a point at which we have to realize that it’s mostly over…Your child is a child for barely eighteen years; but your grown child is an adult for decades. So we have to prepare ourselves to be mothers of adult children for the rest of our lives.”

Sound cold and callous? Don’t discount Rubenstein’s book just yet. Read the excerpt posted on Today’s website and then think twice about paying for Timmy’s bus ticket home at Thanksgiving.