Dreams of Fireflies: The Love That Still Finds Us

Sometimes an ordinary moment touches an ancient wound, and suddenly we find ourselves wondering where we belong, whether we are truly wanted, and who would choose us if they didn’t have to.

In this deeply personal episode of Untamed Voices, Lizzi shares the story of Ann—a woman who came into her life through a relationship but continued loving her long after that relationship ended. Ann made belonging feel effortless. She made room. She included. She loved Lizzi’s son. And every year, she took them to see Trans-Siberian Orchestra.

Years after Ann’s passing, during a moment when old feelings of abandonment and exclusion resurfaced, Lizzi found herself unexpectedly thinking about her. Then a song appeared on her music feed: Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s Dreams of Fireflies.

What followed was a powerful reminder that the places where we weren’t chosen are not the whole story.

This episode explores the people who become unexpected family, the difference between being included and truly feeling wanted, the way old wounds collect evidence of every abandonment while forgetting the people who stayed, and the possibility that love continues leaving little lights behind long after a person is gone.

Because perhaps fireflies don’t come to eliminate the darkness.

Perhaps they simply glow long enough to remind us:

There was love here.

There was a place for you here.

You belonged.

And that love still counts.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:42

Hello, friends, welcome back to my podcast. Today it feels like such a lovely day and such a wonderful day to talk about fireflies. So, fireflies are rather unremarkable creatures in the daylight, right? If you've ever seen one up close, you actually will know what I mean. They're tiny, a little brownish. They're easy to overlook. You could walk past one sitting on a leaf and never know there was anything particularly or like extraordinary about it, right? There's nothing about its appearance that announces what it is capable of. But then the evening comes, the sky darkens, the details of the world begin disappearing, and somewhere in the grass a light flickers just once, then it disappears. A few seconds later, another one answers from somewhere else, then another. And before long, what looked like an ordinary field during the day becomes filled with tiny floating lights. I have always, always, always thought fireflies were beautiful, but recently they became something else to me. So about a week ago, I was crying and somehow fireflies found me. Not actual fireflies, okay, but a song. And a woman named Anne. But let me rewind a little bit. Something happened recently that made me feel left out. And honestly, the details aren't really important. And nobody necessarily did anything wrong. And I think it's worth saying that because sometimes we sometimes I guess we believe that pain requires a perpetrator, right? If I am hurt, someone must have hurt me. If I feel rejected, someone must have rejected me. If I feel abandoned, someone must have abandoned me. But human emotions aren't always that tidy. Sometimes happens in the present that simply brushes against something much older. And then suddenly the emotional response doesn't actually match the size of the moment. You know that feeling? It's like you're having a perfectly normal conversation, something is said, something changes, maybe somebody makes a decision, maybe you aren't invited somewhere, maybe plans happen without you. Maybe someone you love chooses someone else for something. Maybe you watch a group of people laughing together and suddenly become acutely aware that you're standing three feet outside the circle. Maybe someone simply uses the word we and for some reason you realize that the we does not include you. Nothing catastrophic happened, but something inside you whispers oh and boom, there it is. That ache. So for me that ache was belonging, or perhaps not belonging. Something I battled with for a long time. Logically I understood what was happening, I could explain it, I could understand everyone's perspective. And none of that mattered to the part of me that had suddenly become super, super small. Because that part wasn't asking whether the situation was reasonable. She was asking something much, much older. Am I one of you? And underneath that was, am I really wanted? And even deeper, if nobody had to choose me, would anybody still choose me? Ugh, that question just broke something open, and I cried and it hit me so hard. I cried much harder than the present moment probably warranted. Also surprising myself that I was feeling that so deeply, which you know I shouldn't be surprised because I've had that for a long time. But that's the thing about old wounds is they don't arrive alone. Sometimes one little moment opens a door and suddenly everyone who has ever lived inside that wound becomes becomes walking through. Little girl me, teenage me, young adult me, every version of me who has ever stood somewhere wondering, where exactly do I belong? They were all there. And while I was sitting in those feelings, a woman suddenly popped into my