Chaos File 009: The Power of a Post-It

One of my favorite things to search in my Google Photos is “post-it” or “sticky note.” The chaos of my brain is often written down and photographed, and there’s something strangely sacred about those tiny squares of chaos and affirmation…especially when they come from strangers who saw something in you for the few hours you were forced to work in a group.

I found this photo today from a Safe School Ambassadors training activity, and it inspired a whole day of writing. I cannot stress this enough: the power of a Post-it is real.
Even if it’s “just an activity” in a PD (granted, this was a really good PD).

Whether you’re running a workshop, teaching a class, or just trying to keep someone from falling apart in a coffee shop—share the kind words. Write the thing.
It matters.

Even if it ends up stuck in the bottom of a backpack or training manual for six months. Even if they don’t remember your name. Even if it’s just two sentences in Sharpie.

Because those little scraps of kindness?
They stick.

Chaos File 008: Best Portrait Ever

Few things bring me as much joy as portraits of me drawn by students. This one is the Mona Lisa.

Chaos File 007: “Hold Your Head Up, Wilma."

I bought this photo in an antique shop about 15 years ago for a dollar. I didn’t need it, but something about pulled at me so hard, I couldn’t leave without it. On the back, it says: “Hold up your head, Wilma. I would if I were you.” That line has lived in my bones ever since.

This photo has followed me to many different addresses, through breakdowns, breakups, and more new beginnings than I can count. It feels like I’ve lived a dozen lives in the time I’ve had the photo, but that message to Wilma has been there at every new beginning always reminding me to keep my chin up.

I’ve always had a strange draw towards the things people leave behind…like book inscriptions written with so much care that now sit forgotten on dusty shelves or old photos with lovely messages written on them meant to pay tribute to and preserve a moment in someone’s life that have found their way into a basket at an antique stores, like this one on FM 518 in Pearland, TX.

Things that were once precious often become $1 curiosities, and this 100 year old photo (if I had to guess) of two women I will never know is one of my most prized possessions. Wilma may have just broken a nail while picking flowers or lost her man in the Great War. I don't know what she was going through, but I’m having a rough roaring twenties of my own. I appreciate the message.

I hope Wilma held her head up that day. I’m holding mine up, and I appreciate these two for the advice.

xoarl

Chaos File 006: Voice Memo From Brian

Voice Memos from my brother are always a delight, and this is certainly the best 64 seconds of my day.

Chaos File 005: Seventeen

Her handwriting. My voice. Our story.

I pulled this journal entry from a box of my mom’s things I’ve been sorting through while writing. Most of it is a jumble—photos, scribbled notes, receipts, half-thoughts that trail off—but I randomly opened to this page from 1998 today, and reading it felt like flipping to a page in my own notebook (if my handwriting were better and my thoughts a little clearer). I would never say “run like the wind” and have no interest in bungee jumping, but it seems we had similar aspirations in our 40s.

I always knew we shared some things—our love of words, our capacity for big feelings, our inability to control our facial expressions—but going through this box, I’m realizing we shared even more than I thought We were, and are, deeply similar.

When I’m in the passenger seat rifling through my bag for a pen, it’s a whole production. Zippers, wrappers, the clatter of rogue ibuprofen in a side pocket. A fork I forgot about. Surprise candy with questionable wrapper integrity. That bag is my Cotopaxi mobile office, but it may as well be a tribute to my mother’s purse. Always chaotic, probably had what you needed (eventually), and always pretty reflective of the mind of the woman carrying it.

I am her. That truth has always been semi-alarming. But now, it’s also deeply comforting.

This page—dated March 29, 1998—was written when I was seventeen. That age feels like a lifetime ago, and also somehow just beneath my skin. I can’t stop thinking about the timing. It’s like a sign from the universe that I’m on the right path.

I hang out with teenagers for a living, and I have a couple of degrees in education. I can say with absolute certainy that 17 years olds are children. No one is equipped to make informed decisions and deal with the consequences of those choices. Their prefrontal cortexes are still under construction and executive function is on its way but stuck in traffic. My mother got married at 17, and I was 17 when everything shifted for me. The year the systems that were supposed to protect me—school, family—didn’t. I’ve spent my entire adult life repairing the damage of that traumatic year (which felt nothing like trauma at that time) because I was a child that was failed by the people who were responsible for me. That’s not blame. That’s just the truth.

