[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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Perpetual Spring
Even the prick of the thistle,
from “Perpetual Spring” by Amy Gerstler
queen of the weeds, revives
your secret belief
in perpetual spring,
your faith that for every hurt
there is a leaf to cure it.
I hold on to “faith that for every hurt there is a leaf to cure it” with both hands. I am profoundly curious. Curiosity is a leaf of faith. I move to new cities and search for new leaves. Change is a leaf of faith, too. I reach out for the leaf of righting old wrongs. There is healing there. I find trees full of leaves and notice each and every leaf. There is wisdom there. I practice forgiveness and letting go. They are leaves. I write because words can be leaves.
My secret belief in perpetual spring is not even all that secret. I believe in perpetual spring with all my heart. To say I never experience doubt and fear would be completely false. What I am saying is that I invite doubt and fear into my perpetual spring. I ask doubt and fear to be with me.
When I fail miserably at something (which happens frequently) I search for leaves. Signs of life. Light in darkness. Warmth in cold. I search and have faith that a leaf cure will emerge, and doubt and fear and cynicism and anger and whatever else I am carrying along with go by way of my breath. A gentle exhale. That is the leaf cure. That is perpetual spring.
About Katie
From 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.
