Feeling Our Way Through

[The Stage is on Fire] is a page-turner in which, much like life, there are no easy answers and yet each step of the journey yields insight and hope. This work of heart must not be missed!

Melanie Faith

Creative Writing Teacher, Essayist & Poet.

Katie Steedly’s first-person piece [The Unspeakable Gift] is a riveting retelling of her participation in a National Institutes of Health study that aided her quest to come to grips with her life of living with a rare genetic disorder. Her writing is superb.

The Society of Professional Journalists

In recognition of receiving the Dateline Award for the Washingtonian Magazine essay, The Unspeakable Gift.

I thank you … It is the authenticity of your “class notes”; and it is the delicacy and skill with which you present the nuances of classroom life and the actuality of your students’ and fellow teachers’ lives.

Maxine Greene

Philosopher and Education Scholar

Enter your email here to receive Weekly Wide-Awake

back

Underneath, there is only one emotion. – Mark Nepo

My parent’s are selling my childhood home: the home my family has lived in for 40 years. The home where I had my first kiss and drank my first beer and fell in love with Van Halen and writing. When I think about where my family is in processing this time and decision, I think about a kaleidoscope of emotion, about milestones and memories and family, about the constancy of those doors and windows and walls and flowers, about what it has felt like to know no matter where I go, home has always been there. Home is a verb there.

We are now in a grief process. We are sorting through overwhelm and stuff. We are in logistical overdrive toward next steps. We are staving off overwhelm and shutdown. Romance and pragmatism are dancing around facts. The stairs are more like a dangerous ladder than a gentle walkway. The yard is a beautiful acre of responsibility. The house makes 40 year old demands. This is where we are.

Feeling through this moment is teaching me a few things. I am learning the depth of my love for the people who have touched my life; for their spirits fill that house. I am learning of the complexity of home; for both joy and sadness live there. I am learning about the power of experience and memory and story; for I breathe differently there. I am learning that love looks like forgiveness and acceptance and gratitude; for finding childhood gems is priceless. I am learning about life’s flow; for what serves us when we are young often shifts and changes. All of these are goods things to know. All of this I am learning in this process. As the list of “last times” continues, it will become clearer I am sure. What the house means. What home means. The ways in which I carry home on in my life. We are all just feeling our way through.

https://kitt.global/may-13-feeling-our-way-through-mark-nepo-the-book-of-awakening/