• Milk and Something Green

    Chiaroscuro of a Passing Thought circa 2026 Mrs. Gilly Milk and Something Green The paper cloud is shaped precisely, like a thought bubble, which is appropriate, its edges torn into something that resists straightness, the way a held breath resists release, or the way Sundays resist ending. It is a serious cloud, or at least…

  • Dodge, Duck, Dip, Dive, and Dodge Again:

    A Neuroaesthetic Theory of Survival Every nervous system develops a choreography. Long before we have language for it, before we can explain ourselves to therapists, teachers, partners, or even to ourselves, the body learns a sequence of movements. Some of these movements are visible. Others occur internally. Together they form a repertoire of responses that…

  • The Wrench Thrower: Notes on a Firefighter I Am Still Learning to Thank

    I am still sorting my scripts. That is the honest place to begin. In Internal Family Systems therapy, the interior life is not a single voice but a community — parts with distinct roles, distinct histories, distinct ways of trying to keep the whole person alive and functioning. Some of those parts I have named.…

  • Aftershock

    Somewhere above me a life is happening in boots — and not the cute kind. My stomach knows that language — conjugates it downward through the ceiling, through the plaster, through the years, until the room rearranges itself around an older room, the one with the low light and the counting. This is worse than…

  • The Mouse in the Wall

    We hear it at night,a tiny pencil scratchingthe lease we never signed. We named them bothafter our landlords.It seemed only fair. In Monterey, Janice,where the rooms were built, politely,on the shifting sand dunes. In the Midwest, Gretchen,grandfathered into the garage wall. Neither pays us rent.It was always as such. Both buildings went upsometime in the…

  • Neurosignatures as Art Movements

    On How the Nervous System Paints, and How a Life Learns to Read the Brushwork Field Notes on Ground, Trait, State, Sfumato, Pentimento, and Chiaroscuro Mechelle Marie Gilford, Ed.S., NBCT In the tradition of Oliver Sacks, who understood that the person inside the condition is always more interesting than the condition itself. “Tell me, what…

  • Instructions for Rolling 

    the sky tips its headto see what you are doing wind arrives latebut enthusiastic your laugh, laughingbefore you decidewhether you meant it and the hill—well, the hill is not seriousabout anything except gravity it keeps its promises you roll

  • The Pope Wrote a Letter to Teachers. I Think He Meant It.

    A close reading of Drawing New Maps of Hope — the apostolic letter on Catholic education that contains at least five things its summaries have not told you. For Church Life at Notre Dame by Mrs. Gilly, Mechelle Marie Gilford, Ed.S., NBCT, Mendoza EMNA Candidate at the University of Notre Dame. I want to start…

  • Fifty Ways to Leave Your Classroom

    Get on the Bus Gus by Mechelle Gilford circa 2024, For two years, I stood at my classroom window and watched my students run for the buses. I photographed them every afternoon — over two hundred times. Not because any single moment was remarkable. Because all of them were.  Fifty Ways to Leave Your Classroom…

  • Production at the Whims of My Brain

    By Mechelle Gilford  Some morningsmy mind arrives early,dragging crates of ideasthrough the loading dock of dawn,stacking sentences like bright canned goodson metal shelves. Other daysit leaves me staringat a blinking cursorlike an abandoned factory workerwaiting for the conveyor beltto remember its purpose. My brain is not a manager.It is weather. It floods the rooms unexpectedly,fills…