mind. Her name was Anne. Now, Anne has been gone for a few years now. She wasn't related to me, at least not technically. She was my ex-boyfriend's mother. I dated her son a long, long time ago when, and while he and I were together, Anne became a big part of my life. And that's pretty normal. You date someone long enough and eventually your lives begin overlapping. You meet their people, you learn their traditions, you spend holidays together, you develop relationships with people you would never have met if it weren't for this one particular person connecting you. And usually if the relationship ends, those relationships eventually end too. There's almost an unwritten rule about it. You take your people, I'll take mine. Everyone quietly returns to their respective corners. Except Anne didn't. When her son and I broke up, Anne kept me. That's the best way I know how to describe it. She kept me. She continued loving me. And it wasn't in a polite, distant way people sometimes do when a relationship ends. Not the occasional Christmas card, not the obligatory, hope you're doing well. She genuinely kept me in her life. She kept my son too. She loved him. She included us, she made room for us. The relationship that originally connected Anne and me disappeared. And somehow the love didn't. I don't think I understood at the time how extraordinary that was. Because there's something profoundly different about being loved by someone who has every socially acceptable reason to let you go and chooses not to. Anne didn't have to keep me. There was no obligation anymore, no title requiring it, no family structure demanding it. She wanted me. And there's such a difference between being allowed somewhere and being wanted there. There's a difference between you can come if you'd like and of course you're coming. I think Anne made me feel like an of course. Of course you're invited. Of course your son is coming. Of course there's room. Of course you're still part of this. Of course I still love you. The circumstances changed. The love didn't. And one of the traditions Anne continued sharing with my son and me was the Transsiberian Orchestra. Every year she would take us, Christmas would come around, and eventually there would be Transsiberian Orchestra. If you've ever seen them perform, you know how enormous the whole experience is. The music fills everything. Lights everywhere, theatrical and dramatic and almost excessive in the best possible way. And there we would be. And my son, me, her husband. At the time, I thought we were going to concerts. That's the funny thing about memories. You almost never know when you're making a memory that will someday, you know, become sacred. You think you're eating dinner, you think you're driving somewhere, you think you're sitting around a kitchen table, you think you're watching Christmas lights, you think you're going to a concert, and years later you realize, oh, that wasn't just a concert, that was belonging. That was someone saying, There's a place beside me and it's yours. I didn't know how much I would need that evidence someday. But apparently I did. Because there I was all these years later, crying because something had made me feel outside again. And suddenly Anne, I hadn't intentionally gone looking for her. I wasn't scrolling through old photographs, I wasn't reminiscing. She simply appeared in my thoughts, and almost immediately I remembered what it felt like to be loved by her. I remembered that there had been someone in my life who didn't need a technical reason to claim me. And then shortly afterward, a song came onto my music feed, out of nowhere, Trans Siberian Orchestra. I looked at the title and it was Dreams of Fireflies. And I just stared at it because sometimes something happens that I don't particularly want to dissect. I don't need to know the mechanism. I don't need to calculate the odds. I don't need to decide whether everyone else would interpret it the way I did. Some moments are allowed to be just sacred. Maybe you can call those moments coincidence or synchronicity or God or the universe or intuition or memory. Maybe you believe the people we love sometimes find ways of reaching toward us after they're gone. Whatever language fits your beliefs, I honor that. I only know what that moment felt like to me. It felt like Anne. And if it was Anne, I think I know what she was saying. Honey, you forgot something. Not you shouldn't be upset, not this doesn't hurt, not those feelings aren't real. Just you're forgetting. You're remembering every place you didn't belong. You're forgetting the places where you did. And suddenly the title of that song fent felt so important. Dreams of fireflies, fireflies, those tiny little creatures that spent the you know the day looking completely ordinary until it becomes dark enough for you to see what they have been carrying all along. Light. And I started wondering, maybe people can be like that. Maybe some of the most important people in our lives don't arrive with trumpets announcing that they're about to change us. Maybe they just show up, they make dinner, they remember your birthday, they ask where whether you're coming, they save you a seat, they learn