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Heroes have been a part of American pop culture for decades. We’ve seen them come to life on the pages of comic books and movie screens, and heard them sung about by some of our favorite musical artists. Songs by David Bowie and Foo Fighters are some of my favorites, but I think Mariah Carey’s song about heroes is probably the best one to match up with today’s story.
Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday, this is episode 686, “Holly the Heroic.” I’m Darrell Darnell, my Stranger Things podcast has been downloaded over 1.3 million times, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living.
Last month we said goodbye to Stranger Things. Sort of. There are still spinoffs coming our way, but when it comes to the characters we’ve known from the beginning portrayed by the actors we’ve come to love, it’s over. We got 42 episodes across 5 seasons with them, and it was great.
For me personally, I also got to enjoy the series with my daughter Addi. We launched The Stranger Things Podcast in the summer of 2017, just a few months before the start of season 2. Experiencing the show and podcasting with her was wonderful. It wasn’t always fun, it wasn’t always easy, but it was incredibly rewarding. So much so that we both were eager to keep the podcast going and cover the upcoming spinoffs.
We also got to interact with and meet a lot of amazing Stranger Things fans over the years. That podcast reached a wider audience than any other we’ve ever had on the Golden Spiral Media network, surpassing even The Fringe Podcast and The Blacklist Exposed. In fact, some of you are now listening to this podcast because you first found The Stranger Things Podcast. If that describes you, welcome, you amazingly strange person!
I personally found the final season of the show to be wonderful. Flawed in some ways for sure, but after a decade and a half of covering various TV shows on a microscopic level via podcasting, I expected that. As the show came to its conclusion, I found myself crying tears of satisfaction and connecting with the characters in deep, meaningful ways.
The final season has inspired at least three episode ideas for Stuff I Learned Yesterday, and today’s is the first of them. The others will come at various times over the next few months. I’ll do my best to share today’s story with as few spoilers as possible. I’ll be vague when I can and withhold details unless necessary. But if you’re super concerned about Stranger Things spoilers, then go catch up on the show!
As you probably already guessed based on the title of this episode, today’s story will center around a character named Holly. But before I tell you about her, let me give a bit of backstory for those of you who have never seen the show.
To put it simply, Stranger Things is a show about a group of kids who are faced with incredible danger. Set in the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana in the 1980s, the story involves a government project that uses children as test subjects as a way to give them special powers. If you’re a Fringe fan, think of the Cortexiphan trials. If you’re a Stephen King fan, think Firestarter.
The story also involves a dimension to another world. A portal is opened that connects that dimension to Hawkins, and through that portal monstrous creatures emerge. Over the course of five seasons, a group of kids and teenagers engage in a battle against these other-dimension monsters. And yes, there are a few adults who are aware of the battle as well, but the story is very much told through the eyes of the kids and is a coming-of-age story.
And that brings us to Holly. Her exact age is a bit of a mystery, but during the show’s final season she’s likely nine or ten years old. One night she unexpectedly encounters a monster from the other dimension. The creature comes after her. An adult sees the situation and tries to intervene, only to have the creature attack the adult while Holly stands and watches. The adult is overpowered, and the creature drags Holly away to the other dimension.
When Holly arrives in the other dimension it’s not what she expected. She encounters other people there and believes that she’s actually in a safe place. However, soon she encounters someone new, and that person helps her realize the true danger she is in. In fact, both of them are in great danger, and this new friend believes that Holly can help bring the escape from the dimension that they have long hoped for and tried for without success.
So they devise a plan of escape. At first things go well, but eventually one of the monsters learns of their activity and begins pursuing them. Holly and her friend try to outrun the monster but it corners them. Holly has a fire poker that she’s brought with her, but she fails to use it. Again she just stands there while the monster attacks.
Eventually they manage to escape, but it’s in no way whatsoever thanks to Holly or anything she did during the attack. Holly also realizes that when she was first dragged away, she just stood there and did nothing. She’s now had two opportunities to do something heroic, to fight back, to stand her ground, to change her outcome, and each time she’s failed.
Still, they’ve managed to escape the most recent attack, and so they move on and continue their efforts to find the way out of the dimension. And sure enough, a short time later they find a portal that will allow them to escape. Sort of. In this dimension, portals are specific to each person. So this portal will only allow Holly’s friend to escape. Holly will have to find her own portal.
Obviously, Holly finds this demoralizing. She doesn’t know how to do that. Holly’s friend tells her that she needs to find something powerful and meaningful from the real world. It should be something special to her that makes her feel safe, brings her strength, and gives her hope.
Holly immediately grabs the necklace she’s wearing. The necklace has a toy figurine called Holly the Heroic that her brother made for her. But then Holly realizes it’s just a toy, it’s not important.
Her friend challenges her thinking and asks, “If she’s just a toy, why do you always carry her with you?”
Holly tells her friend that her brother told her that Holly the Heroic has divine powers and never gets scared, and so if she ever got scared, she could just become her. But she keeps trying, and it never works. No matter what she does, she’s still just Holly. The girl who needs a stupid nightlight.
Holly recalls when she was first captured and just stood by when an adult tried to save her and then again stood by when she and her friend were attacked by the monster as they tried to escape. She says, “I stood there again. There’s nothing heroic about that.”
Holly’s friend tells her there was nothing she could have done in those moments. She says, “You honestly think that you could’ve stopped those monsters with a fire poker?”
And then the conversation takes a shift that changes everything. It reframes Holly’s perspective.
Holly’s friend tells her about all the brave things Holly has actually done. How she went into the woods even though she’d been told dangerous monsters live there. How she followed her friend into a cave when they just met, even though she had no good reason to trust them. How when her friend told her to go back into danger, she didn’t hesitate. And when her friend gave up, Holly didn’t.
