The suitcases were packed and waiting at the bottom of the stairs.

For Joanna Gaines, that familiar move-in-day sight came with hugs held a little longer and the knowledge that two of her children were heading back to college. In photos she shared Sunday, Aug. 16, the mom of five wrapped her arms around her kids before another goodbye.

There was pride in watching them go.

There was also the wish that time would slow down.

Gaines, 48, and her husband, Chip Gaines, share five children: Drake, 21, Ella, 19, Duke, 18, Emmie, 16, and Crew, 8. This fall, Drake is returning for his senior year of college while Ella is beginning her second year.

The Suitcases Made the Goodbye Real

College season is no longer new for Joanna.

She has already watched children leave home, packed rooms and faced move-in days. Still, this year’s photos captured the part that doesn’t seem to get easier: the moment when everything is packed and the leaving is no longer weeks away.

Her Aug. 16 post included photos of hugs with her children and luggage gathered at the foot of the stairs.

Joanna addressed other parents who were doing the same thing this fall, writing that she knew the feeling “all too well.” As first reported by PEOPLE, she described college sendoffs as carrying a wide range of emotions.

The feelings don’t arrive one at a time.

Pride can sit beside sadness. Excitement about who a child is becoming can come with the urge to hold that child close for another minute.

Joanna put that tension into a few words.

“Holding on a little tighter before letting go,” she wrote. “Feeling proud of who they’re becoming and wishing time would slow down.”

This year gives her two versions of that goodbye at once.

Drake is nearing the end of his college years, heading into his senior year at 21. Ella, 19, is only entering her second. At home, three younger Gaines children remain, including Crew, who is 8.

She Has Been Here Before

Last year, Joanna was already trying to put words to how quickly the years had moved.

While preparing for another college goodbye, she shared an image of a room filled with boxes and reflected on something other parents had warned her about when her children were younger.

“They told me it would go by quicker than I think,” she wrote at the time.

The prediction had proved hard to dismiss.

“The days are slow but the years are fast,” Joanna recalled being told. Looking at the packed room, she wrote that the time had “roared past us all.”

That goodbye carried another change. Her oldest daughter was preparing to spend her first year of college across the country, and Joanna described the season as “one big, breathless surrender.”

She was trying to make room for two instincts at once: keeping her children close and accepting that their lives were supposed to expand beyond home.

Her words then were framed as a question to herself.

“Lord, how do I hold them close while also letting go?” she wrote.

A year later, the same tension was there again, this time in the suitcases by the stairs.

‘Watching Your Kids Grow Beyond You’

In her new post, Joanna didn’t describe letting go as the opposite of loving her children closely.

She described it as part of the same job.

“Thinking of all the parents sending their kids off to college this season,” she wrote. “I’ve been on that side of move-in day, so I know the wide range of emotions well.”

Then came the part of the goodbye she has learned to value even when it hurts.

“As hard as that goodbye is, there’s nothing more fulfilling than watching your kid grow beyond you,” Joanna wrote.

For her, that growth had been part of what she was trying to accept the year before.

In that earlier post, she wrote that although she believed she and her children had been made for each other, she also believed they had been “made for more.” She named experiences, knowledge and growth that couldn’t all happen inside the family’s walls.

Now Drake is approaching graduation, while Ella has another college year ahead.

The packed bags are evidence of exactly what Joanna had been trying to make peace with: the children she spent years keeping close are building lives that take them farther from home.

That doesn’t make the hugs shorter.

Holding On and Letting Go

Joanna’s message wasn’t only about her own family.

She wrote it for parents standing in bedrooms filled with boxes, loading cars, making move-in trips and watching children walk toward a life that no longer fits entirely under the same roof.

Her own family gives her several stages of parenthood at once. Two children are in college. Three are still younger, with years between 18-year-old Duke and 8-year-old Crew.

There will be more leaving.

For now, though, the image is the one Joanna shared: hugs before departure and luggage waiting downstairs.

She told parents that the goodbye could hold joy, comfort and gratitude alongside the difficulty of letting go. Then she returned to the idea at the center of her post, the one she could see happening in her own children.

“There’s nothing more fulfilling than watching your kids grow beyond you,” she wrote. “I’m feeling it with you.”