What We Bring Along

[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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A river doesn’t hold all the water that passes through it.
Mark Nepo

My parents are selling our family house.

The house that I have called home since I was 8 years old. The house that has been my North Star. The house that has been constancy during change. The house that has been open arms. Selling the house is a good thing. It is time. The river is not holding the water that is passing through. That doesn’t make it easy.

Our house is about a mile from the Ohio River.

When I think about the river, I am flooded with memories of the lives of people who are no longer with us, of victories and defeats, of habits and seasons, of books I read and where I read them, of things I wrote and where I wrote them, of songs I learned and where I learned them, of seeing the house in the distance as I was coming home, of the sounds of the clattering fan in the hall bathroom, of birds and frogs, and barges and calliopes. As we sort through the stuff in the house – the antiques collected from generations, the boxes and boxes of pictures that tell all the stories, the artwork gathered from artist friends and years of vacations – it is hard to know what to bring along. The excavation is balm for the soul. Part therapy. Part celebration. My heart says make space to bring things along. My head understands I am already the sum of all I learned there.

I have been held by the river my entire life.

The house, like the river, has held me my entire life. It cradled my creativity. It sheltered my family. It stood over time as other things – my dreams, my relationships, my body – have morphed and changed. I have always understood the gift of being held. We are held beyond the things we sort through. We are held by the experiences have. We are held by the love we share. Being held makes what we bring along make sense.