A to Z Challenge — The Living Archive: Notes to My 94-Year-Old Self

Labeling the Primary Sources of My Own History

History isn’t just something we find; it’s something we leave behind.

Inspired by Kirsi Dahl’s Letters to My Daughters and Lori Olson White’s Century Safe Project—two women writing time forward—I’ve turned the A-to-Z Challenge into an experiment in remembrance.

This year, I’m taking a 26-letter inventory of a life in progress, a digital time capsule so my ninety‑four‑year‑old self will remember and those who follow won’t have to guess.

I have no grand design—only a wish to look closely at the raw materials of my own becoming. I will record what is truly worth remembering: the grit and resilience, but also the absurd footnotes—ridiculous hairstyles, feats and failures, and the moments I was laughing too hard to breathe—that make a life one’s own. These are the primary sources of a life as it is actually lived, not just the one that looks tidy in a ledger.

From the first stirrings of A for Affection to whatever mystery awaits me at Z, this is the home base for every artifact and ancestor cataloged in the series.

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The Series Index:

A is for Affection: On the radical agency of choosing the standard for your own heart.

“Writing [this series] will change you, making you more intensely aware of your daily priorities.” — Martina R. Williams

B is for Books: The books that become friends we return to, and what they reveal about our souls.

“SO many books! The portal to our imaginations.” — Jill Swenson

C is for Comfort: The architecture of our everyday comforts—the shields that give us sanctuary.

“Such a wonderful list and something for us to consider making our own list of Comforts.” — Carmel’s Corner

D is for Dress-Up Box: The "dueling scars" of make-believe and the complicated, inherited history of the masks we wear.

“A delightful story…I’m reminded of the many dress-up games I played with my beloved “Bear.” Though restitched dozens of times, he’s one of the few artifacts of my childhood that remains.” — Barbara at Projectkin

“What magical writing-takes me back to my early days of imaging other worlds…” — Kyla Bayang

E is for “Easy Fix:" The family mantra that turns shattered heirlooms and everyday mishaps into lessons in proportion, reminding us that things are replaceable, but the people we love are not.

“My husband and I have been mastering the art of the easy fix for decades. For us it is combination of flexibility, decision analysis and knowing what matters. My grandparents were my role models on this craft and we are committed to passing it to our grands…” — Lori Olson White

“I also like the idea of Kintsugi -- the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery using lacquer mixed with powdered gold. Instead of hiding damage, highlight the repair. Treat the breakage as part of the story.” — Lisa Maguire

F is for Found: Finding the hidden “midden” of a family farm—the glass and iron fingerprints of my ancestors, preserved in the very soil I stand on.

“Fascinating!” — Beth O’Brien, Ph.D.

G is for Glass: Three hand-blown bottles from a family midden — and what the ordinary things people threw away reveal about the lives they actually lived.

“This is a marvellous piece of writing, Lauren. And it has inspired me to look again at the relics we found in our garden when we put in a pond...” — Xanthe Hall

“Loved this piece, Lauren. I am well familiar with all of those bottles and somewhere in my collection of ephemera is a Fletchers Castoria advertising postcard.” — David Shaw

H is for Humiliation: Most of history is an attempt to look dignified, but in this entry, I argue that we must preserve our peak humiliations. Read the story of my own 'Porcelain Murder Scene'—a jet-lagged, five-months-pregnant disaster in the middle of the night. It is a reminder that the archive truly survives on the grace to find the whole thing funny!

“Kudos for documenting it and reminding us all that ALL the moments matter, not just the self curated ones.” — Kirsi Dahl

“Dear Fire Station No. 1…[t]hank you for saving my life on Thanksgiving…I don’t know that the situation was really that extreme, but I’m going to claim it was to balance the mortification in which I now look back at just waltzing out in front of all of you from the toilet to my bed…” — Teresa Townsell

I is for Intersection: A meditation on the hidden history of the roads we travel every day. I drove through my hometown's "Five Corners" ten thousand times before realizing this single coordinate held the fireworks of an 1897 wedding, the grief of a fatal Christmas sleigh accident, and the forgotten footsteps of my own ancestors. It is a reminder that the land keeps its stories, and that sometimes, familiarity is just a kind of forgetting

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The Collaborative Archive

One of the most beautiful parts of this challenge has been seeing these “Living Archives” spark new investigations in others. Below are the essays and reflections this series has inspired—evidence of the “ripple effect” of each life lived, and what occurs when we bother to name what matters.

What Your Favorite Children’s Books Reveal About You by Fran Davis: A playful exploration of how our earliest stories act as personality snapshots.

“A living archive isn’t only made of census records and vital statistics—sometimes it’s made of the stories that raised us.” — Fran Davis

Six Books That Teach the Craft of History by Lisa Maguire: A discussion of the six books that made Lisa want to be an historian, and how those books made her a stronger writer.

“How are our libraries our own living archives? What books tell our story?” — Lisa Maguire

And read Teresa Townsell’s full comment in H is for Humiliation - it’s a hilarious story worthy of its own essay!