He needs this very fear of life from you in order to begin: these very days of your transition are perhaps the time when everything in you is working at him, as you have already once, in childhoood, breathlessly worked at him. Be patient and without resentment and think that the least we can do is to make his becoming not more difficult for him than the earth makes it for the spring when it wants to come.
And be glad and confident.

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a young poet, translated by M.D. Herter Norton