Undoing Toxic: Do You Remember the Time?
Happy Sunday and thank you for reading today’s blog. May is Mental Health Awareness Month: a time to be more honest about what we’re carrying, what we’ve normalized, and how it’s actually impacting us. Each year, about 1 in 5 adults in the U.S. experiences a mental health condition, and many people wait months or even years before seeking support. A lot of that delay comes from minimizing, telling yourself it’s “not that bad,” that you’ll figure it out on your own, or that you just need to push through. But you don’t have to keep doing that. You don’t have to suffer in silence, and you don’t have to navigate patterns, anxiety, or relationship stress alone. Therapy can be a starting point, not because something is wrong with you, but because you deserve space to process, understand, and actually heal. If you’ve been thinking about getting support, let this be your nudge to take that step. And as always, I include crisis and safety resources at the end of every blog. If you or someone you know are in immediate distress or need urgent support for medical and psychiatric reasons, call 911, go to your nearest emergency room. Other resources you can call or text: 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline), text HOME to 741741 (Crisis Text Line).
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May always feels like a threshold to me. Not loud or abrupt, but just a quiet shift that you can feel if you are paying attention. The air softens, the days stretch a little longer, and suddenly everything around you is blooming again without asking for permission. And every year, without fail, it does something internal too.
It brings things back. Memories. Feelings. Old versions of yourself you haven’t thought about in a while.
It is also graduation season, which already carries this energy of closing chapters and stepping into something new. But, it is also deeper than that. It’s reflection. It’s “look how far I’ve come,” mixed with “wow, I remember when…” And layered into all of that is Mother's Day; a day that can feel warm and loving for some, and heavy, complicated, or even distant for others. The month of May doesnt let us stay at the surface level. It invites you to feel, to remember, and if you’re ready, to do something different with the thoughts and feelings that arrive.
This is really what Undoing Toxic is about. Not just calling things toxic and moving on, but actually sitting with your patterns, your history, your emotional muscle memory, and asking yourself how it’s still showing up in your life today. This month, I am leaning into that more intentionally: through blogs, reflections, and conversations that are honest about relationships, about family, and about the work it takes to unlearn what you thought was normal. Because a lot of what we are trying to “fix” in the present actually makes sense when you look at where it started.
And for me, this whole reflection started with music.
Last week, I was getting ready to go to the movies and I was listening to “Remember the Time” by Michael Jackson, and it didn’t just remind me of a person; it reminded me of former versions of myself. The feeling of being in something, the hopefulness, the way you fill in the gaps when something is not quite right but you want it to be. If you know, you know. Music has a way of doing that. It does not just bring you back to moments, it brings you back to you in those moments. Listen to the same song over time and you will understand. And if you are honest, it can show you things you didn’t fully see at the time: patterns, emotional habits, the way you loved, the way you stayed, the way you explained things away.
Music has always been that for me though. Before I had a lot of language for emotions and knew how to describe it, I had music. I remember learning how to read it. “Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge.” I learned how to understand notes, hand placement, coordination, tempo, and structure. There was something about it that just made sense. You couldn’t rush it. You couldn’t skip steps and expect it to still sound right. Then actually playing it added another layer; feeling it, interpreting it, making the piece your own. And looking back, it shaped how I understand relationships more than I probably realized at the time. Because relationships have rhythm, too. There’s timing, there’s consistency, there’s a flow. And when something is off, you feel it. You might not have the words for it yet, but your body knows. Your emotions know. The disconnect is there, even if you’re trying to harmonize something and someone that is not meeting you. Maybe the connection to each other is not what you need, anymore.
This is why music is such a powerful part of healing. Across cultures, across languages, across completely different lived experiences, music is one of the few things that connects us all in the same emotional space. We celebrate with it, we grieve with it, we fall in love to it, we let go through it. Sometimes a song will say exactly what you’ve been avoiding. Sometimes it will hold the emotion you haven’t been able to release yet. Music, songs, and the words create a bridge—between your past and your present, between who you were and who you are becoming. And when you’re doing the work of undoing toxic patterns, that bridge matters. Because you cannot change what you won’t acknowledge, and sometimes music helps you acknowledge it without forcing it.
That is where the real reflection comes in. When you think back: on relationships, on family dynamics, on the way you learned to love, what are you actually remembering? Are you remembering consistency, or are you remembering moments that you held onto because they felt good enough? Are you remembering feeling chosen, or are you remembering the anxiety of not knowing where you stood? Are you remembering growth, or are you remembering how much you had to shrink to keep something going? Because part of undoing toxic is being honest about that. Not to shame yourself, but to understand yourself. To see clearly what you were working with at the time, and what you’re no longer willing to accept moving forward.
And with Mother’s Day approaching, that reflection can hit even deeper. Because mother-daughter dynamics, family relationships, the way we were nurtured and supported, or not, those things do not just stay in childhood. They show up in how we attach, how we communicate, how we tolerate, how we love. For some people, Mother’s Day is simple; it’s appreciation, closeness, connection. But for a lot of people, it’s layered. It’s love mixed with hurt. It’s distance mixed with obligation. It’s grief, whether that person is physically here or not. Undoing toxic in this space means allowing those truths to exist at the same time. It means not forcing yourself into a narrative that doesn’t fit your reality. And it means deciding, intentionally, what you carry forward from those relationships and what no longer works for you.
I keep coming back to this for May: life will bring you back to familiar places, but not to keep you the same. It’s more like an invitation to notice what once pulled you in, and decide if it still gets access to you now. The feeling might be similar. The words might even sound the same. But something in you has shifted. What used to confuse you is clearer. What you once explained away, you now name. And instead of moving on instinct, you give yourself a moment. You pause. You check in. You choose. That’s the difference. That’s growth. That’s the work actually landing.
So yes, remember the time. Let the music take you there if it does. Let yourself feel it; fully, honestly, without rushing past it. But don’t stay there. Let the memory show you something. Who were you in that moment? What were you hoping for? What were you needing that you might not have been receiving? And more importantly, who are you now, with that awareness?
Because May isn’t just about what’s blooming around you. It’s about what you’re finally ready to tend to within yourself—what you’re willing to nurture, and what you’re no longer willing to carry just because it once felt familiar.
Thank you for reading.
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