I served 23 years in the Air Force, first in logistics and then more than a decade in intelligence analysis, and I retired at 41. This week, I became a published children's author.

The book started long before my service did. In ninth grade, I wrote a short story about a girl named Penelope. My teacher stuck a yellow note on it that said I was good at it. I kept that note for 29 years, through every move and every deployment.

After I retired, I went back to that story. It became "Penelope and the Vase," a picture book for children 4 to 10 about a girl who goes looking for her worth in things she can hold and finds out it was inside her the whole time.

That note also became the Be Someone's Sticky Note Foundation, a Las Vegas nonprofit I started this year. On Nov. 21, we're hosting a free event where 100 local children hear the story, learn how to use affirmations, and each go home with a signed book and a plush sticky note of their own.

Military life teaches you to show up for everyone else. Plenty of us are less practiced at telling ourselves we're enough. That's what this work is about.

One note from one teacher stayed with me for almost three decades. If you've ever had someone believe in you at the right moment, you know what that can do. Be that person for a child in your life.

Danyail Lawton, U.S. Air Force, Retired
Las Vegas