Greetings my lovelies,

We went to see Practical Magic 2 expecting witches, nostalgia, sisterhood, and a really good time. What I did not expect was to walk out of the theater contemplating my entire damn existence, but apparently the Owens women had other plans for me.

First, let’s discuss the important stuff.

We did D-BOX seats.

I had been ridiculously excited about these seats, and holy hell, they MOVE. I was expecting some shaking and maybe a little rocking here and there. Nope. That chair was an active participant in the movie. It moved, jerked, shook, and occasionally seemed personally offended that I had the audacity to sit comfortably.

Meanwhile, I was clutching the margarita popcorn holder I absolutely had to have, because if you’re going to see Practical Magic 2, apparently eating popcorn out of a regular bucket simply will not do. There I was, margarita in hand, getting tossed around by a possessed theater seat and having the time of my life.

Honestly, that alone would have made the night worth it.

But before the movie even started, something happened that I didn’t think much about at first. An exercise advertisement came on, and the message was that it’s never too late to start again.

Well, okay then.

I came here for Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock, not an existential intervention from an exercise commercial.

But that sentence stuck with me, and as the movie unfolded, it started connecting itself to everything I was watching. By the time the credits rolled, I realized this movie had hit me somewhere I wasn’t expecting.

I’m not giving away the story because I despise spoilers. I want people to experience those moments for themselves, especially because some of them carry a lot more weight when you don’t know they’re coming. What I can talk about is what those moments made me think about.

One of the simplest messages was the one that landed hardest for me: Live a little. Live a lot.

That sounds almost ridiculously simple until you actually think about how much time we spend waiting to live. We wait until we’re ready, until life settles down, until we’re healed, until we’re happier with ourselves, until we have more money, until we’re less afraid, until the grief isn’t quite so heavy. We convince ourselves that somewhere out there is this magical point where everything will finally be lined up correctly and then we’ll really start living.

Except life doesn’t work that way.

There is always going to be something unfinished. Something uncertain. Something we’re carrying. If we wait until everything is perfect before we allow ourselves to enjoy being alive, we’re going to spend an awful lot of our lives sitting in the waiting room.

Maybe starting again doesn’t require burning your entire life to the ground and dramatically rising from the ashes with fabulous hair blowing in an imaginary wind machine. Although, admittedly, that would make one hell of an entrance.

Sometimes starting again is quieter than that. Maybe it’s deciding to participate in your own life again. Going somewhere. Laughing. Trying something you’ve been putting off. Taking care of yourself. Buying the ridiculous margarita popcorn holder because it makes you happy.

Live a little.

And then maybe live a little more.

The movie also made me think deeply about sisterhood. There is a part involving blood and sisters that I won’t explain, but it immediately struck something in me. It reminded me that there really is a kind of magic in sisterhood, and it goes far beyond sharing DNA.

Sisters know versions of us that other people never met. They remember where we came from. They know the old stories, the ridiculous stories, and probably several stories we’d prefer they stop telling at family gatherings. They can drive us absolutely batshit crazy and still understand something about us that nobody else quite can.

Of course, blood by itself doesn’t automatically create sisterhood. Sisterhood is also something we do. It’s showing up. It’s remembering. It’s carrying pieces of one another’s stories. It’s knowing that sometimes another woman remembers a part of you that you’ve temporarily forgotten.

There is magic in that.

Family history runs deeply through the movie too, and that couldn’t have hit me at a more interesting time in my own life. I’ve been digging through my own history lately—genealogy, old writing, old blog names, old usernames, old versions of myself. I’ve been looking backward, not because I want to go backward, but because I’m finally beginning to understand how much there is to learn by seeing the entire road behind me.

Families hand things down whether they realize it or not. We inherit stories, traditions, strength, habits, fears, wounds, ways of loving, ways of protecting ourselves and sometimes a whole lot of crap nobody bothered dealing with before handing the box to the next generation.

Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.

But knowing our history gives us a choice.

We get to decide what comes with us.

Some things are treasures worth protecting. Some are lessons worth remembering. Some need healing. And some deserve to be looked directly in the face and told, “You’ve traveled far enough. You’re not coming any farther with me.”

