Stay Gold

I first met The Outsiders when I was a kid – a wide-eyed student swallowed up by S. E. Hinton’s world of Greasers and Socs, cracked fists and quiet heartbreak. I remember reading it and watching the 1983 movie, feeling like I was touching something raw and forbidden, something too real for the neat rows of desks and chalkboards waiting at school.

Years later, as a teacher in inner-city Oklahoma City, I read that same story aloud to my own students – kids who knew all about survival, about rough edges, about playing roles just to get through the day. I watched them lean in, watched their walls soften, as Ponyboy and Johnny’s world unfurled. We weren’t just reading a book; we were slipping into a mirror.

And always, always, there was that poem. Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost.

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

That opening line – what a gut punch. It’s telling us right away: what’s most beautiful, most alive, most precious… is also what slips away the fastest. The first flush of spring, the first thrill of love, the first glimmer of possibility – gone in a blink.

As a kid, I felt that as melancholy, a kind of sad truth about growing up.

As a teacher, I felt it as a desperate wish for my students: hold on. Please, just hold on.

But now, as an IFS (Internal Family Systems) therapist specializing in helping people find their authentic selves, I hear it like a spiritual bell ringing:

this isn’t just a truth about nature or youth.

It’s a truth about you.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

IFS teaches that we are made of parts – protective parts, wounded parts, anxious parts, fiery parts – and at the core, something unbreakable: Self. Calm, curious, compassionate, connected. That’s the “gold.” That’s the flower that blooms inside us, often only for an hour before the world or our defenses start crowding in.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief.

Yeah. That sinking – that fall from grace, from ease, from wonder – we all feel it. Life has a way of piling on betrayals, heartbreaks, little daily abandonments. The grief is real. But here’s the catch:

Eden didn’t disappear. It’s still inside you. It’s just covered over.

That’s why Johnny’s dying words hit so hard: “Stay gold, Ponyboy. Stay gold.”

He’s not saying, stay innocent or stay young.

He’s saying: remember who you are beneath the grief.

Remember your authenticity, your softness, your innate goodness.

Stay connected to the part of you that still believes, still hopes, still loves.

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

At first glance, it sounds like a funeral bell: nothing good lasts, kid.

But if you look again – really look – it’s not just about loss. It’s about attention. It’s about knowing the dawn won’t last forever, so you hold it in your chest when it comes. It’s about staying awake to the beauty, even as it flickers and fades.

And in IFS language, it’s about turning toward your parts, your Self, your gold – over and over again – because the world will try to make you forget.

As a therapist, as a parent, as a human stumbling forward, “stay gold” has become my whispered rebellion.

It’s not about clinging to some naïve hope.

It’s about fiercely, tenderly, defiantly protecting the truth of our authentic goodness – even in a world that rewards hardness, speed, performance, and control.

So here’s my invitation to you, wrapped in Frost’s aching little poem and Johnny’s trembling voice (I still feel feel the ache and get teary when Johnny tells Ponyboy, “Tell Dally, I don’t think he knows.”):

Stay gold.

Stay awake to your own goodness.

Stay awake to the sunrise inside you, even when the day feels long and cold.

You are still gold.

Even when the leaf subsides.

Even when Eden grieves.

Even when the dawn slips away.

Stay gold, friend.

Stay gold.