Trust in the Chaos:

Small Shifts, Deep Breath, and the Quiet Power of Letting Chaos Transform You

By Christina Ireland
Mar 27, 2026

Chaos has always been part of being human.

Just being in a body can feel overwhelming. The ancient alchemists spoke of this as the prima materia ~ a swirling, formless state from which transformation begins.

When life feels chaotic, we often lose our center.

We can’t find coherence.

We can’t find the breath, the pause.

Chaos has been my companion for as long as I can remember, and every time it arrives, creativity isn’t far behind. Clear the clutter, the calm after the storm, doodle, journal, or move to help find clarity.

I’ve spent enough time inside my own shit storms to know this: chaos isn’t separate from creativity. Most of the time, it is the spark.

Take these common synonyms for chaos:
havoc, confusion, mess, hell, jumble, disorder, clutter, anarchy.

The last one particularly stood out for me.

I’ve always been a bit of an anarchist, not so much in the political sense, but in the soul sense: someone who refuses to pretend life is tidy when it’s clearly not.

And that’s the thing about chaos:
It’s not abstract.

It’s lived.

It shows up in the most ordinary, disruptive moments, in waves.

Take moving homes or relocating to a new country as an example. Everything gets stirred up, generally tornado-style. And then, gradually and slowly, things settle as we unpack, settle in, place furniture, hang pictures, and organize spaces, with a fresh new perspective. Creativity arrives in the out-breath.

Chaos isn’t foreign to us.

We knew how to navigate it, how to dance with it, once upon a time.

Think of a child. They move spontaneously, curiously, and freely.

They pick things up, drop them, taste them, explore them, abandon them, return again and again, randomly and naturally.

They swim in chaos without fear, because to them, chaos is play.

Somewhere inside us, that innocence still lives.

That freedom.

That wildness.

That unstructured creativity.

And here’s the truth:

That state of freedom is not far from overwhelm. It’s just on the other side of it.

As we grow up, we’re taught to fear chaos.

To control it.

To organize it.

To eliminate it wherever possible.

But what if chaos isn’t the enemy?

What if it’s the doorway?

As writer Tom Barrett puts it: “Chaos in the world brings uneasiness, but it also allows the opportunity for creativity and growth.”