The Things That Usually Stay Quiet

A night on the couch with my daughter and Noah Kahan

I watched Noah Kahan: Out of Body this weekend with my daughter.

My daughter is a huge fan of Noah Kahan. She already got us tickets to see him in August, and a few nights ago, she asked if I wanted to watch the documentary with her. Both felt like easy answers, a grateful and resounding “yes.”

My kids are 18. They’re both getting ready to leave for college. I can feel that shift happening in real time. The way moments start to feel a little more finite. The way something as simple as sitting on the couch together carries a little more weight than it used to.

I’ve always tried to connect with my kids through music. Music says a lot about us, so it feels important to ask what they’re listening to. It’s a way for us to bond, connect, and share common ground. With my son, it was Kendrick Lamar. We went to a concert together, and it’s a moment I still think about today. It brought us closer together. Now it’s my daughter and Noah Kahan, and I’m loving it.

So we watched the documentary together.

What stood out to me wasn’t just the music (which is really good). It was what he was willing to say. He talks openly about body dysmorphia, about struggling with his relationship with food, and about using food as a way to cope. He talks about anxiety and depression in a way that doesn’t feel cleaned up or resolved. It feels ongoing. It feels honest and vulnerable.

And I kept coming back to the same thought. What stood out wasn’t that he struggled. It’s that he said it out loud. Saying things publicly that usually stay unspoken. Not just once, but throughout the film.

There’s something very real about how he talks about these things, and it resonated with me. Because this doesn’t always look the way people expect it to. When men talk about their bodies, it often gets reframed as discipline or effort, as doing what you’re supposed to do. And when it doesn’t fit that narrative, it gets minimized or ignored.

I hear versions of this every day in my work. The constant thoughts and anxiety about food. The way eating becomes something to control or something to escape through. The way your body becomes something to manage instead of something to live in. The shame. The fear. But in real life, most of this stays quiet.

That’s why it stood out. He said it out loud.

There was another part that stuck with me. He talks about how, as he got more successful, he started to lose touch with himself. Everything became about the next album, the next level of success. And the more things worked on the outside, the more lost he felt on the inside.

I see that version of it a lot too. Chasing something that’s supposed to make you feel better, more in control, more settled, and instead feeling further away from yourself.

Toward the end, he talks about going home. He moves back to Vermont after living in Nashville. The decision feels like something that’s been building in him. A realization that it’s just where he feels more like himself, no matter what that looks like.

Not fixed. Not better. Just more like himself.

I kept thinking about that. How different that is from the way we usually talk about change. We’re so used to the idea that things should get better, clearer, more resolved. But this felt more like a return than a solution.

And I kept coming back to the people I work with. How many of them don’t feel that way in their own bodies? How often does the goal become fixing, changing, controlling, instead of asking what it would mean to feel a little more like yourself there? Not perfect, not resolved. Just a little more like you.

Sitting there next to my daughter, I wasn’t thinking about how to explain any of this. I wasn’t trying to turn it into a lesson or a conversation. I was just paying attention. To what she connects with. To what she hears in his music. To the fact that this is the kind of honesty she’s choosing to listen to. That part made me proud.

My kids are leaving for college soon. I don’t know how many moments like this we have left where they ask me to sit down and watch something with them. Where I get a small window into what matters to them right now.

Maybe that’s part of this too. Not fixing anything. Not trying to turn it into something bigger than it is. Just being there for it. The mix of joy, pride, and sadness.

We watched it together. She asked. I said yes. And for a couple of hours, we sat on the couch listening to someone say things that usually stay quiet.

That feels like something I want to remember. And I’m really looking forward to the concert.