I need to talk about this Mercury retrograde because it has been doing the absolute most.
Not in the “my life is falling apart” way. In the “I want you to see how far you’ve come” way.
Who would I have been if I had been that free?
I didn’t know that was the question I was carrying into this week. But the universe had a whole curriculum planned.
I went to a birthday party for my friend Rosa. The theme was “dress like your childhood self.” Adorable. Lots of drinks, pizza, great conversation. A wonderful time.
But holding two photos of myself with a 30-year age gap put me in direct contact with Little Justin. The version of me that was 8 years old. And how much I’ve been working to reclaim his confidence, his charm, his relentless ambition — all these years later.
Then I spent the better part of two days in an elementary school library, giving the same presentation 25 times to small groups about the power of positive affirmations — reaching 300 kids total. Afterward, students designed their own joy flags and wrote on the back: I am Brave. I can keep going.
(We teach what we need to learn.)
The PTA hired me to inspire some children. I did not realize the universe had also signed me up for something.
Becoming a new version of yourself is not a straight line forward. It’s more like a spiral. The universe drops you into the same feeling, the same dynamic, the same pressure — and this time you get the opportunity to choose differently. To break the pattern.
That’s what’s been happening to me for the better part of three years.
So I’m in this library.
I’m watching a kid of color hold his ground while a white child tries to bully him into giving up his seat. I sat there pretending to read, quietly deciding if I should step in. I didn’t need to. This child did not move. Did not shrink. He stood there with more dignity than most adults I know.
I know what it feels like to fail that test. To make myself small so someone else is comfortable. To go with the flow when I know — I know — I don’t want to give up the seat I worked so hard to get.
Then, same library, different group: a kid colors their joy flag with the rainbow and trans flag colors. Quietly. Happily. They show it to me and say they want to represent their identity. Like it is the most obvious thing in the world that they get to exist exactly as they are.
I came out as gay in my late twenties.
At nearly 41, I had to collect myself as a tear threatened to fall. Because I’m sitting there thinking about who I would have been. If I had been that certain at that age. That free.
I don’t have an answer. But something in me that has been held very tightly for a very long time broke free. Watching them be themselves made it feel like the most obvious thing — and slightly ridiculous that the world strips it from us if we’re not careful.
We are living in the best of times and the worst of times, and I mean that with everything in me.
Real progress exists. I saw it with my own eyes in a school library. In children who haven’t learned yet that the world might want them to be smaller.
And yet. We are in the middle of a political climate that feels like it’s actively trying to unwrite that progress. A collective uncertainty that has defined this entire decade. Rapid technological change arriving faster than any of us can emotionally process — leaving us all slightly terrified of what comes next. The ground doesn’t feel stable because it isn’t.
But here’s what I keep coming back to:
Sometimes the healing isn’t something you do. Sometimes it’s something you witness. You let it touch the part of you that needed to see it.
And that’s enough.
That’s my week.
What are you being asked to revisit right now? And what would it look like to choose differently?