[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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California
Oh it gets so lonely
From Joni Mitchell’s “California” from Blue
When you’re walking
And the streets are full of strangers
All the news of home you read
More about the war
And the bloody changes
Oh will you take me as I am?
Will you take me as I am?
Will you?
Home is the place that takes us as we are. Successes and failures. Stuff we want everyone to know and secrets. Perfect imperfections. All the stuff under the hood of life’s car. We know home when we are there. Home does not have to be particular place, and certain people do not have to be part of home, either. We get to choose how we define home and who we include in home.
Travel teaches me about home. Seeing beauty somewhere allows me to see beauty everywhere. Experiencing the new allows me to experience the old more deeply. Widening my arms to embrace difference and perspectives and understanding. Finding friendships with strangers. Appreciating the familiar a little more. There is no feeling like coming home.
I learn about home when I move, too. Keeping and letting go. Deciding what matters and what does not. Building and maintaining relationships. Welcoming and being welcomed. Discovering my home voice. Establishing my home rhythm. Practicing my home fundamentals. Through all my moves, and there have been many, I have always gone home.
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.
