I found my dreams when I remembered Captain Kangaroo.

But it all began with a red car

Your Forgotten Dream May Be Hiding in a Sound

Get in the Red Car

Let’s have a little fun.

Stop for a moment and imagine a red car.

Not just any red car. Your red car.

Maybe it is a convertible with the top down, and maybe you are wearing a yellow scarf that has absolutely no practical business being around your neck while you drive, but it looks fabulous flying behind you.

You are on a winding mountain road, your best girlfriend beside you, both of you laughing so hard you can barely remember what started it.

The sun is warm, the air is rushing past you, and for once, nobody needs anything. In your scene you are driving a red car.

Can you see it? Are you able to feel it?

Good.

That is all I wanted you to do.

Now watch what happens.

You may notice a red car later today. Perhaps one will pass beneath your window, appear on television, or pull up beside you at a traffic light.

Red cars have not suddenly multiplied because you imagined one. They were already there.

What changed was your attention.

You gave the red car a little life inside your imagination, and now your mind knows it matters.

So let’s play again.

When you were a girl, what did you dream of doing?

Perhaps you wanted to fly an airplane.

Do not immediately start thinking about flight school, your eyesight, the cost of lessons, or whether a seventy-year-old woman has any business in a cockpit.

Good lawd a-mercy. We have been practical long enough.

Just imagine flying.

See your hands on the controls, look down at the earth beneath you, and feel the plane rising as the ground gets smaller and the horizon gets larger.

Did you want to become a singer, a teacher or a nurse?

Do not concern yourself with whether you can carry a tune. Imagine yourself onstage beneath a pool of light. Hear the music begin, and feel the moment just before you open your mouth and your voice fills the room.

Maybe you wanted to paint, write books, travel the world, dance, train horses, build furniture, design clothes, live by the ocean, or become the first woman on the moon.

Do not ask whether the dream is reasonable — we are not being reasonable right now. If we were together in person, I’d likely pull out a rule to slap you- it’s that important to cease being reasonable. ( just kidding but wanted to make the point vivid)

We are playing.

There is real value in this little exercise. Attention is not decoration — it is how the mind decides what deserves a second look, and that capacity does not retire when we do.

Reclaiming forgotten dreams may be one of retirement’s greatest missed opportunities, and we do not speak about them nearly enough.

We talk about retirement planning, downsizing, investments, healthcare, staying active, and finding something useful to do with all that time.

But when do we ask a woman what she once dreamed of before life began handing out assignments, before practicality took command, before she became responsible for everybody and everything?

Those dreams may be difficult to recall at first, and they may not return as complete sentences — they may return instead as a sound, a smell, a texture, or a sudden little flicker of delight.

That happened recently when Captain Kangaroo began floating across my mind.

He and Mr. Green Jeans would bring out construction paper, crayons, paste, and scissors to make something, and this little girl’s mouth practically watered. Whatever Captain Kangaroo was making, I wanted to make it too.

A woman commenting beneath my Substack note wrote:

“I can perennially hear him cutting construction paper.”

The instant I read that, I heard it too.

That thick, scratchy sound of scissors working their way through construction paper.

Sixty years later, the sound is still stored somewhere inside us and it is likely it is not the only the sound we remember. We remember the promise the sound carried.

Something was about to be created. Brightly colored paper would be cut, folded, pasted, and turned into something that had not existed moments before.

Creativity was not a word I had for what I was feeling. Sitting there, I certainly was not predicting that I would one day become a fine artist.

All I knew was that when Captain Kangaroo reached for the construction paper, something inside me leaned closer.

Something came alive.

That little girl was paying attention.

She did not ask whether making things was productive, wonder whether she was talented enough, or concern herself with establishing a brand, finding her niche, or creating an additional income stream.

She wanted the paper, the crayons, and to make something.

A very important question for you to consider: What made you lean closer when you were a girl?

Was it the ivory coolness of piano keys beneath your fingers, the smell of library books, the click of tap shoes against a wooden floor, or the sweep of a full skirt as you turned in front of a mirror?

Perhaps it was the smell of sawdust, bread baking, wet earth, grease in your father’s garage, or oil paint. Maybe it was the sight of an airplane crossing the sky.

We tend to dismiss these memories as nostalgia — sweet little scraps from childhood that float through our minds and then disappear again.

I want you to consider that they are breadcrumbs instead. Following the breadcrumbs can actually awaken a dream from your childhood providing you with a delicious experience of emotional depth and fun, in the now. Our goal here is to capture that essence, not to necesairly re-create the dream.

A forgotten dream does not always return waving a flag and carrying a detailed plan.

Sometimes it whispers, “Remember this?”

For forty or fifty years, most women directed their attention toward what needed to be done for someone else. We monitored moods, remembered appointments, anticipated problems, kept the peace, and carried details no one else seemed to notice.

Then retirement arrives, and all that well-trained attention is still looking outward.

No wonder a woman says, “I don’t know what I want.”

She has not lost the ability to want.

She may have simply stopped noticing the evidence.

That is where the red car practice comes in.

Choose one dream, desire, or childhood delight and let yourself play with it.

Do not make it defend its practicality, or demand that it become a business, a goal, or a complete renovation of your life.

Give it a little room in your imagination.

If you dreamed of living by the ocean, feel the cool water around your ankles, smell the salt in the air, and hear the waves arriving and retreating.

If you wanted to write, picture the notebook in your lap and feel the pleasure of a sentence arriving exactly as you hoped it would.

If you wanted to dance, turn on the music and let yourself imagine the dress, the movement, and the delicious drama of it all.

Then notice what begins appearing.

A class, a book, a conversation, an old photograph, an art supply store you have passed a hundred times without seeing.

The original dream may not return in the form you imagined at ten or twenty — reclaiming the freedom you felt watching an airplane cross the sky does not require becoming a commercial pilot, singing does not require Broadway, and painting does not require a gallery.

First, find the part that made you come alive, and let that part breathe.

You are not required to know what you want to do with the rest of your life.

For now, you can put the top down, tie on the yellow scarf, and take the red car around the bend.

See what you notice.

That is the whole opportunity for now. Not a plan. Not a decision. Just noticing — what a room smells like when you walk past it, what song makes you stop what you are doing, what you find yourself doing without deciding to do it.

Reclaiming a dream requires something many women have forgotten how to give themselves: trust. Trust that the memory returning repeatedly is worth noticing. Trust that the tiny flicker of excitement means something. Trust that a desire does not have to be practical, profitable, or approved by anyone else before we are allowed to follow it.

Self-trust does not always begin with a life-altering decision. Sometimes it begins by believing yourself when something inside you says, “I still want that.”

Now, then. Tell me. What sound, smell, or texture still carries you back? I read every comment.

Your dream may have been waiting there all along.

Noticing is free. Sitting with what you notice, week after week, with other women doing the same thing, is what the Breakthrough Circle is for. New members get twenty percent off right now — the door is open below.

After you have become a paid member you will have access to the perks!

And if something in this piece made you pause, nod, or feel a little less alone — please give it a heart before you go. That one small tap tells the algorithm this conversation matters. It puts these words in front of another woman who needs to hear them today. She's out there. Help me find her.