For Your Reflection & A Playlist: Heard It in a Past Life
About the Series & Our Counselor Reflections: “Heard It in a Past Life”
At Camp Thirlby, we’ve spent much of 2020 reflecting on our pasts — in commemorating the new decade by keeping our pasts close to our heart, in our journeys with our bodies, in journaling our past and current obsessions with pop stars, and, most prominently, in our contributions for our “Heard It in a Past Life” series. While Maggie Rogers sang it best (and first), we also followed along the trajectories of our Camp Counselors’ experiences with their pasts and how they bring these moments into their present. This process is ongoing, whether through how we let go of our exes, understand our queerness in a plethora of ways, or navigate a trans identity inside transphobic fitness institutions. To carry on this mission of reconciling with our pasts to ensure a better future, our writers continue to share just how they hold their pasts close to their heart, whether through a certain song (featured in our collaborative playlist, featured at the bottom of this piece!), a past memory, or simply a way of being.
Natalie Geisel:
I’ve always considered myself to be nostalgic at heart — I constantly look back on my past with a strange combination of the heart-eyes emoji and the pleading face emoji (you know the one), even when that past is toxic. To ensure this yearning for my past doesn’t get out of hand, I always go to making playlists; I have one for when I’m crushing, when I’m reminiscing on a past fling, when I’m feeling all the things one feels during a last semester of undergrad, several for when I’m heartbroken. Some people view their journals as a memoir of their past emotions, but I use my Spotify account as a memoir instead. I look back on my past playlists and listening activity to understand how I was feeling in that moment in time, and I listen to specific ones, no matter how old, if I’m going down a similar path of feelings. Even when I know I’ve grown from those pasts, I know that this growing is never linear, and that diving back into these mixes isn’t a sign of devolution. Instead, it’s a method for me to remember those specific emotions that can only be shown through a certain array of songs that speak far more than words.
Elena Phethean:
Everyone seems to either cringe or smile and tear up at their past selves. After all, pain and nostalgia are fairly universally applicable to the past. For me, I find it important to compare myself now with my past selves — no, not to point out all the ways I'm fucked up that I didn't used to be, but to understand where I've come from and how I arrived to now. I need past iterations of my life to understand this iteration, but only without self-judgement. How can I measure progress without seeing growth over time? Despite this, I try not to yearn too hard for the past or who I used to be. Especially when thinking about growth, I can’t judge myself for choices I’ve made, regression I’ve experienced, or failures along the way. Everything from my professional career to my mental health can be scrutinized as a growing animal over time, but I try to see change for what it is, not what I judgmentally perceive it to be. I won’t ever be my past self again — and embracing that has allowed me to work on accepting my current self.
Emil Yvon:
Sometimes I would really rather not think about past selves, but since I prefer to feel like a real human person, they’re a necessary part of my self understanding. There’s a lot of work to be done — layers of cringe, shame, and embarrassment are hard to peel away. Tools like self-compassion and inner child work can seem unappealing and cringey themselves. I’m still very much figuring out how to be present on top of trying to assemble a self-compassionate narrative about who I’ve been and acknowledging all the hard work and sacrifice past me has done for present me. The irony of me being a (mostly) nonfiction cartoonist doesn’t escape me. Yet, I believe the tools of drawing, writing, and the magical tandem between the two that is comics hold an immensely sweet and rich potential for reconciliation and healing.
Victoria Middleton:
I think of myself like an ongoing art project; I am constantly changing and expanding, being molded into different shapes and painted in different styles, and it makes it easy to project how much of the original material remains. I find it incredibly grounding and rewarding to take a step back and really look at who I’ve become and what elements have remained, even if they’ve been crafted in ways I didn’t expect. I tend to be a future oriented person, always thinking of the ways I can improve and making plans for what is to come. When this gets overwhelming, I stop to reflect on the younger versions of me and remind myself of the ways in which I am making them proud. More than that, I think of the ways current me is proud of past me by looking back with empathy for myself that I didn’t have at the time. Sometimes, you have to be your own big sister.
Olafur Eliasson via Tate Modern
And finally, the playlist you’ve all been waiting for…
Songs to close out our Past Selves series, collected from our Camp Thirlby community
