[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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Weekly Wide-Awake – Choose Love
My Choice
This week I thought about choices.
I went to an open air restaurant in Key Largo last Saturday. I immediately noticed half the staff wearing masks (the guideline for reopening) and half the staff not wearing masks. The crowded restaurant was not respecting capacity guidelines for reopening, either. We were preparing to leave, when a server asked us if she could help us find a table. I explained that we were leaving because half of the staff was not wearing masks. She responded, “That is my choice.” I then explained, “Leaving is my choice.” I chose to leave because unmasked crowds are unsafe right now. Plain and simple. I also left in an act of solidarity with other mask wearers that are respecting reopening guidelines, and with the medical care providers who will be asked to care for those who get sick as a result of ignorance and indifference.
Right now we are all faced with deep and important choices. The choice to use our bodies and minds toward justice and love. The choice to educate ourselves about history, public health, and policy. The choice to create and build tomorrows that do not perpetuate yesterday’s failures and cruelties. The choice to wear a mask feels like a simple one.
Choice Right Now
What I read and wrote about this week makes me think about choices. Serving others as a grateful choice. Worship as a choice toward continual revelation. Fasting as a choice of peaceful resistance. The choice to leave the cages our lives. The choice to set goals. The choice to fall awake. These are all choices I considered this week, as absolute fatigue over it all begins to creep into my bones. There is no time to feel anything but blessed by all the choices. To hold each choice as a precious opportunity. This moment requires our choices to move us toward love. To both individually and collectively choose love.
About Katie
Born in Louisville. Live in Atlanta. Curious by nature. Researcher by education. Writer by practice. Grateful heart by desire.
Buy the Book!
The Stage Is On Fire, a memoir about hope and change, reasons for voyaging, and dreams burning down can be purchased on Amazon.
