High School Never Really Ends

My recent reunion kicked up a lot.

Me (in the red gown) with my grandparents; I keep this photo on my desk.

I found myself standing in an overpriced skincare boutique. You know, the deceptively sleek kind that’s all glass, marble, and promises. I’ve walked past it a thousand times but never entertained going inside. But suddenly there I was, standing at the counter, desperate to know what “miracle” product might turn back the clock.

It was a last-minute, irrational act of hope. Maybe there was something out there—some gold-infused serum or celebrity-endorsed potion—that could make me look just a little more like the girl I was at seventeen.

My high school reunion was days away and of course, it had me wondering how I’d be seen, judged, and measured. High school reunion anxiety comes for us all, or at least, those of us who grew up in a classically suburban environment like I did. My face and my body would signify the signs of success (or the lack of it). I wanted to show up looking like I had spent the following decades after graduation well. To leave my classmates with an image that said, She’s done all right.

Of course, standing under the boutique’s oddly harsh lights, listening to a twenty-something salesperson extol the virtues of $100 gold face sheets, I knew it was all ridiculous. But I was also aware of how symbolic it all was: I was literally—and emotionally—going back to high school.

The same old self-consciousness stirred awake. The discomfort in my own skin, just now replaced by wrinkles instead of acne. The voice that still wonders: What will they think?

These were the people whose opinions once mattered more than anyone’s. They were witnesses to my early experiments in identity: my first romance, first hangover, first acts of rebellion, and first attempts at being an adult. They are woven into my personal mythology, the internal theater that shaped me.

At the reunion, I laughed with my old friends and found myself sliding back into familiar dynamics, the shorthand of our younger selves. It’s humbling to realize how easily we regress. We gossip. We posture. We feel judged. And we judge, too.

I see this every day in the teenagers I work with and in the ones I raised. That adolescent energy is never far away. It’s why we still form cliques at work and why we crave approval even as grown-ups. Why social anxiety, competition, and belonging still preoccupy us, even if we pretend or wish that it didn’t.

We may leave adolescence, but it doesn’t leave us. In many ways, adulthood is just a reworking of the same themes—identity, acceptance, belonging—on a bigger stage. And that’s also the gift of a reunion: the chance to revisit those early chapters with compassion. To see the awkward, striving, insecure teenager inside us not as a relic to be hidden, but as a foundation. A living part of who we are.

I think about how my own adolescent pain and the confusion I couldn’t name and the longing I didn’t understand that led me to a career helping young people find language for theirs. Maybe that’s how we heal: by creating for others what we once needed ourselves.

What we call high school never really ends, the place of insecurity, uncertainty, and status consciousness. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It means we still have access to our curiosity, our vulnerability, our longing to connect. The trick is to meet those feelings now with a little more grace. And maybe without a $100 gold face mask.

Demystifying Recs

• For anyone who loves or cares about the next generation of men, I recommend Scott Galloway’s new book, Notes on Being a Man

• I had a fascinating conversation with Lansberg Gersick Advisors’ Lighthouse Podcast about how parents in successful family enterprises often face a unique challenge: balancing professional ambition with intentional, values-based parenting. Listen to the conversation.

• Another shameless plug, but almost everyone I know is stressed at work. How’s your relationship with work right now? Maybe my Anxiety Reaction Types @ Work quiz can help you identify and work through any worries you have.

I wish you a restorative and peaceful Thanksgiving holiday!

Take care,

Dana