Everything Needs Fixing

[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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in your thirties everything needs fixing. i bought a toolbox
for this.
From Karla Cordero’s “Everything Needs Fixing“

Everything needed fixing in my thirties. I had quit. I had gotten fired. I had moved across the country. I had burned. I had built. I had broke. My twenties were about living all of it. By the time I was thirty, I was too young to give up, too hard headed to keep flailing, too big to live small, and too loud to be quiet. I had already learned how much I did not know. I wanted to dive into the next decade like a master craftsman seeking to build the table on which future feasts will be served.

My Fix-It-At-Thirty Toolbox

Travel

My toolbox included travel. Travel all over the planet. Healing waters and museums. Food and conversation. Fjords and glaciers. Healers and sheep herders. The kind of travel so disorienting that it takes you a few days on either side to feel normal. Disorientation shakes the soul in ways that fragments can fit back together. Work travel allowed me to see large swaths of the United States. (Work travel can disorient, too.) Cross country moves (disorienting in the way that uprooting is the definition of disorientation) taught me about who I was, am, and continue to become.

Health

Health became a tool, as well. Never too concerned before 30, I started to run and completed a marathon within a year. To end the 15 year silence that surrounded my Turner syndrome diagnosis, I participated in a study at the National Institutes of Health. I started practicing yoga. I did all of that to feel whole in a body that always felt broken: to feel strong in a body that always felt weak.

Writing

Writing has been my most consistent tool. In my thirties, I completed my dissertation. I took writing classes and participated in writing groups. (The need for which and joy found within had been revealed to me in graduate school.) I wrote and published a memoir. I started my blog (which continues to this day, of course). I leaped into the world of writing. Eyes open. Heart exposed. Fear be damned.

What I Learned From My Fix-It-At-30 Toolbox

I am not sure why everything needs fixing at 30. Perhaps thirty is when the body, mind, and spirit need a tune-up. Perhaps thirty is when we begin to realize we are blessed to have lived this long and better kick ass the rest of this crazy life. Perhaps thirty is when we are strong enough, and love ourselves enough, to put the pieces back together. I am not sure. What I know for sure is that my fix-it-at-30 toolbox has left me stronger in the way that vulnerability and courage are strength in real time. I am more clear headed in that I ask for what I want and know what work is mine to do in this life. I am more grateful in the way that gratitude is the manifestation of abundance, grace and love.