Just like many times over the last few years, I spent this weekend driving back-and-forth to Ohio to meet my parents and handoff my daughter for her spring break trip in Pittsburgh. The first part of the roundtrip was with my favorite sidekick and her self-created Spotify playlist, Slay! Spring Break Road Trip 2024, which is unsurprisingly full of songs by Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, and the ever-so-random ones passed amongst her crew of Second Grade friends.
There were so many moments where I found myself pausing from our sing-along to embrace the sound of her sweet Taylor Swift- loving voice, still also trying to process how she knows so many words, to so many songs.
Karma is a breeze in my hair on the weekend...
You were driving, the getaway car...
He's got a one-hand feel on the steering wheel, the other on my heart...
The Taylor songs went on for hours, as did our car ride. As the miles passed through Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, I found myself reflecting back on our eras together in the car. I can't tell you how many times I've smiled while catching glances in the rearview mirror of my daughter singing and dancing along.
She is a self-proclaimed Swiftie, but God, she's so much more than she may ever know.
We spent the night with my parents in a hotel in Toledo, about halfway between Chicago and my hometown of Pittsburgh, and then after a long hug goodbye, I was alone in the car for the four-hour return trip home.
The soundtrack of my solo car ride changed drastically, as it was less poppy and cheery, and instead Spotify seemed to know just what I needed to hear.
Folk. Country. Americana.
Songs about living, learning, loving, hurting, dreaming, hoping, and trying so hard to figure it all out.
Driving through Ohio, I found myself ever-so nostalgic of the hours-long car rides between Hampton and Athens, always overexcited to return to my beloved college town, yet filled with gloom on the drives back for trimester breaks, to the house I grew up in.
Ohio was my new home, and my OU friends quickly became my forever family. So many of them, still close friends, even through two decades and way too many miles apart. I long for our walks around campus and nights out on Court Street, but am grateful that our "just thinking of you" texts, pre-scheduled calls, and never-long-enough visits seem to show that nothing has changed- even when everything actually has.
At times I sang along to the lyrics of the songs, feeling free and hopeful. During others, tears unexpectedly filled my eyes, thinking just how much I've been through and how life has changed me.
While I've come to find immeasurable gratitude for the growth that these challenges have caused to surface, I also know how the deepness of pain can cause endless doubts and create the fear that you'll never be happy again.
I have been there, for a lot of my life. I know all too well, what it feels like to have the endless wish for peace in my mind and in my heart.
And on Sunday afternoon, as I traveled back through Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, I thought about it all so much. With each song, I was taken back to so many moments of my life that challenged my past and created my present.
But then, when the sun shined brightly down on me, I also focused on the beauty that could come in the future.
And that's something that I'm ready for now. Whatever it may look like, wherever it may take me. I know I'm ready, and I know I deserve it.
I've seen hard times, bad luck, all that in-between; Sweetest of the sunflowers, yeah, you're the sun to me...
And when you see what I've become, will you love me for who I am, not who I was...
I hope you're feeling happier than you've ever been; and hope I never leave me again...