every time i hear “heroes” by david bowie, an electric spark moves through my body.
it tickles my skin, like the past brushing lightly against the present.
i’m back on my ninth-grade school bus, taking the back roads in rural northwest ohio.
my little sister and i were always the last ones on the route, and the driver—kind and unbothered—let us pick the station for the last twenty minutes.
i always asked for the oldies. i was waiting for stevie wonder, or the clash, or anything that felt like a secret door to somewhere else.
this was before music lived in my pocket and every song in the world could be called up in seconds.
back then, you waited.
you hoped.
and when the right song came on, you were ready to feel it! (or at least i was)…
the first time i heard “heroes,” the bus hummed past fields of soybeans and leaning barns, their wood silvered by weather and time. behind us, the last brick buildings of town blurred into distance, giving way to open sky and long stretches of quiet.
the landscape was familiar—goats grazing, cows nuzzling their young, roosters screeching, rows of corn that stretched for miles—but my mind was elsewhere. i was already dreaming of rivers i hadn’t seen, of mountains i didn’t know the names of, of bustling markets, of languages i wanted to learn. i imagined birds in colors too bright for this place, and oceans with the big bright moon rising over them.
i wanted more than what ohio could offer. and when bowie sang, we can be heroes, just for one day, i felt like he was handing me a key.
later, at twenty-two, living in a cold columbus apartment and working late nights at the bar, i picked that same song for karaoke. my coworkers—my found family back then—all sang along with me, not knowing the weight it held in my chest. those lyrics still warmed me: just for one day. they became a kind of quiet mantra.
you don’t need to change everything. just try it.
just for today, be a little more of the self you're reaching toward.
just for today, say the thing. take the step.
because the day itself isn't promised, but your choice inside it is.
nostalgia moves through music, but it lives in other places too.
every july, when the pawpaws begin to ripen, a different memory finds me.
i think of the first paw paw ever gifted to me—soft, fragrant, wild. i was living in rugby, tennessee then, in a cabin surrounded by woods. when i planted the tree behind my home, a gray kitten appeared out of nowhere and watched me from the edge of the trees.
she followed me home.
she soon became mine.
i named her michi, which means the path in japanese.
one august morning, thick with heat, i woke to the sound of shattering.
every jar of herbs, every potted plant—scattered across the floor like some wild offering.
and there she was: a small gray comet, chasing a baby rabbit in circles through the wreckage, eyes wide with pride.
i opened the door, still half-dreaming, and in a blur of fur and breath, they both disappeared into the morning—
as if the path had always been waiting for her to return.
i always felt like she could read my thoughts. when i packed for a long hike and left her with a sitter, she slipped back into the woods and was never seen again.
people said she missed me. that maybe she went looking.
but i don’t believe that.
i believe she was simply following her path—the one she was always destined to return to.
just like me.
some feelings take root deep in the body.
they don’t follow time and they don’t ask permission.
they settle quietly, shaping the way we move, the way we act, the way we hope.
years can pass before they rise—subtle at first, then suddenly, they surface.
nostalgia.
years later, you find yourself back in a room you thought you forgot the shape of.
a voice, a smell, a chord in a song, a strand of light across the floor pulls something loose in your mind.
the feelings and sensations that once surrounded a forgotten memory flood to greet you.
sometimes nostalgia arrives as sweetness—a sudden warmth, the glow of something soft that once held you.
sometimes it arrives as a wish, a what-if, a version of you who needed more than they got.
nostalgia is memory in motion and it holds the potential for medicine to heal.
can you hear the echo of an earlier version of yourself asking:
can you see me now?
can you love what i tried to do?
“There is nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns.”
—Octavia Butler
even if the stories feel familiar—old wounds, old dreams, old longings—we are not the same.
we are the new sun.
every time we return to a memory, we bring a new self to meet it.
this is how memory becomes medicine: by letting it be revisited under a new kind of light.
your past is not your prison.
if you feel despair or heavy hearted when confronted with nostalgia or an old memory- it does not mean you’ve failed—it means you’re alive and still becoming and yearning.
and you’re allowed to bring new vision to old stories.
but if looking back still stings—if the pain hasn’t softened and something in you tightens every time that memory returns—
you’re not broken. you’re being asked to pay attention.
sometimes that lingering hurt isn’t about the past at all.
it’s a signal that something in your present still needs shifting.
a boundary. a pattern. a way of being that no longer fits. a need isn’t being met.
and that’s okay.
the story isn’t over. you still have the power to change what comes next.
🌞 Affirmations 🌞
every day, i rise in a new light: i am the new sun that shines on my own becoming.
what once hurt me is now teaching me how to thrive.
healing doesn’t mean forgetting—it means seeing differently.
🌱Journal Prompts🌱
What parts of my past feel familiar but not aligned anymore? What’s changing in me that no longer fits the old story?
What am I ready to reimagine—not because it was wrong, but because I have new vision and understanding now?
What am I seeing more clearly now that I couldn’t see back then? How can I honor that growth?
memory becomes medicine when we meet it with presence,
when we let it open us rather than close us.
this is how we compost what once was.
this is how we grow something new from the shadows and pain.
so let the past remind you, not define you.
let it soften you, not shrink you.
you are not here to repeat—you are here to remember, reimagine, and begin again.
at least try it, just for one day…
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