Here and There

[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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Here is always beneath There. – Mark Nepo
Mark Nepo

What I Know For Sure About Here and There

There is bigger in our memories.

Memories are There. My memories are big. The church I attended as a child. My high school. The house in which I grew up. Milestones. Events. Memories let There be a bit grander, skewed toward the magical, and closer to my dreams. There is alive in our memories. We can dress There up in costumes. We can give There superpowers. We can talk about There in ways that truth becomes a fairytale. A big There can protect. A big There can soothe.

If we don’t love Here, we won’t love There.

Here and There ask that we love where we are. Loving Here can seem impossible in times when fear and cruelty and pain seem to frame our lives. Loving Here looks like taking time, even a minute, each day to reflect. Loving Here looks like caring for ourselves and others. Loving Here looks like wrestling joy from the clutches of the day-to-day. Loving There looks like setting the fire of goals and dreams. Loving There looks like loving the romance of possibility and the comfort of now. Loving There looks like hope.

Here is peaceful. There is peaceful.

When Here is peaceful things makes sense. Our world purrs. Our thoughts flow. We are in the zone. We feel wonder. There is no journey to gratefulness and creativity. We are simply There. When There is peaceful discipline is met with ease. Words like optimistic, positive, and gentle describe our perspective. We can see beyond the weight of our circumstance. Our horizon does not create anxiety. There lifts us out of despair.

Getting from Here to There.

To get from Here to There we move with grace knowing they are fundamentally connected by the fabric of experience. To get from Here to There we participate in the conversation of desire, forgiveness. and healing. To get from Here to There we embrace both Here and There. To get from Here to There we allow honesty and vulnerability to open the window of our soul and let sunlight in. That is how we get from Here and There.