Leah Remini On Daughter's 'Bittersweet' Move to College: 'I Have Never Cried so Much in My Life'
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Leah Remini/Instagram
Leah Remini has a pretty good reason why she didn't attend good friend Jennifer Lopez's Georgia wedding to Ben Affleck — she was sending her daughter off to college!
The PEOPLE Puzzler host, 52, shared on Instagram over the weekend that moving daughter Sofia into school has been the "proudest moment of my life." Yet like all parents of college students, the joy was also tinged with sadness.
"I have never cried so much in my life," Remini wrote Saturday after she and husband Angelo Pagan helped settle Sofia into her new.
"I am only comforted by meeting other parents at Target who bonded with me over our mutual pain and pride," she added.
"It is the hardest thing I have ever done, and I'm still torturing myself with the idea that I might have pushed my daughter on the college track because I never got to go when I was her age," The King of Queens alum continued alongside an old picture of the mother-daughter pair posing for the camera.
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Remini then reminisced about how she and Pagan felt the same way when they sent Sofia to kindergarten.
"Angelo and I sat in the parking lot of our daughter's school, crying like babies, and discussed pulling her out and homeschooling her," she revealed. "It is not easy to let go; change is so hard."
In a separate post on Sunday, the star shared a carousel of photos of her wallpapering Sofia's new room and posing for photos with friends and family who helped her make the big move.
"My heart goes out to all the parents and caretakers who might be going through this bittersweet journey," Remini concluded her first post. "The good news is, Thanksgiving is in 83 days…"
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The star has been anticipating the huge milestone event for over a year. In February, she told PEOPLE that she was hoping to "treasure every moment" with her daughter leading up to the transition.
"People are always like, 'Oh my God, you should be so proud,'" Remini says. "Yes, Angelo and I are very proud, but it's like I'm having a job of 17 years that I've loved and cherished ripped away from me overnight. I'm devastated."
She continued, "I've always provided for my family members, and I've always been the boss, so now it feels like it's coming to a different chapter of my life where it's not going to be about getting Sofia to and from school anymore. I have to now find ways to get out of the house. It's scary, because I don't know what the next thing is for me."
