Miley Cyrus.

I was a little too old for Hannah Montana. I used to roll my eyes at her, an internalized misogyny kind of eye-roll. The kind we’re taught to do when a girl is loud, shiny, confident, and too big for the box she’s been given. Too visible. Too performed. Too much.

She shapeshifted in public while the world ridiculed her for daring to be unruly. We didn’t realize at the time that we were witnessing someone who was always going to outgrow the container.

Oh, what… we’re shocked when the tiny person forced into a grueling, adult-level work schedule at age 12 grows up too quickly? Weird.

We treat child stars like machines and then clutch our pearls when they start dancing in latex or shaving their heads. The rebellion isn’t the surprise the survival is.

And then “Flowers.”

Not just a song it was a collective rupture.

Her honesty met my freedom mid-air, like a cosmic high five between strangers on parallel healing timelines. It was one of those rare moments where you could feel the entire internet sync up. The kind of shared emotional beat we’re losing in the age of algorithmic solitude. Everyone I knew texted some version of “Wait, this is actually so good??” And we knew what we meant. Not just catchy. Not just empowering. But true.

Miley gave us a moment.

She gave us the pulse.

In an era where everything is fragmented, curated, and strategic, she gave us a feeling. A spark of collective feminine liberation. It cracked open something soft and solar in all of us who had been performing our way through grief, longing, and self-abandonment.

She didn’t apologize.

She didn’t over-explain.

She just stood in her own light. A woman. Whole. Bright. No longer auditioning for belonging.

And then came the album Something Beautiful.

Her newest body of work is nothing short of mythic pop maximalism is lush, layered, and fiercely feminine. It’s fantastical, sensual, and strangely stabilizing. It’s the sound of someone who’s not afraid to be both mirrorball and mountain. These songs don’t beg for radio play, they offer themselves as emotional ecosystems. They hold the complexity of real, grown, gloriously contradictory lives.

They remind us we can be devastated and divine.

Soft and sharp.

Golden and burning.

She is the blueprint for surviving your own spectacle and choosing to thrive anyway.

She’s no longer asking for the mic she is the mic.

And I’m listening.