I’ve Been Watching ‘Halloweentown’ For Years Now (And Rewatching It In My 20s Taught Me 4 Life Lessons We All Should Hear)

Every October, I inevitably find myself in front of my TV watching Halloweentown. It’s just one of those things that I do. No matter how old I get or how many new Halloween shows or horror movies come out, nothing feels the same. You may be asking Halloweentown OVER Hocus Pocus?! Well yeah. It’s just one movie feels like fall, is cozy, a little cheesy, and still manages to make me feel eight years old again, wrapped up in a blanket with a mug of hot chocolate. Watching it now in my late twenty-somethings I find myself noticing so many more things than I did when I was a kid. Obviously there’s witches and pumpkins and stuff, but at the end it’s a story about family, growing up, and being okay with the parts of yourself that don’t fit into everyone else’s version of “normal.”

1) You don’t have to hide the parts of you that are different.

I used to think of Marnie as just a stubborn, mildly annoying teenager who didn’t listen to her mom. Now I kind of TOTALLY where she’s coming from. Her mom, Gwen, is just trying to keep her kids safe by pretending magic doesn’t exist. Well.. in trying to protect them she’s also denying a part of who they are. When you’re younger, you think “different” means wrong. You learn to hide the weird bits, how to smooth out the rough edges so people won’t look at you funny. You know at some point, you realize that the weird edges are what make you, you. Marnie refuses to give that up. She doesn’t even fully understand her magic yet, but she knows it’s important. I think that’s something we all feel deep down, that there’s a piece of ourselves we’ve been told to tone down for the sake of fitting in. You don’t need to hide the things that make you special just because they make other people uncomfortable.

2) Family is messy but it’s everything

As a kid, I always thought the family arguments in Halloweentown were just funny background noise. As an adult, they sound a lot more painful. The Cromwells talk over each other, they misunderstand each other, they love each other and they don’t always know how to show it. There’s something so honest about the way Marnie and her mom butt heads. Gwen wants to protect her kids, but she also doesn’t trust them to make their own choices. Marnie just wants her mom to believe in her.

Neither of them are wrong, they’re just coming from love in completely different ways. That’s how family works. It’s not neat or tidy, but when it matters, when things really fall apart, they show up. Watching all three generations of the Cromwell family finally come together to save Halloweentown felt like a reminder of how powerful that kind of love is. You can disagree, you can yell, you can roll your eyes at each other but at the end of the day, you still share something that’s unshakable.

3) You’re allowed to be a little weird

Every time Grandma Aggie says, “Being normal is vastly overrated,” I find myself nodding harder than I ever did as a kid. When I was younger, I didn’t get it I wanted to be normal. I wanted to blend in. Now I love the weird stuff about me. The stuff I used to try to hide or explain away, the random hobbies, the way I talk too much when I’m excited, the fact that I still watch Halloweentown at my age that’s what makes life interesting. Sometimes I think adults forget how freeing that feeling is. We spend so much energy trying to seem “put together” that we forget how good it feels to be unapologetically ourselves.

4) Believing in yourself isn’t a cliché (it’s actually the HARDEST part)

There’s a line from Aggie that I’ve always liked that goes “Magic is really very simple. All you’ve got to do is want something and let yourself have it.” strictly because it felt like something my nana would have said, yaknow’ that gentle kind of advice that doesn’t sound deep until it’s 2 a.m. and you realize juuuust how true it is.

It’s weird how hard it is as an adult to just let yourself want things. To let yourself try something new without automatically assuming you’ll fail. I’ve talked myself out of SO many things over the years jobs, ideas, partnerships, because I thought, “Who am I to think I can do that?” Watching Marnie finally trust herself and save the day made me emotional in a way it never did before. It’s not about magic at all, it’s about confidence. That’s the kind of message that sneaks up on you. You start to realize that maybe you’ve been holding yourself back without meaning to. Just maybe it’s time to start wanting things again and actually letting yourself have them.