how you take your coffee, they love your children, they call to make sure you got home. They put your favorite food aside because they know you'll want some. They buy an extra ticket without asking because obviously you're coming. Tiny things, ordinary things. Until one day, years later, you're standing in the dark, and suddenly you realize you were light. You were showing me something, you were teaching me what it felt like to matter. Maybe that's what Anne had been doing. I don't think she knew. I don't think she woke up one morning and thought, I'm gonna help this young woman understand belonging. She just loved me, and somehow that was enough. And it made me think about something else. We put a lot of faith in titles like mother, father, brother, sister, husband, wife, grandparent, family. We expect certain titles to guarantee certain kinds of love, and sometimes they do, sometimes beautifully, but sometimes they don't. Sometimes the people who are supposed to make us feel like we belong don't know how. Maybe they love us but don't know how to show it. Maybe they have their own wounds. Maybe their version of love feels very different from ours. Maybe they simply cannot give what we hoped they would. And then sometimes someone enters through a side door, a friend's mother, an ex's mother, a teacher, a coach, a neighbor, a coworker, a mentor, a friend, someone who was supposed to be temporary, someone who wasn't technically at anything to you, and somehow they become home. I think there's something incredibly beautiful about that. Because maybe family isn't only something we inherit. Maybe sometimes family finds us. Maybe belonging can come from directions we never thought to look. And maybe that's important because sometimes we spend so much time staring at the place where we wanted belonging to come from. That we miss all the places it actually came from. We stand at one closed door for years asking, Why won't you let me in? Meanwhile, somewhere else, someone has been standing with the door wide open, saying, Where have you been? Come inside. And I guess this is where I want to slow it down a little bit because maybe you're listening to me talk about Anne and nobody comes to mind for you. Maybe you're searching through your memories right now, thinking, I didn't have that. I'm not gonna tell you that you did. I'm not gonna romanticize your story. Some people genuinely grew up without enough belonging. Some people learned very early that love was conditional. Some people were tolerated rather than cherished. Some people were useful rather than known. Some people became experts at taking care of everyone else because nobody seemed to notice they needed taken care of too. Maybe you've spent your entire life being the person who makes room. You remember the birthdays, you send the messages, you invite the person who might otherwise be alone. You notice when someone goes quiet, you move over, you add another chair, you make everyone else feel like an of course. And maybe somewhere deep inside you're still waiting for someone to do that for you. If that's you, I'm not going to tell you to search harder through your childhood until you find a beautiful memory. Maybe it isn't there. But maybe your fireflies don't all live behind you. Maybe some of them are ahead of you. And maybe somewhere smaller than you realize, a teacher who remembered your name, a stranger who was unexpectedly kind, a friend who listened without trying to fix you, a neighbor whose house felt safer than your own, an animal who ran toward you every time you walked through the door, a place where your body relaxed. One person who saw you for five minutes at exactly the moment you needed to be seen. Tiny lights still count. They don't have to illuminate an entire lifetime to have been real. And maybe some of us eventually become the very thing we spend our lives searching for. Maybe because we know what it feels like to stand outside. We notice the person standing at that edge. Maybe because we know what it's like to wonder whether we're wanted. We say, of course you're coming. Maybe because nobody saved us a seat, we start saving seats. Maybe because we know what conditional love feels like, we become intentional about loving differently. Not because suffering was necessary, not because pain was some gift we should be grateful for, but because once we know that what darkness feels like, we tend to recognize light. And we can choose to carry some. I wonder how many times we've been somebody else's firefly without knowing it. That thought, it gets me. Because Anne probably had no idea. She probably had no idea that years after she was gone I would be sitting somewhere crying and remembering her. She probably didn't know that those concerts were becoming evidence. She probably didn't know that every time she included my son and me, she was quietly adding another sentence to a story inside me. You are wanted, you are remembered, you are worth keeping, there is room. She was just living her life, loving people, and decades later her light was still reaching me. How incredible is that? That something you do today could become someone's evidence twenty years from now. Maybe