I’ve lived what feels like a hundred different lives since then, and I’m a few years older than my mom was when she wrote it. I’ve learned a lot in the time since (from many years in both public education and therapy). Here’s the thing—what others do with the truth is none of my business. My therapist (a literal goddess) helped me understand that telling the truth is not the same as assigning blame. I’m not responsible for the feelings or reactions of others.

In 1998, We were two women, at very different ends of the same bridge. She was learning how to live again, and I was trying to figure out how to start.

My mom died when I was 29, just as we were beginning to find each other—not the roles we were given and expected to play, but in the people we were becoming. We'd only just started building a relationship grounded in truth and joy, instead of guilt and expectations.
I was barely old enough to see that we’d both been surviving in silence.
We missed each other.
But now, all these years later, I’m finally catching up.
And I’m proud of the life I am living and I know she would be proud too.

xoarl

Chaos File 004: Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Before chaos had a name, it looked a lot like this: a bench, a brother, and a pair of flip-flops.

I am thrilled to be in the thick of the memoir writing process. The little girl sitting on that bench 40 years ago wouldn’t have dreamt that the first “chapter” would be written about (and for) the little boy on that bench.

An excerpt about Brian:

As a child, my brother Brian was never just a kid—he was a performer. Anytime he could gather a crowd, especially one full of women of a certain age, Brian seized the moment to launch into his rendition of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." He was utterly fascinated with Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, an admiration that quickly spiraled into a lifelong passion for all things Judy Garland. In Brian’s kindergarten school photo, he was proudly wearing a blue gingham shirt our grandmother carefully sewed, determined to fully embody Judy Garland. 

His obsession reached new heights when, inspired by Garland's well-known struggles, he climbed into the medicine cabinet during one of my mom’s lengthy phone calls, dramatically attempting to overdose on Flintstones vitamins. (Meanwhile, I once polished off an entire jar of mayonnaise during a similar unsupervised moment—an act that probably says more about our childhood personalities than either of us care to admit.) Brian was dramatic, and quite probably the only ten-year-old boy in Port Arthur, Texas, in the 1980s who regularly trekked to the public library in search of Judy Garland biographies. 

And whatever he was into, I was into—partly because that's what siblings do, and partly because I had no choice. I’d heard him practice “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” or, oddly enough, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” enough at home that I was never quite as impressed with the performances as everyone else because he was my brother. But he was also one of my only friends. The older I get, the more clearly I see just how lonely we both were as kids, two weird siblings wandering together through library aisles filled with other people's stories, desperately searching for our own.

Chaos File 003: Things I’ve Been Carrying (Literally)

I don’t know what this it or why I’ve been carrying it around in my computer case for a couple months. There might be an important moment of genius in there…or it may be trash. Either way, I’ll think of it as a lesson for sort through all the things I’m carrying around that don’t serve me.

Chaos File 002: The Genetic Jackpot

I once had a psychiatrist tell me that I’d hit the genetic jackpot for mental health predispositions. And honestly? He wasn't wrong.

Maternal Genetic Jackpot—me, my mom, and her mom c. 1987 if I had to guess. In my family, we won’t pass down recipes, heirlooms, etc…we lovingly pass down anxiety, neurodivergence, and a legendary talent for overthinking and feeling everything at once.

I wouldn't trade my time with those two (or the beautifully tangled brain they gave me) for anything.

xoarl

Three generations and a whole lot of big feelings.

Chaos File 001: Inside My Journal

Welcome to the Chaos Files.
This is where I dump the stuff that doesn’t quite fit anywhere else—but still matters. Think of it as a spiraling scrapbook, a behind-the-scenes look at how my brain works (which, honestly, is where all the words I write start out anyway).

It’s messy, nonlinear, deeply human—and maybe a little beautiful, too.

You’ll find journal scans, unfinished thoughts, voice memo transcripts, weird lists, old letters, notes app confessions, and whatever else I feel like sharing. Some things are funny. Some are raw. Some are just…scribbles.

The truth is: my brain is all over the place—and this section reflects that.
It’s taken me years to figure out how to take all the notes, noise, and nonsense inside my head and turn it into something I can share with other people. I’m proud that I finally got here (shoutout to my therapist—thanks, Feelings Healers™!).

If you’re curious about the chaotic behind-the-scenes part of my writing, storytelling, or healing process—this is it. Welcome to the mess. I kind of love it here.

xoarl