What Happens To The Childhood Dreams We Outgrow?

Lately, I’ve been asking the same question, but about something far less tangible: childhood dreams.

When I was eight years old, I wanted to be an actress. It wasn’t the passing ideation of a girl who might also want to be a princess or an astronaut. It was a certainty.

That conviction was born the night I saw the 2008 production of Les Misérables on Broadway. The musical was magic, but the moment that rewrote my future was when Alexis Kalehoff stepped onto the stage as Young Cosette. She was eight. I was eight. And for the first time, I saw my future with absolute clarity: I wanted to be that girl, standing on that stage, singing under those bright lights.

The next day, I joined my town’s local theater program, and as the years went on, I looked to star on bigger and bigger stages. By twelve, I had signed with my first agent and manager, turning a childhood dream into a succinct plan. I traded after-school sports and weekend playdates for rehearsals, acting coaches, and voice lessons. Summer camp for summer acting intensives. My world became a relentless cycle of auditions—commercials, short films, Broadway productions. I even auditioned for Game of Thrones once, a fun fact I like to casually drop into first-date conversations.

I booked some roles, but more often than not, I sat under fluorescent lights while casting directors picked at their lunches and delivered polite rejections: 

We love your energy, but we’re going in a different direction.

You were amazing, but we’re looking for someone taller.

Come back next time!

At first, I took it in stride—rejection was part of the process, my agent said. Every no brings you closer to a yes. But as the rejections piled up, they grew heavier, especially for a girl already weighed down by pre-teen insecurities. It wasn’t just the rejection—it was the vulnerability. Stepping into a sterile audition room, heart pounding, voice unsteady, giving everything, only to hear a polite, “Thank you.” It wore me down.

At sixteen, I landed an audition for a brand-new Disney Channel TV show. This was it, the dream all teen-actors had. I prepared for weeks with my acting coach, perfecting every line. I got a callback.

My hopes soared until, like a script I knew by heart, I received another no. Later, I found out the role went to Sabrina Carpenter. Yes, that Sabrina Carpenter. Every so often, I catch myself thinking about it—watching her on SNL or performing at the Grammys—like some cosmic joke. A Sliding Doors moment where, in another universe, I’m the one singing onstage, and she’s the one writing this personal essay.

The thing about giving up on a dream is that your mind scientifically refuses to let go of the version of you who didn’t quit.

That night, I curled up on my parents’ bathroom floor, sobbing through the words: I can’t do this anymore. I was drained from the endless cycle, but more than anything, I just wanted to be normal. To go to high school parties without keeping an eye on the clock. To trade rehearsals for Friday nights drinking raspberry Svedka in someone’s childhood basement. 

Acting was isolating. While my best friends were captains of the volleyball team or editors of the yearbook, my world revolved around a dream no one else seemed to understand. And the truth was, being a theater kid wasn’t exactly cool. I wanted to shed the dorky reputation that clung to me. I didn’t want college to feel like an encore of high school. 

So I quit. I let my childhood dream slip through my fingers like a helium balloon, watching it float higher and higher. I didn’t chase it. I let it go. To the place of missing things. 

For a while, I couldn’t look back. Passing a theater made my stomach drop. Watching movies, I’d wonder if those actors once stood in the same audition rooms as me. Award shows were the worst (still are)—I’d sink into my couch with takeout as actors my age stepped onto the stage, their names echoing in rooms I once dreamed of sitting in. 

But dreams don’t just disappear. They don’t vanish like socks or balloons drifting into the ether. They find new places to exist.

The thing about giving up on a dream is that your mind scientifically refuses to let go of the version of you who didn’t quit. Counterfactual thinking—the mental tendency of imagining “what could have been”—keeps those ghosts alive. It’s why former athletes replay their final missed shot, why actors fixate on the audition that could have been their big break, why we revisit the moments that felt like turning points. These what ifs are sticky; they hold on even as we try to move forward.

Counterfactual thoughts help us process, adapt, and rethink our future—not just dwell on what could have been, but make sense of what is.

Psychologists once viewed this thinking as a trap, feeding regret and blocking acceptance. But new research shows it has value. Counterfactual thoughts help us process, adapt, and rethink our future—not just dwell on what could have been, but make sense of what is.

I think about this every time I watch La La Land. In the final scene, Mia watches a dreamy montage of the life she could have had. It’s beautiful, heartbreaking—but not real. She chose a different path. Yet as the scene fades, she smiles, finding peace in knowing that part of her still lives in that dream, even if she’s left it behind.

At 25, nearly a decade after I quit acting, I understand Mia, the protagonist, and the positives of this psychological tendency. Stepping into a Broadway theater now, the sting of loss has softened into recognition. As the curtain rises, I glimpse a version of myself on stage. And while I’m no longer under the lights, my love for the craft hasn’t vanished. It’s evolved. Now, I feel a kinship with the actors on stage, a deep-rooted connection to a world that once felt like home. More than ever, I’m drawn to Broadway, not just as a spectator, but to honor the young girl who once stood in the wings, waiting for her cue.

I know now that dreams evolve. Acting taught me to shape stories, embody characters, and find meaning between the lines—lessons I now bring to writing. I may not perform, but I still tell stories. The stage has dimmed, but the spark that lit inside me at eight still glows—now on the page.

Maybe that’s where childhood dreams go—not into the past, but forward with us, shapeshifting in ways we don’t always recognize. They thread through our lives, quietly guiding us toward what still makes us feel alive.