The funny thing about nostalgia is it rarely tells the whole truth.
It crops out the messy bits and smooths over the rough parts. It remembers the glow and not the glare. It replays the happiness but edits out the heartache. It’s a generous storyteller— but not always an honest historian.
It culls the past just enough to feel softer and a little more beautiful than it might have in the moment.
But maybe that’s part of its magic … or mercy. That it doesn’t tell the whole truth. Because the whole story was never as simple as memory makes it.
There were beautiful days, days that felt ordinary, and others that felt unbearably hard.
But time has a gentle way of editing our memories.
It blurs the edges.
Softens the noise. And leaves us holding the warmest parts of what once was.
And maybe that’s all nostalgia really is –
A tender recollection of our past.
– Mackenzie Free –
Wife, mother, photographer & current resident of the unassumingly magical town of Steele, Alabama
