how unfinished dreams lead us to remember who we are

[ a musing after watching "the life list" on netflix ]

last night, i watched the life list on netflix: a soft and steady movie that surprised me—not with its plot, but with how gently it stirred something inside me. and of course, i ended up in tears.

the kind of tears that don’t crash, but quietly spill. the kind that come from a place of remembering.

the story begins when her mother passes, and as a parting gift—or perhaps a final act of love—she leaves behind a series of cd’s for her daughter. each one, a breadcrumb. a gentle nudge. an incentive to complete the bucket list she wrote as a teenager. a list buried in time, scribbled long ago in the crooked, hopeful handwriting of a girl who still believed in the vastness of life. and so begins a reluctant, sometimes clumsy, often tender journey back to herself. a remembering. a resurrection. a chance to revisit the version of herself she didn’t realize she had abandoned.

what strummed the strings of my heart the most wasn’t the romance. it wasn’t the neatly tucked-away family secrets. it was the quiet ache of forgotten dreams. the way the film wrapped its arms around that universal experience of growing up and growing out of ourselves.

because i, too, have left dreams behind.
to survive.
to meet deadlines.
to keep it together.

the version of myself i left behind when life got too loud—when responsibility outweighed wonder, when safety became more urgent than curiosity and creativity.

what did i once promise myself? what dreams did my younger self whisper into the night that i never gave myself permission to hear? what have i quietly abandoned—not because i stopped caring, but because i was tired, or scared, or simply forgot?

these are the questions that the life list asked me.
and they landed somewhere deep.

returning to the girl who dreamed

we all have a list, even if it was never written down. maybe yours lived in your journal. or in a shoebox under your bed. or maybe it wasn’t physical at all—just a pulse in your soul, a flicker of imagination, or simply inspiration about who you might become. but somewhere along the way, life asked (or demanded) us to trade wonder for realism. curiosity for control. and slowly, piece by piece, we tucked those parts of ourselves away.

but here’s the truth i’m beginning to remember: the person who made the list still lives inside you. and your inner child not asking you to become young again. he or she is just wondering if you remember. if you still believe in him or her enough to listen.

there’s something about loss that reawakens us. in the life list, her mother’s death was the beginning of her resurrection, though she didn’t know it at first. that feels true in life, too. grief. loss. heartbreak. they strip things bare. they return us to the core of who we are. they remind us that we are not here forever—and maybe that’s the most sacred truth of all. we won’t complete every item on every list. some dreams will shift. some will dissolve with time. but maybe the point isn’t completion. maybe the point is reconnection.

to joy.
to risk.
to doing something wildly unnecessary just because it makes you feel alive again.

a gentle invitation

today, i’m thinking about writing my list. not because i need another goal. not because i want to chase productivity dressed up as passion. but because i want to see the desires of my heart on paper—and be courageous enough to show up for them again. i want to remember what once lit me up.

maybe you do too. maybe there’s something small—a solo trip, an open mic night, a love letter you never sent, a poem you’ve been too shy to write, a move you need to make, a relationship you need to mend—that’s calling you back. and maybe you don’t have to do it all at once. maybe you just need to take one small, sacred step toward yourself. because the life list isn’t really about the list.

it’s about the living.
the remembering.
the returning.

and most of all, it’s about allowing your dreams to find you again—right where you are.