That isn’t rejecting where we came from. If anything, I think it’s understanding it more honestly.

And then there is Sally.

I have always resonated with Sally, but watching her now, at this point in my own life, felt different. Sally isn’t the stereotypical loud, theatrical witch who needs everyone within a five-mile radius to know she’s magical. She simply is who she is. Her magic is woven into her. She doesn’t need to perform it.

I understand that.

I also understand the instinct to protect yourself from painful things. When something hurts badly enough, sometimes we shove it into the emotional junk drawer, slam it shut and decide we’ll deal with it approximately never.

Very healthy. Extremely sophisticated. Ten out of ten coping mechanism.

Except hiding something doesn’t erase it.

That was probably one of the biggest things the movie stirred up in me: the importance of remembering who we really are, including the pieces we’d rather not examine too closely.

I’ve spent parts of my life wanting to leave painful things behind so badly that I thought healing meant somehow separating myself from them. But I’m beginning to understand that acknowledging something isn’t the same as continuing to live inside it.

The painful parts belong to my story too.

I don’t have to move back into them and redecorate.

I don’t have to give them control over who I am today.

But I can look at them and say, “Yes, that happened. Yes, it changed me. And yes, I’m still here.”

Maybe remembering who we are isn’t about discovering some pristine version of ourselves buried underneath everything that’s happened. Maybe it’s about accepting the whole woman—the one who laughed, screwed up, loved, lost, changed, survived, started over, got angry, got scared, found her way, lost it again and kept going anyway.

That woman is still me.

The movie also had me thinking about home and belonging. We usually talk about home as though it’s an address, but I don’t think home is always a place. Sometimes it’s family. Sometimes it’s a sister. Sometimes it’s a memory. Sometimes it’s that strange feeling of recognizing something inside yourself that you haven’t felt in years.

Sometimes home is simply coming back to yourself.

And maybe that’s why the idea of love and fear running through the story affected me too. Loving anything makes us vulnerable. Once you’ve experienced loss, you know exactly what love can cost. So sometimes we protect ourselves without even realizing that’s what we’re doing. We hold back. We avoid things. We make our worlds smaller because smaller feels safer.

But safe and alive aren’t necessarily the same thing.

At some point we have to ask whether avoiding pain has also caused us to avoid pieces of life.

Which brings me right back to that stupid exercise commercial.

It’s never too late to start again.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized starting again doesn’t mean erasing everything that came before. I don’t want to erase it. I want to understand it. I want to know where I came from, who came before me, who I’ve been, what shaped me and what I’ve learned.

Then I get to choose what comes next.

There’s another funny little layer to all of this because I’m currently reading Salt & Broom, which I absolutely love. I’ve already been immersed in Thornfield, witchcraft, herbs, healing, history, old stories and things hiding beneath the surface. Then I walk into Practical Magic 2 and get another dose of witches, history, identity, family, healing and remembering.

Apparently my entertainment has unionized and collectively decided I need to contemplate my ancestry.

Fine. Message received.

What struck me most, though, is that neither the movie nor everything it made me think about left me believing magic is about having power over everything around us.

I think some of the strongest magic is much quieter.

It’s knowing who you are without needing to announce it.

It’s knowing where you came from without allowing the past to decide where you’re going. It’s loving people even though love makes you vulnerable. It’s sisterhood. It’s memory. It’s healing. It’s recognizing what deserves to be carried forward and having enough courage to put down what doesn’t.

It’s coming home to yourself.

I walked into that theater excited about D-BOX seats, witches and a margarita-shaped popcorn holder. I walked out still excited about all of those things—because let’s not get ridiculous, that margarita is fabulous—but also thinking about my life differently.

Maybe that’s what I needed to hear right now.

I don’t have to have everything figured out before I start living. I don’t have to erase my history to begin again. I don’t have to become someone completely different.

I just have to remember who I am, take what belongs with me, leave behind what doesn’t, and keep going.

Because it really isn’t too late to start again.

And while I’m here?

Live a little. Live a lot.

🖤