The 90s

I’m not entirely sure how this piece will unfold, but I wanted to talk about it because the feeling of it is everywhere right now. It’s in the music people are playing again, in the clothes coming back around, in the conversations I keep hearing between friends who suddenly find themselves remembering things they hadn’t thought about in years.

Lately I’ve been watching Love Story, along with what feels like the rest of the world, and it’s doing something to us. Something subtle but powerful. It’s stirring something up collectively, like a shared memory we didn’t realize was still sitting quietly inside of us. Watching it feels like being pulled backwards into another time, and the strange thing is how comforting that feeling is.

For me, it feels like coming home.

Home to a place that existed long ago but still feels close enough to touch if I close my eyes. A time that was safe and fun and new all at once, when the world still felt wide open and full of possibility, and childhood stretched out long and slow in front of you.

I was born in the 80s but I grew up in the 90s, and I am truly grateful for that in a way I think about more and more as I get older.

It was before social media existed, before every moment of life felt like it had to be documented or shared or judged by strangers. It was before food became so complicated and engineered and processed beyond recognition. Before the endless cycle of extreme diets, beauty trends, and the quiet pressure that now seems to hover over every part of life.

Of course things weren’t perfect back then either. Every generation has its struggles. But there was something softer about that time. Something slower and less performative.

Life felt more lived than curated.

More and more lately I hear my parents and other older people say things like, “I used to eat that when I was a kid and it was fine,” or “I walked three miles home from school every day and thought nothing of it.” They talk about school being the safest place to be, mentally, emotionally, physically, and the way they say it carries this quiet certainty that the world worked a little differently then.

And maybe it really did.

Because when you grow up in that kind of environment, where childhood feels relatively carefree and the world feels manageable and safe, it’s a strange thing to become an adult and realize how much more guarded you now feel raising your own children. Times feel heavier now. Louder. Faster. There’s more to worry about, more to monitor, more to protect. And yet when I think about my own childhood, it feels like stepping into sunlight.

I loved growing up in the 90s.

I grew up in a small town of maybe fifteen hundred people, the kind of town where everyone knew everyone and the streets felt like they belonged to the kids who rode their bikes up and down them all summer long.

My parents would drop me off in town around eight in the morning with my bike and a packed lunch, and I wouldn’t be picked up until three in the afternoon. No phone, no way to check in, no schedule waiting for me.

Just the quiet understanding that I would figure out my day as it unfolded.

I would ride my bike all over town, pedaling down familiar streets and cutting through gravel alleys, letting the day take shape however it wanted. Sometimes I’d run into friends along the way and suddenly the whole day would shift. We’d end up at someone’s house without really planning it, throwing our bikes in a pile on the front lawn before running inside. We watched movies on VCRs until the tapes wore thin, rewinding them again and again. Titanic seemed to play on a constant loop in someone’s living room, and we all knew the lines by heart. Music was starting to change too. We had CDs stacked in those big plastic binders in the car, flipping through them while the car bumped along gravel roads.

Other days we played truth or dare until someone inevitably dared someone else to eat a dog treat, which they usually did just to prove they weren’t scared. We would laugh until our stomachs hurt, collapsing into piles on the carpet like we had nowhere else in the world to be.

Sometimes we would end up sitting on the corner of Third and Elk with ice cream cones that were melting faster than we could eat them, sticky rivulets running down our hands and dripping onto our shirts while we talked about absolutely nothing and absolutely everything at the same time. Lunch was simple. Sometimes it was a brown paper bag packed from home. Sometimes we’d scrape together a few dollars and walk into the little pizza place downtown where slices were two dollars each, hot and greasy on paper plates.

Those afternoons felt endless.

I didn’t have a cell phone until I was sixteen, and even then it was a hot pink Nokia, the kind where texting required pressing each number button three or four times just to get the right letter. Writing even a short message took patience, and sometimes by the time you finished typing it you had forgotten why you were texting in the first place.

We didn’t check the weather on our phones before leaving the house. We just knew to bring a sweatshirt if the sky looked like it might turn later, or to be home before dark because that was simply the rule.

My hair back then was long and naturally blonde, lightened by sun and summer days in a way that felt effortless, the same shade I now try to recreate with appointments and highlights and careful maintenance.

When we were bored, we didn’t scroll.

We read magazines cover to cover, flipping through glossy pages and tearing out pictures of outfits or bedrooms we liked. We circled things in thick catalogs that arrived in the mail, imagining the day we might finally order something for ourselves.

And the styles felt genuine somehow. Real. Girls dressed like girls. We weren’t trying so hard to look older than we were.

We were just kids.

And maybe that’s what so many of us are feeling right now when we find ourselves drawn back to the music and movies and feeling of that time.

It wasn’t just the decade.

It was the freedom.

These days I find myself reaching for that music again more and more. Songs I haven’t listened to in years suddenly finding their way back into my mornings or playing quietly in the car while I drive. And something about it shifts the whole atmosphere. The moment those familiar sounds start playing, I feel myself soften a little. My shoulders drop. My breathing slows. It’s like being transported back to a simpler rhythm of life where the world felt manageable and open and safe.

I think that’s why so many of us are turning back toward it right now.

Because sometimes the past doesn’t just remind us of who we were.

Sometimes it reminds us of how it felt to be free.