Dancing in the Dark

You ever get transported without warning to a completely different chapter of your life?

This morning, mid-run, a song came on and I was gone. Not just distracted. Fully there. Back in a season I hadn’t visited in a while.

“Dancing in the Dark” from the movie Home.

And suddenly I was back in my early motherhood stay-at-home days, far from family, isolated in a community that never accepted me for who I was. A place where I felt pressure sometimes sneakily, sometimes loud, to become something I wasn’t. A season where I was navigating not just motherhood, but personal identity. Where I was learning, painfully, that belonging isn’t something you can force by shrinking yourself.

Support was limited. Connection was conditional. I often felt watched, misunderstood, and alone.

One of the few constants in that season was this movie.

Odin and I watched Home more times than I can count. We loved it. The main character is named Oh—just the letter O—and we’ve always called Odin “O.” He thought that was hilarious. He loved the purple aliens, the chaos, the music. And like most kids, he was deeply committed to watching it again… and again… and again.

But beneath the silly, colorful surface was a story that mirrored my life more than I realized at the time: a single mom and her child, challenged by circumstance, navigating fear and uncertainty, doing whatever it takes for one another. Going to the ends of the earth for family.

That was me.

At the time, it didn’t feel brave or poetic. It felt very lonely. It felt like constantly being on guard. It felt like trying to hold onto myself while the world I was in nudged, sometimes shoved, me toward a version of womanhood that didn’t fit me. It felt like choosing my son again and again while quietly wondering if there would ever be space for me too.

But still, I kept going.

So when that song came on during my run this morning, it stopped me emotionally (my legs kept moving, thankfully). I wasn’t sad. I wasn’t aching.

I was admiring.

Admiring how far we’ve come.

How different life looks now. How we’ve grown and thrived and built something solid. How love has expanded. How community has formed, real community, the kind that doesn’t ask you to contort yourself to belong. How I no longer feel the need to explain or justify who I am. How survival has turned into stability, and stability into joy.

That version of me didn’t know what was ahead. She just knew she had to protect her child, stay true to herself, and keep moving forward even when it felt dark.

Music has a way of holding our memories gently, like a time capsule we can open when we’re ready. Today, it reminded me that even the hardest chapters can become the ones you look back on with pride not because they were easy, but because you stayed yourself inside them.

We danced in the dark back then. And somehow, it led us to all of this joy.

If you’ve never seen Home (or it’s been a while), put it on your list. It’s colorful, funny, unexpectedly tender, and full of heart. It’ll make you laugh, maybe cry a little, and remind you that family doesn’t have to be perfect to be powerful. Bonus points if you watch it with a kid curled up next to you—or just let your inner child enjoy it. It’s pure, cozy, feel-good magic. 💜👽✨