Back to School: A Guest Post by Shannon Yerxa
I still have every single one of them. Same spot by the front door, same slightly-too-big backpack, the same squint into the morning sun because I never once thought to move them out of it. Fifteen years of first-day photos in a folder I don't open often.
Then came the September I picked up my phone out of pure habit, turned toward the door, and there was nobody standing there.
The backpack industry has a great many opinions about September. Nobody has a single one about the year you stop needing a backpack.
Back to school gets photographed a lot and processed a little. The first-day picture, the new supplies, the countdown on the fridge — all of it captures the logistics. None of it touches what's happening underneath: a transition, for the kid and for the parent standing behind the camera, that looks completely different depending on which stage you're standing in.
This is a guide to the underneath part. What each stage actually feels like — for the student, and for the person watching them go — and what to do with the feelings that don't fit neatly into a first-day photo.
I've stood at all of them now, including the last one.
Three Stones for Three Different Septembers
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Moonstone |
Rose Quartz |
Citrine |
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Jump to: Elementary · Junior High · Senior High · When There's No Back to School · Crystal Pairings · FAQ
Elementary: The Big Feelings Are Allowed to Be Big
For the student
For most elementary kids, back to school is a genuine mix — real excitement about new supplies and seeing friends, sitting directly beside real nerves about a new teacher, a new room, a new routine. Younger kids don't have the vocabulary yet to separate excited from scared, so it tends to arrive as both at once. Or as clinginess. Or as a full meltdown at 8pm the night before over something that appears to have nothing to do with anything.
It usually has to do with something.
For the parent
This is the stage where the adult's emotions are often doing more work than the child's. There's the practical worry — will she be okay, will she make a friend, will she eat any part of that lunch — and underneath it, something bigger: the low hum of watching a baby turn into a kid in real time.
Kindergarten in particular ambushes people. It's never really about the classroom. It's about time passing, in a building, on a schedule, without your permission.
And if you're the grandmother in this scene rather than the mother — standing slightly back, holding the water bottle, watching your own child do the thing you did — that's its own layer entirely. Nobody photographs that one.
None of it needs fixing. The nerves, theirs and yours, are just what a beginning feels like from the inside.
Junior High: Where the Ground Shifts
For the student
Junior high is where school stops being mostly about the classroom and starts being about identity. Who am I, who are my people, where do I fit — questions that carried almost no weight in elementary suddenly carry all of it. Add the physical and emotional churn of puberty and back to school stops feeling like a fresh start. It feels like walking into a room where the rules changed and nobody circulated the memo.
Confidence takes a real hit at this age. Not because anything is wrong with the kid, but because this is the stage where comparison becomes constant and self-consciousness becomes the factory setting.
For the parent
This is where parents feel most locked out. Your junior high kid may be telling you noticeably less than she used to — not because something is wrong, but because part of this stage is pulling inward and working things out privately before letting anyone see the draft.
That is hard to sit with. The urge to ask more questions, gather more information, or quietly project-manage the social landscape from the sidelines is strong, and mostly needs to be resisted.
What helps more than information is availability. Being around. Low pressure. Not needing every conversation to be a check-in.
If the nerves have tipped over into something heavier, the anxiety guide covers what actually helps and what's just marketing.
Senior High: Pride, Pressure, and the Beginning of Goodbye
For the student
Senior high carries a different weight, especially in the back half. The pressure is real now — grades that count differently, decisions about what comes next, a future that used to be safely abstract and abruptly isn't. Sitting right beside that pressure is something genuinely thrilling: more independence, more autonomy, the first real taste of choosing a direction herself.
Both are true simultaneously. Excited and overwhelmed, confident and unsure — that combination is more or less the entire emotional weather system of senior high.
For the parent
This is where a parent's own grief tends to show up, usually without knocking. Every last first day carries an undertone the earlier ones didn't. Last first day of grade ten. Last first day before the applications start. Last first day, full stop.
Pride and loss sit right next to each other here, and neither one cancels the other. It's a strange assignment — staying steady and encouraging on the outside while quietly processing something that feels a great deal like grief for a thing that hasn't happened yet.
That's not dramatic. That's just accurate.
When There's No Back to School
There's a version of this season nobody talks about: the parent whose last child has graduated, moved out, or moved on. Who wakes up in September to no first-day photo to take at all.
If that's you this year — the absence of a routine you performed for fifteen or twenty years straight is its own kind of loss. Even when you are genuinely, enormously proud of where they landed. Especially then, sometimes.
Nobody sends a card for this one. There's no photo to post, no lunch to pack, no countdown on the fridge. Just a September that used to be loud.
You spent years organizing your life around a rhythm that has just ended. Adjusting to its absence takes time, the same way any real ending does.
