Jennae Cecelia imagines meeting her 15-year-old self for coffee will likely be a cathartic experience, even if her younger self appears late in wearing sweatpants.
“She sighs and crys. I tell her to release her feelings one at a time,” Cecelia (30) wrote in a poem she posted earlier this month to Tiktok. .
Her words, featured in her upcoming book, Deep in My Feels, have influenced Tiktok trends. There, I post my own versions of what I think would happen if people caught up with their past selves.
As of Friday, there were 16 million posts featured on Tiktok’s “Coffee with My Young Self” page, with many users using the video with the text “Meeting Young Self for Coffee” We share. The post uses a clip from the song “Sweet Heat Lightning” by Gregory Alan Isakov.
For Cecelia, writing poetry was a way of embodying her “backing up my current self-meeting with my past self and becoming someone she had not at the time.” She said she was surprised that others were now using her poems as a way to heal her poems and reflect her memories.
“Some people chose to go on a really deep route of talking about past self and healing, but some people made it lighter,” Cecelia said. “So it was really fun to just look at each direction people have it.”
The video has gained hundreds of thousands of viewers about Tiktok. Even “shark tank” judge and entrepreneur Barbara Corcolan have come into the trend by sharing their journey from being a waitress to becoming a “Queen Real Estate in New York.”
In the video, trend participants reflect topics such as body image, career planning, housing, relationships with parents, and romantic relationships with partners.
Sundas Raza, 21, a spoken language artist living in Cardiff, Wales, believes that the popularity of this trend has arisen in part in those who want to heal their inner child.
“It’s easier to practice self-love when talking to a child than adults,” said Raza, who read poems aloud and twisted the trend, rather than writing them as text. . On the video. “So I think by doing this, people can give that love in the form of thinking themselves young.”
Some people who posted the video said writing their own version of “coffee poems” is a way to celebrate their achievements, big and small. Others said it was a way to let go of past hopes and dreams.
“I think it’s very easy to get caught up in the days of life, and seeing that trend forced me to retreat and reflect on how far I’ve come,” Giselle said. Ortega said. 23, I also participated in the trends.
In her video, she recalls her younger self-coffee order (Ice mocha with two creams) for her current order (Ice coffee from “Just Almond Milk Please”). Her younger self talks about how long she couldn’t wait to leave her hometown, and her older self shows how she enjoys her new hometown, Boston I’ll say it.
“We hope to see you again for coffee,” the end of her poem states.