Then her friend says something that hits home. “I’ve been here for so long, Holly. So long. And I could never make it out. But you? You found a way. You saved me, Holly. You saved me. So you see, Holly the Heroic is not just a toy. She’s you, Holly.”
So what happened next with Holly? I suppose you’ll have to watch Stranger Things and find out!
Okay, you should totally watch Stranger Things, but here’s the thing that happened.
At that point Holly and her friend separated and Holly soon found herself in a new situation. She encountered some other people. These were people that were trapped without realizing it just like Holly was when she first arrived.
Armed with the experience of her escape, her fire poker, and the shift in perspective brought about by her friend, Holly did become Holly the Heroic. She rounded up the new people she found and helped them understand they were in a trap. She led them through obstacles. She encouraged them, helped them as they struggled, and led them toward freedom.
And then it happened. A monster discovered them. This time Holly stood her ground. As the monster neared them she immediately lunged at it, striking it with the fire poker. As it recoiled, she struck it again. She’d faced her fear and stood up to the monster that once terrified her.
Honestly, it still terrified her, but Holly was now heroic, able to stand up to her fears.
Here’s what I learned.
I am Holly.
You are Holly.
We all are.
Each of us carries moments of failure. Times when we froze. Times when we didn’t speak up, didn’t act, didn’t fight back when we should have. We replay those moments in our minds, cataloging our mistakes, building a case against ourselves. I stood there. I did nothing. There’s nothing heroic about that.
And as long as we define ourselves by those moments, we’ll never become the people we dream of becoming.
Holly had every reason to believe she wasn’t heroic. The evidence was clear. She froze when the monster first attacked. She froze again when cornered with her friend. Twice she had the opportunity to be brave, and twice she failed. That’s the story she was telling herself. That’s the identity she was building.
But her friend saw something different. Her friend saw the whole story, not just the moments of failure. Yes, Holly froze during the attacks. But she also ventured into dangerous woods. She trusted a stranger. She kept going when giving up would have been easier. She found solutions when her friend couldn’t. She saved someone.
The problem wasn’t that Holly lacked courage. The problem was that Holly was measuring herself only by her failures.
We do this too.
We fixate on the presentation where we stumbled over our words, instead of remembering the client we helped last week. We obsess over the argument where we lost our temper instead of celebrating the patience we showed our kids at bedtime. We replay the relationship that ended badly instead of acknowledging the growth we’ve experienced since then.
We let our worst moments define us while ignoring the evidence that we’re more than our failures.
Here’s the truth Holly’s friend helped her see, and it’s the same truth we need to hear: your past failures don’t have to define your future. They can inform it. They can teach you. They can make you better. But they don’t get to tell you who you are.
Holly couldn’t change the fact that she froze. Those moments happened. But when her perspective shifted, when she started seeing herself through the lens of everything she’d done instead of just what she hadn’t done, something changed. She didn’t suddenly become fearless. The monsters still terrified her. But she became someone who could stand up to her fear.
That’s what heroes actually are. Not people without fear. People who act despite it.
When Holly faced that final monster, she wasn’t a different person. She was the same girl who froze before. The same girl who needed a nightlight. The same girl who doubted herself. But this time she had a different story running in her head. Not the story of her failures, but the story of her bravery. Not the moments she froze, but the moments she moved forward anyway.
And that made all the difference.
So what’s the story you’re telling yourself?
Are you replaying your failures on a loop, building an identity around your worst moments? Are you carrying around a list of reasons why you’re not enough, not brave enough, not smart enough, not strong enough?
Or are you paying attention to the whole story? The times you tried when it would have been easier to quit. The times you showed up when you could have stayed home. The times you chose kindness when anger felt more satisfying. The times you kept going when giving up seemed reasonable.
Those moments count. They’re just as real as your failures. More real, actually, because they reveal who you’re becoming, not just who you’ve been.
Sometimes we have to step into fear to become what we dream of becoming. Sometimes we have to pick up the fire poker and face the monster even though our hands are shaking and our heart is pounding and every fiber of our being wants to run.
But we can’t do that if we’re still living in the shadow of our past failures.
We have to take account of our mistakes. We have to learn from them. We have to be honest about where we fell short. But then we have to use those mistakes to make us better, to propel us forward, to fuel our growth. As long as we live in the past, we will never break free.
Holly the Heroic wasn’t just a toy her brother made. It was a picture of who she could become. Who she already was, actually, if she could just see it. But she couldn’t become that person while she was stuck in the story of her failures.
Neither can we.
So here’s my challenge for you today. Think about the story you’re telling yourself. Think about the failures you’re using to define who you are. Now ask yourself: what else is true? What are you ignoring? What brave things have you done that you’re not giving yourself credit for? What moments of courage, kindness, strength, or perseverance are you glossing over because they don’t fit the narrative you’ve built about yourself?
You are more than your worst moments.
You are more than the times you froze.
You are more than your failures.
And when you start to see yourself through the lens of everything you’ve done, not just what you haven’t done, you might discover that the hero you’ve been trying to become has been you all along.
I’m Darrell Darnell, and this has been Stuff I Learned Yesterday.
I want you to be a part of the next Monday Mailbag on March 30th! Monday Mailbag is your opportunity to share what you’ve learned, so that other listeners and I can learn from you. It can be a message as short as 30 seconds or several minutes long. It really doesn’t matter just as long as it’s something that will benefit others. You can send in questions or responses to my SILY episodes, and I’ll respond to them via Monday Mailbag episodes. You can participate in Monday Mailbags by visiting the Golden Spiral Media listener feedback page.