That grief is allowed to be real alongside the pride. Alongside the relief, which is also allowed. Alongside genuine excitement about what's next for you, which is the part people rush you toward before you're ready.
It doesn't need a reason that makes sense to anyone else.
My friend Shannon writes about the nearby territory — what it's like to come back to yourself once the years of being needed in one very specific way start changing shape. Her piece is here, and it's more honest than most things written about this stage.
Crystal Pairings for the Season
Before the stones, the thing I say to everyone: these are reminders, not fixes. A bracelet doesn't settle a nervous nine-year-old or fill a quiet September. It sits where you can see it and reminds you what you decided to be steady about. That's a smaller job than people advertise, and a more useful one.
For Parents — Moonstone
Moonstone is the stone for this whole season, at every stage. Long associated with cycles, transitions, and the ordinary rhythm of endings making room for beginnings. Whether you're at a kindergarten door for the first time or an empty kitchen on a morning that used to be chaos, it carries the same message: this chapter closing doesn't erase the ones before it, and it doesn't cancel whatever's next.
The Faceted Rainbow Moonstone Bracelet is $39 CAD and the one I reach for most. If this is the September with no first day in it, The New Chapter set ($127 CAD) was built for exactly this — moonstone and snake, endings and shed skin. I didn't name it for back to school. It turns out that's what it's for.
For Junior High Students — Rose Quartz & Black Tourmaline
Rose quartz supports the self-compassion junior high spends nine months wearing down — a counterweight to a stage built entirely on comparison. Black tourmaline pairs alongside it as the grounding one, useful for a kid navigating shifting friendships and a building that feels far less predictable than last year's.
A bracelet is the right format here. Low-key, no explanation required, doesn't have to become A Whole Conversation at the breakfast table. The Rose Quartz Heart Chakra Bracelet and the Black Tourmaline Root Chakra Bracelet are $28 and $35 CAD, and they stack.
For Senior High Students — Citrine & Amazonite
Citrine carries confidence and personal power — useful for someone stepping into higher stakes than she's faced before. Amazonite is the clarity and honest-communication one, which matters in a year full of real conversations about the future.
The Amazonite Stud Earrings are $28 CAD and read as jewelry, not as a message from your mother. The Faceted Citrine Bracelet ($54 CAD) is the same idea in a bracelet.
Both are the kind of thing a seventeen-year-old will wear daily without ever mentioning it, which is the highest compliment available at that age.
✨ Not sure which stone fits your student — or yourself — this season? Take the free Gemstone Quiz →
New to working with stones at all? Start here. And if you're buying for a birthday inside the school year, the birthstone guide covers all twelve.
✨ Want the stone guides? Which stone for which chapter, how to wear it, and what it's genuinely for — sent when there's something worth sending. No spam, just occasional magic. Get the stone guides here
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is back to school so emotional for parents?
It marks time passing in a way that's difficult to look away from — a visible measure of how much a child has changed since the last first day. With younger kids it tends to surface separation anxiety on both sides. With older ones it edges closer to grief for something that hasn't happened yet, as parents feel the early stages of a much longer goodbye. Both are common. Neither means anything is wrong.
What crystal is good for back-to-school anxiety?
Black tourmaline is the usual choice for nerves tied to a new or unpredictable environment, since it's associated with grounding and protection. Rose quartz is the gentler option, focused on self-compassion — better for a student who is hard on herself. For a parent managing her own September, moonstone holds the transition without rushing you through it. The full anxiety guide is here.
What's a good jewelry gift for a junior high or senior high student?
Something simple in a stone that matches what she's navigating tends to land better than anything overtly symbolic. Rose quartz or black tourmaline for a junior high student dealing with social pressure; citrine or amazonite for a senior high student facing bigger decisions. Keep it wearable — the piece she puts on without thinking is the one that does the work. The Gemstone Quiz narrows it in about a minute.
Is it normal to feel sad when your last child graduates and there's no more back to school?
Yes, and it's far more common than the amount it gets discussed would suggest. Losing a decades-long rhythm — even one built out of drop-off lines and school supply lists — is a genuine transition, not a small one. Pride in your child and grief for the ending of that chapter can occupy the same September without contradicting each other.
What should I give a grandchild starting a new school year?
The same principle applies, with one adjustment: keep it something she chooses to wear rather than something she's expected to. A bracelet she can put on quietly beats a pendant she has to explain. If you want her to pick, the Gemstone Quiz makes that the fun part rather than the obligation.
Every stage of this season asks something different of the people living through it. None of it needs to be rushed, corrected, or explained away — least of all to yourself.
And if you're the one standing at the door this year with nobody to photograph: the folder is still there. So are you.
