…With Grief On the Mend
On Luck, Grief, and Growing Up Alongside Hilary Duff
“I remember it all and I remember nothing
How did we get here?
Was it luck…or something? Was it luck…or something?”
sings beloved millennial pop star Hilary Duff in the closing track “Adult Size Medium,” from 2026’s luck…or something*. Marking the cultural high of her long-awaited industry return, Duff, now 38, reflects on adulthood, marriage, and all things insecurity through the hook-forward, mature pop lens of someone who’s now “all grown up.”
Touching on artificial circumstance, Duff turns inward as she explores jealousies in “Holiday Party,” and looping worries in “Future Tripping,” “Roommates,” and “Tell Me That Won’t Happen,” before zooming out in “Adult Size Medium.” Notably, the all-too-familiar people pleasing response rears its head in luck’s opener, “Weather For Tennis.”
Clearly, Duff is a woman who’s unafraid of mixing a little fun with self-reflection and accountability. As someone who values both to the highest degree, it’s comforting to know that she’s relatable well past her early prime.
After a week of streaming — repeats and resurging memories — it’s both 2003 and 2026, and all the years in between. It’s childlike yearning, blissful in its ignorance and unmoored in its glossy synths. It’s 2003’s Metamorphosis decades before it resonates. It’s corded headphones, lyric-laden karaoke when no one’s watching, and scratched silver CD players on long car rides home. It’s luck…with grief on the mend.
“Pulling on holes of an adult sized medium, I really don’t know how I got here”
You can say that again.
While Duff dreams in past tense with a hazy nostalgia, I find myself looking to the future, excitedly, for the first time in my life. Tugging on the threads of chance, I’m actively and willingly creating. Pulling at the seams of anxious indifference, I’m silencing the voice in my head that’s long told me failure was inevitable.
In a childhood devoid of levity or longstanding promise, Duff radiated hope. Although only a few years old during her Disney era, I remember watching The Lizzie McGuire Movie: the hairbrush singing, blasting “What Dreams Are Made of” on repeat, the middle school graduation scene.
Playful, hopeful, cautiously optimistic.
Even with stuttering-induced self-consciousness running an early show, somehow, watching Duff sashay around Italy with newfound confidence made me believe we were the same.
I believed, if only for a few minutes, that I could be more than panicky and sweat-ridden.
For a few moments, I could pretend I was the proud, self-confident one — who might just get up on stage, too.
Although a figure of early 2000s coming-of-age, to me, Duff symbolized peace, contentment in the absence of struggle, and an unwaveringly stable sense of self.
I really don’t know how I got here, either.
From child size extra large to adult size medium myself — ironically — I’m at a loss for words.
I didn’t expect to make it here.
Aimless and hollow, I searched for meaning in every face I met and every secret song I sang.
I spent countless days longing for the permanence of finality, while missing out on the fleeting entirely.
“I’m waking up to a dream sequence, sometimes I can’t see me in it”
As I wipe the fogginess out from underneath eyes, I can’t help but ask myself,
Is this my real life?
Am I really alive and well, with a sequence of dreams in the making?
Is this the real me, after all?
Drenched in the shimmery, effervescent pop gloss of luck…or something*, I’m feeling now what I felt back then: wistful, carefree, and buoyant.
It really is luck…with grief on the mend.
