Music Video Arm Choreography

A Blog Series by Songs I’ve Heard Today

Hold On to Yourself

Inspired by “Hold On” by Wilson Phillips

There are songs you grow up with… and then there are songs you grow into. Hold On has always been around, floating in the background like a hopeful anthem. But the older I get, the more I realize it was speaking to a version of me I hadn’t met yet — the version who finally understood the weight of those lyrics.

When I was younger, I was the kind of person who took negative comments as truth. Not suggestions. Not opinions. Truth. A single offhand remark could twist itself into my identity before I even had a chance to question it.

And in relationships?
I let partners shape me into whatever made them more comfortable. I let their moods dictate mine. I let their insecurities become my boundaries. I let their preferences become my personality. It wasn’t intentional — it was survival. I didn’t know I was allowed to hold on to myself.

It took years of therapy for me to realize something I wish someone had told me much earlier:

My voice was gone.
Not silenced.
Not quiet.
Gone.

I had handed it away piece by piece, until one day my therapist gently asked a question I’ll never forget:

“Doug… if I took away everyone else’s opinions, expectations, and reactions — what would you actually say?”

I couldn’t answer.

Not because I didn’t want to…
but because I didn’t know.

That was the moment I understood just how lost my voice had become. It wasn’t just muted — it had been overwritten. And reclaiming it wasn’t going to be a single breakthrough moment. It was going to be a process. A slow, steady, sometimes uncomfortable climb back into myself.

That’s why Hold On hits differently now.

Because the message isn’t about white‑knuckling through pain — it’s about holding on to the parts of yourself you abandoned while trying to be loved.

It’s about realizing that you don’t have to:

• absorb other people’s negativity,
• twist yourself into emotional origami,
• apologize for your own intuition,
• or shrink to keep the peace.

You’re allowed to take up space.
You’re allowed to feel how you feel.
You’re allowed to have a voice — and you’re allowed to use it.

Therapy taught me that I didn’t lose my voice because I was weak. I lost it because nobody ever told me I could keep it.

Reclaiming it meant:

• questioning old beliefs that never belonged to me,
• speaking up even when my voice trembled,
• letting myself disappoint people who benefitted from my silence,
• and giving myself permission to be fully, unapologetically human.

And here’s the beautiful irony:
The more I held on to myself, the less I needed anyone’s approval to feel steady.
The more I stayed rooted in my own truth, the less I attracted people who wanted to rewrite me.
The more I reclaimed my voice, the clearer my life became.

These days, when Hold On comes on, I don’t hear a pop song.
I hear a milestone.

I hear the younger me — quiet, compliant, trying so hard to be lovable — and I gently tell him that he didn’t have to earn anything. He just needed to come home to himself.

And yes… if you peeked into my kitchen this morning, you would’ve seen me full‑on lip‑syncing the chorus with dramatic 90s music‑video arm choreography. Healing apparently comes with its own flair.