You know when you're cruising down the road, minding your own business, and an old song comes on the radio — your absolute favorite song growing up — and for about three minutes, you're all but lost in your own world?
You remember blasting it with the windows down so you could feel it in your bones. No matter when you hear it now, somehow this song remembers exactly who you were back then and takes you right back, even if you've forgotten half of that version of yourself.
And for those three minutes... you feel like her again.
The way she laughed. The things she got excited about. How much less complicated life felt when her biggest decision was what to do on a Friday night.
Then an obnoxiously loud commercial interrupts your daydream and pulls you right back into reality.
You glance around at your actual life and think, Awww, I miss those days.
That is, until your brain turns a perfectly innocent moment of nostalgia into a full psychological analysis of your emotional state for absolutely no reason…
And you catch yourself thinking:
Wait. Do I want my old life back?
No. You absolutely do not. I mean, seriously?
There are entire seasons of life you can remember fondly and have zero interest in repeating.
Going back would cost too much. You would have to give up everything you know now, the people you love, the life you've built, the hard things you've lived through, and the ways all of it has changed you.
And yet there might be pieces of who you were back then that you still miss. That's a different thing entirely. You can be relieved a season is over and still miss something about who you were inside it.
Both of those feelings are allowed to be true at the same time.
The distinction matters, because when you say, "I miss who I used to be," it sounds like you want to go backward. Back to the old job. The younger body. The little-kid years. The life before marriage or motherhood or grief or responsibility or whatever happened between then and now.
But what if what you miss is the way she moved through her life?
Her curiosity. Her confidence. How easily she laughed. The fact that she had opinions about things other than what everybody else needed for dinner. She made plans simply because they sounded fun. She wore something because she liked it, without first wondering whether it was flattering, practical, age-appropriate or going to require a different bra. She had a hobby she was terrible at and did it anyway. She was brave in a way you can't seem to find in yourself these days.
That doesn't mean she had everything figured out. Good grief, you know she didn't.
There are things my younger self believed that current me would very much like five minutes alone with her to discuss.
She made mistakes. She worried about completely different things. And chances are, she longed for pieces of the life you're living right now.
Which makes the whole thing even stranger.
Sometimes the woman you miss was busy wishing she had what you have. And now you have it... and find yourself missing something she had.
Nostalgia can tell you something useful, as long as you give it a minute before deciding it means you want to recreate the past.
Memory has a funny way of packaging the person, the season and everything that happened inside it together.
Sometimes it edits toward the good, and you remember the freedom while forgetting the uncertainty. Other times it edits toward the hard, and you forget there was anything good there at all. Either way, one part of the story starts speaking for the whole thing.
Underneath all those details, what you're missing may be much more specific.
You don't necessarily want the old Friday nights back. You miss feeling excited about something.
You don't want to go back to the beginning of your career. You miss feeling that ambitious.
You don't want your kids to be toddlers again. You miss the version of you who was silly with them before life became one long logistics meeting.
You miss having something that belonged to you simply because you liked it. Being the one who suggested something ridiculous instead of the one making sure everybody packed sunscreen. Having strong opinions and actually saying them. Looking forward to something that had absolutely nothing to do with being productive, responsible or useful to anyone. And you miss how little time you used to spend wondering whether you were doing life correctly.
Part of why this gets so confusing is that saying I miss who I used to be out loud can sound ungrateful, or like regret. It can even feel a little disloyal to the woman you are now, as if appreciating something about who you used to be means she was better than who you are today.
It doesn't have to mean that.
The woman you are now has things your younger self didn't have yet.
Perspective. Discernment. History. People she loves. Scars she carries. Things she knows because life taught them the expensive way.
There may be more depth here now, more patience, better boundaries, a stronger faith, and a lot less interest in impressing people who never deserved that much power in the first place.
You've gained a lot, and you've changed a lot too.
That's easy to forget when an old version of yourself comes rushing back through a song or a picture or something you haven't thought about in years.
You remember her as a whole person, and the ache says, I miss her.
But when you look a little closer, you may realize it's a few specific parts of her you miss most…
Creativity doesn't belong to twenty-five-year-olds. Neither does playfulness, curiosity, ambition, friendship, adventure, or being terrible at something and doing it anyway because you enjoy it.
Those things may have been easier to see in you back then because your life looked different. But they never belonged exclusively to that season or that version of you.
They're still yours.
I think that's why an old song can hit so hard.
For a few minutes, something familiar comes back online.
You remember how it feels to be excited for no reason, or silly, or bold, or completely absorbed in something you love.
Then the song ends, you're back in the car, and there's this little ache because you realize how long it's been since you felt that particular part of yourself.
There's some grief in that. And it's worth resisting the urge to immediately turn it into a project. You don't need a five-step plan for becoming fun again by Friday.
For now, it's enough to notice the difference between I miss that life and I miss this part of myself. Those are two very different things.
Which brings me back to that song. The next time it comes on, the feeling might be closer to…
Ohhh. There you are.
You get to keep everything this version of you knows now… the perspective, the faith, the people, the lessons, all of it. And you can still admit there are pieces of yourself you miss.
So turn it up.
For three minutes, you get to remember a part of yourself you haven't felt in a while.
And for now, that's enough.
Want to keep going with this conversation?
🎧 Listen to Ep. 71: The Good Parts Get to Stay Too →
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