There are certain pieces of art that never really leave us.
Have you ever stopped to think about them? The words, the literature, the quotes, the movies, the music—the things you’ve loved across the years. Each season of life brings new favorites, new obsessions, new discoveries. And yet, the old ones don’t disappear. They settle somewhere deeper, tucked just beneath your chest, waiting.
It’s why a song can undo you in seconds.
Why you return to a show that no longer airs, as if it still knows you.
Why you reread a book you’ve already memorized and still find something new.
Even now, I can name a handful of those pieces for myself—the ones that built something in me I can’t fully explain.
There are musicians I return to again and again, like Chris Rice, whose songs “Big Enough” and “Smell the Color 9” held space for my questions about faith long before I had the language to articulate them. They didn’t give me answers so much as they gave me permission—to wrestle, to wonder, to believe and doubt in the same breath.
There are films like Cinderella that tether me to childhood in ways I can’t quite escape. Not just for the story itself, but for the feeling of watching it—who I was, what I believed, how the world felt back then.
And then there were stories that shaped something more forward-facing—something aspirational. Beauty and the Beast and Ever After didn’t just build a longing for love and adventure—they reshaped what that longing meant. They whispered that love wasn’t about rescue, but about recognition. That freedom and partnership could coexist. That a woman could choose her life, not just be carried into it.
As a child, I found myself drawn to worlds that didn’t quite make sense to others. The stories of Gary Paulsen opened something wild and enduring in me—a desire for survival, for resilience, for growth born from hardship. He gave me a version of strength that wasn’t polished or pretty, but real.
Music, too, stitched itself into my memory in ways that feel almost inherited. I can still picture the record spinning as my father replayed “December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night)” by The Four Seasons—a song older than either of our current generation of music that I’d borrowed from a family friend. Or the playful, almost cheeky wisdom of If You Wanna Be Happy, introduced to me through my grandfather’s love of 50s and 60s music—less about its literal message, more about the way humor and culture intertwine across generations.
And then there is art that expanded my sense of the world itself. The iconic images of Mount Fuji by Hokusai, the quiet precision, the reverence in every line—paired with the elegance of geisha culture—planted an early and lasting love for Japan. Not just as a place, but as a feeling. A rhythm. A way of honoring beauty, discipline, and soul.
When I look at it all together, I begin to understand something:
Who I am was not built in isolation.
It was shaped—gently, persistently—by everything I’ve taken in.
Every lyric that held me.
Every story that stretched me.
Every image that taught me how to see.
And maybe that’s the invitation—
to pay attention.
To notice what you return to.
To ask why it stayed.
To honor the quiet ways it’s still shaping you.
Because the art we love doesn’t just reflect us.
It raises us.
Well-Stirred & Wondering 
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