REMEMBER WHEN
Memory is not nostalgia. It is access.
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It’s the moments that are scripted into our stories without our deliberation that seem supernatural. Maybe even ordained.
I am driving in my little white jeep named “Blanche” to stretch class and a song overtakes me, transporting me from the corner of 15th and Prairie to the middle of a high school football field—
Bright lights, short skirts and long legs…instantly something begs me to pay attention to this quickening deep in my cells.
This is not about longing or regret or even loss of those carefree years.
What I yearn for, perhaps even obsess over,
Healing,
has visited me,
not as an unexpected passenger but as a part of myself I’ve missed.
This deep joy commandering my morning isn’t an outsider but a familiar and soothing best friend. “Come close,” I beg. I have a feeling there’s something I need to tell myself.
Memory. As Medicine.
A holy reminder that this joy, vitality, even freedom, is accessible not without, but within.
My body’s own archive—of lightness and laughter—is a prescription for healing that is mine simply by leaning in, allowing it.
Remembering is a way of embodying wholeness when parts of me feel missing and broken.
The body doesn’t only record what scattered our pieces—
it also remembers what makes us whole.
I tap my fingers on the steering wheel and turn up the volume with full intention to drench my senses with this knowing, like a familiar IV to my veins.
This teenage girl once singing way too loudly “and he shall be Levon…” is the woman who is startled by the tears as she listens to the same refrain.
“Remember joy,” my body whispers. Healing and joy share the same name. Science names trauma as imprinted, etched into the nervous system like tiny interior tattoos.
But if the body is capable of holding wounds,
it is capable of holding wonder too.
Every laugh that once doubled me over, every field where my body believed it could fly, every song that loosened anxiety—
their outpouring, still mine.
The body remembers what is familiar.
I have practiced sorrow, memorized loss, carried ache like a second skin through my life.
But today, remembered joy is my medicine.
If you’ve carried sorrow for a long time or even a little while, maybe this is your invitation to remember joy. To let your body lead you back to healing through what it already knows.
The body doesn’t only keep the score of what broke us. It also enshrines what makes us whole.
NOTES — Joy Prescription
Memory as access: To call back a song, a smell, a moment of laughter is not nostalgia but a form of medicine. The body stores not only injury but joy, vitality, and lightness.
The science of remembering: Neural pathways strengthen with rehearsal — what we revisit, we reinforce. Trauma embeds itself, yes, but so does wonder. Calling joy to mind strengthens its imprint, quickening healing.
How to access memory as medicine:
Shift attention: deliberately recall times of delight — music, friendship, play.
Use the senses: revisit smells, tastes, sounds that once carried joy.
Let the body move: dance, stretch, walk where memory first rooted.
Anchor in words: write down “remember whens” that restore laughter and ease.
Pray with memory: thank God not only for deliverance from pain but for His gift of joy seeded in you long before the hurt.
Scripture echoes:
“The joy of the Lord is your strength.” (Nehemiah 8:10)
“Forget not all His benefits.” (Psalm 103:2)
“I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago.” (Psalm 77:11)
Image: I am sixteen and Elton John’s “Levon” is one of ‘the favorites’. Two things I remember not with my head but heart—1. my creative writing class and 2. dancing in unison with the cheerleading squad. I do not remember with longing nor with any sort of wishing or regret. I simply allow the moment to wash over, bathing me in the healing molecules of pure joy. P.S. Look at those pom poms…it doesn’t get any better than that!
