[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
Enter your email here to receive Weekly Wide-Awake
back
Go To The Limits Of Your Longing
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
From Rainer Maria Rilke, “Go to the Limits of Your Longing“
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.
No feeling is final. Let that sink in. Thank you Rilke. Thank you Rilke. Thank you Rilke for reminding me that everything — the beauty and terror — are part of the falling apart and coming back together of life. I have thought a lot about finding my edge over the years.
The limits of my longing and my edge seem similar. They breathe my desires and hopes. They challenge my comfort and assumptions. They leap before nets appear. They boundary cross. They move slowly like anticipation and perseverance, while also fast like memories and fear. They creep in incremental heft toward an unknown. They connect with something greater.
Letting everything happen is beautifully terrifying. Sometimes it is hard to just keep going. As Glennon Doyle tells us, we can do hard things. Buried deep within longing and edge is our spiritual center — whatever we call it, however we understand it, where ever we find it. That is what we are asked not to lose.
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.
