Anyone who has read my last three posts may recognize my current love… I’m going back… and I’m rewatching a few good movies.
Today, I rewatched Mamma Mia! Sixteen years later… and I have chills.
Mamma Mia! is a musical set on a Greek island. It features lots of ABBA songs. It follows a young woman, Sophie, who invites three men to her wedding, hoping to discover which one is her father.
The music… this where the chills kept coming, song after song. ABBA never ever gets old. Plus…it hits just right.
The laughter… it all felt familiar, yet somehow deeper this time. It made me think of my friends and how obnoxious we get sometimes when we get together… and it’s been a while since I had this. I need this.
Looking back, I realise that the first time I saw it, I was younger, unamarried, and not yet a mother. And even though I was six years older than her age in the movie, I found myself reasoning with Sophie… her excitement, her dreams, her search for answers. I understood that version of her so well. She was hopeful, curious, and full of wonder about love and life.
But now… watching it again, I find myself reasoning with Donna. Her weariness, her strength, her messy courage. I see the woman who has built a life out of fragments, a woman who carries love and loss in the same breath… and even the same heart… a woman who keeps singing anyway.
I see her… exhaustion, independence, a mix of pride and vulnerability… I feel her. I understand her choices and her chaos in a way I never did before. It’s funny how life catches up with the stories we once only watched.
I feel her more than I ever expected to. I paused a time or two to ponder on this.
And what an incredible trio of “fathers” she had. Mmmmmm… what an ensemble of lookers; Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, and Stellan Skarsgård. Each one of them was charming in his own way. Pierce Brosnan (Sam)… steady and soulful, Colin Firth (Harry)… sweet and slightly awkward, and Stellan Skarsgård (Bill)… the free-spirit.
Sixteen years later, Mamma Mia! still feels like sunshine… but now, it warms me in a different way. It reminds me how life shifts and softens us, how love changes shape, and how we keep dancing through it all.
I realised also, you can always find yourself, whether it’s at twenty, at forty, or even again at sixty.
