Jennae Cecelia imagines that meeting her 15-year-old self for coffee would be a cathartic experience, even if her younger self would probably show up late, wearing sweatpants.
“She lets out a sigh and has a good cry, I tell her to release her feelings one at a time,” Cecelia, 30, wrote in a poem that she posted to TikTok earlier this month.
Her words — which will be featured in her upcoming book, “Deep in My Feels” — have inspired a trend on TikTok, where people are posting their own versions of what they think would happen if they caught up with their past selves.
There are 16 million posts that appear under the “Coffee with My Younger Self” page on TikTok as of Friday, with many users sharing videos with text that begins “I met my younger self for coffee.” The posts often use a clip of the song “Sweet Heat Lightning” by Gregory Alan Isakov.
For Cecelia, writing the poem was a way for her to embody “my present self meeting back up with my past self and be the person for her that she didn’t have at that time.” She said she has been pleasantly surprised that others are now using her poetry as a way to heal and reflect on their own memories.
“Some people have chosen to go the really, really deep route of talking about healing with their past self, and some people have kind of made it more lighthearted,” Cecelia said. “So it’s just been really fun to see just each direction that people have taken with it.”
The videos have garnered hundreds of thousands of views on TikTok — with even “Shark Tank” judge and entrepreneur Barbara Corcoran getting in on the trend by sharing her journey from waitressing to becoming the “Queen of New York Real Estate.”
In the videos, trend participants reflect on topics like body image, career planning, housing, relationships with parents and romantic relationships with partners.
Sundas Raza, 21, a spoken word artist who lives in Cardiff, Wales, believes the trend’s popularity partially stems from people wanting to heal their inner child.
“It’s easier to practice self-love when you’re speaking to a child — in this case someone’s internal child — than an adult,” said Raza, who put a twist on the trend by reading her poem aloud rather than writing it as text over video. “So I think by doing this trend, people are able to give themselves that love in the form of seeing themselves as younger.”
Some who have posted videos said writing their own version of the “coffee poem” has been a way to celebrate their accomplishments, large and small. Others said it has been a way for them to let go of past hopes and dreams.
“I think it’s so easy to get caught up in the day to day of life, and then seeing a trend like that kind of forced me to step back and, like, reflect on how far I’ve come,” said Giselle Ortega, 23, who also participated in the trend.
In her video, she recalls her younger self’s coffee order (an iced mocha with two creams) versus her current order (an iced coffee with “just almond milk please”). Her younger self would talk about how much she couldn’t wait to get out of her hometown, and her older self would say how she’s been enjoying her new home city, Boston.
“I hope we meet for coffee again,” the end of her poem states.
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