Swimming In Our Love

[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

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I lose sight of us at times; the way that fish can’t see the ocean; the price of lovers swimming in their love. – Mark Nepo

I am a curious lover of people. I strike up random conversations in different places. I ask a lot of questions. I learn gems of wisdom. Sometimes the questions focus on love, especially when I am talking with a couple. To me, swimming in love means staying in love, remaining intimate and warm, seeing the good in one another, first. I have a few thoughts about how to find and stay in love based on these conversations. Though these thoughts are focused on romantic couples, I suspect these truths hold across other relationships, too.

Couples who stay in love are kind to one another.

This might seem easy – a low bar – but it needs to be said right out front. Love can only live when we are fundamentally kind. Similarly, love dies when we are not kind. It is just that simple. There is a presence to kindness. There is a gentleness to kindness. There is a respect to kindness. Starting from kindness, working through pain and anger can happen.

Couples who stay in love are humble.

Humility is about listening and consideration. Humility is about forgiveness, apologies, and making amends. Humility is the opposite of self-centeredness. Love does not survive self-centeredness. There is a mutuality to humility that allows both people to understand and value the other. Humility asks us to be healthy and centered and not depleted and hurt.

Couples who stay in love laugh together.

Laughter has been a main theme of many of my conversations. Couples that laugh together stay together. I heard this particularly from couples who were older. When couples laugh, the white hot burn of whatever may be burning falls away. When couples laugh, really laugh from that space of comfort and common ground, they see the future and feel warmth. When couples laugh, they remember why they fell in love to begin with.

https://kitt.global/june-14-swimming-in-our-love-mark-nepo-the-book-of-awakening/