they'll be having the worst day, maybe they'll feel alone, maybe they'll be convinced nobody has ever truly seen them, and then suddenly they'll remember something you don't even remember doing a conversation, a Christmas, a meal, a ride home, the way you hugged them, the fact that you noticed, the time you said, Of course you're coming, and suddenly light. Maybe this is why belonging matters so much. It isn't simply about inclusion, it's about being held somewhere in another person's mind, knowing that when plans are made someone thinks of you. When food is prepared, someone accounts for you. When chairs are counted, there is already one for you. When someone imagines the gathering, you are already in the picture. You don't have to insert yourself, you don't have to earn admission, you don't have to prove that you are valuable enough to remain. You're simply expected. I think that was the gift Anne gave me. She expected me. And maybe that's why the moment that triggered all of this hurt as much as it did. Because underneath so many abandonment wounds is not simply please don't leave me. Sometimes it's please remember me when I'm not standing in front of you. Please hold a place for me. Please let me exist in your idea of us. And sometimes people will, and sometimes they won't. That's difficult. Because healing doesn't mean reaching a point where exclusion never hurts. I don't want that kind of healing. I don't want to become so detached that I no longer care whether I belong. Belonging is beautiful. Connection is beautiful. Wanting to matter to people isn't weakness. It's human. But maybe healing changes what happens next. Maybe when when one experience says you're outside, we don't immediately allow it to become you have always been outside. Maybe we become better historians and we remember all of it. Not only the people who left, but the people who stayed. Not only the doors that closed, but the doors that opened too. Not only the times that we weren't chosen, the times someone looked directly at us and said, You, I chose you. Because I've noticed something about old wounds. They're excellent attorneys. They gather evidence. If your wound believes you're unwanted, it can build an impressive case. Exhibit A, that person left. Exhibit B, you weren't invited. Exhibit C, that relationship ended. Exhibit D, someone chose somebody else. Exhibit E. Remember that thing from 1997? Apparently we're still stumbling into that evidence. And suddenly the verdict seems obvious. See, nobody stays. You don't belong. But pain isn't always an impartial witness. It forgets Anne. It forgets the friend who answered, it forgets the teacher, it forgets the person who moved over. It forgets the kitchen where someone knew your favorite food. It forgets the animal waiting at the door. It forgets the people who smiled when you arrived. It forgets every single person who made the world feel a little more like home. So maybe healing isn't throwing out the evidence of abandonment. Maybe it's submitting the rest of the evidence to Anne. Exhibit whatever we're on now. She stayed. She loved me after she didn't have to. She loved my son. She kept inviting us. She took us to the Transsiberian Orchestra every year. She made me feel like family. That happened too. And here's what I'm realizing. Love doesn't stop counting because it ended. That's something I really want to sit with. Love doesn't stop counting because it ended. A friendship can end and the years of love before it were still before it were still real. Someone can die, and the love they gave you still belongs to you. A relationship can change and the belonging you experienced inside of it doesn't retroactively disappear. A home can be sold, a family can change. A tradition can end. A person can leave this earth and still what happened there happened. You were loved there, you laughed there. Someone knew you there, someone wanted you there. It counts. Anne is gone, I can't call her. There won't be another Christmas where she takes my son and me to see Transsiberian Orchestra. My son isn't that little boy anymore. I'm certainly not that young woman anymore. That particular chapter of my life is finished. But Anne's love didn't vanish when the chapter ended because here I am, all these years later, still carrying it. Maybe that's one of the strangest things about love. We think of love as something exchanged between two people, but maybe some love eventually becomes part of us. Someone loves you well enough for long enough, and eventually their voice becomes something you can hear when they're gone. Their kindness becomes something you know how to offer someone else. The place they made for you becomes a place you learn to make for others. Their light becomes something you carry. And suddenly I understood the fireflies differently. A firefly doesn't defeat darkness. It doesn't even try. It carries light through it. That's all. And maybe that's enough. Anne couldn't erase every experience of abandonment from my life. She couldn't guarantee that I would never feel left out again. She couldn't protect me from every future loss. But she gave me something I could carry into those places. Evidence, light. You belonged here. Flash. You were wanted here. Flash, you didn't have to earn this. Flash, I loved you. And maybe that's why dreams of fireflies arrived when it did. Because I had temporarily forgotten. I was looking at one painful moment and allowing it to illuminate every other painful moment. And then Anne, a song, a tiny flash. Remember. I don't know exactly what happens after we die. I have my beliefs, you have yours. But I love the possibility that love might continue finding ways to reach us. And whether that particular song was Anne or Synchronicity or something else entirely, the message I received from it was the same. Don't let one moment rewrite your whole story. You have known abandonment, you have known belonging. You have lost people. You have been kept. You have stood outside. And there have been places where someone moved over and said, sit here, both are true. And perhaps part of becoming whole is allowing both to be true without letting the painful one erase the beautiful one. So I've been thinking about my fireflies. Anne is one. There are others. Some are people, some are moments, some are places. Some are memories that haven't crossed my mind in years. And maybe that's something worth doing. Not as some forced gratitude exercise, not to talk ourselves out of grief, but simply to remember accurately who are your fireflies? Who made room for you? Who was happy when you arrived? Who loved you beyond obligation? Who saw you? Who remembered? Who gave you five minutes of belonging when you desperately needed five minutes of belonging? And if no one comes to mind, then I hope you won't hear that question as proof that something is missing in you. Maybe your story with belonging is still being written. Maybe some lights haven't appeared yet. And perhaps one of the most beautiful possibilities is that somewhere right now there's someone you haven't even met yet who will someday feel like home. We simply don't know. And while we're waiting, we can notice something else. We can become people who leave lights behind. We can make room. We can remember. We can tell people, I'm glad you're here. We can invite the person standing at the edge. We can love children who aren't ours. We can keep loving someone even when the title of the relationship changes, when that is healthy and right and right for us. We can make people feel expected. Because maybe years from now, long after we've forgotten the moment, someone will remember us. Maybe they'll be sitting alone. Maybe something has made them feel outside. Maybe an old wound will be telling them they've never belonged anywhere. And somehow our face will come into their mind. Something we said, something we did, some tiny ordinary moment when we moved over and made room. And maybe we'll think, wait, that's not the whole story. There was love there. Maybe that's how we become fireflies or one for one another. Not by rescuing each other from darkness, not by becoming someone's entire source of light. Just by carrying a little. Enough that somebody remembers there is more to the story than the dark. And perhaps that's why fireflies are so beautiful. In daylight they're almost invisible. It's only when the world gets dark that you discover what they were carrying. Maybe some love is like that. We don't fully understand what someone gave us while they're giving it. We don't understand which Christmas will matter, which conversation we'll remember, which hug will stay, which invitation will become evidence, which person will someday appear in our thoughts when we are crying and remind us you have belonged until the darkness comes. And then there it is, a little light. For me this time it was Anne, a woman who entered my life because I loved her son, and stayed in my life because she loved me. A woman who could have let the relationship end when the title changed, but it didn't. A woman who made room for my son and me, a woman who took us to Transsiberian Orchestra every year. A woman who made me feel like an of course. And years after she left this earth, on a day when I was wondering where I belonged, Transsiberian Orchestra appeared on my music feed, dreams of fireflies. Maybe it was coincidence, maybe it wasn't. I know what I choose to believe. I think Anne was reminding me of something. Not that I will belong everywhere, not that nobody will ever leave, not that there won't be moments when I find myself outside, but that being outside somewhere does not mean I have never been inside somewhere. That one person's inability to make room for me cannot erase every person who has. Maybe it always will. So when darkness gets loud, look for the little lights. Not because they make the darkness disappear, but because sometimes one tiny flicker is enough to remind us that darkness was never the whole story. Sometimes it's a person, maybe sometimes it's a memory, sometimes a Christmas from twenty years ago, sometimes someone who isn't there anymore. And sometimes it's a song. Dream of Fireflies. Thank you, Anne. I remembered. And maybe somewhere listening today, someone else just remembered too. Thank you all for listening. I hope you have a wonderful, love filled week. Remember the fireflies. Until next time.