Widening Circles

[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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I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.
From Rainier Maria Rilke, “Widening Circles“

We must give ourselves to widening circles. Our widening circles hold multitudes. We fall apart and back together. We begin and end. We wake up and fall asleep. That feels right to me. That sounds like the knowing that whispers and shouts. That looks like a desire path that reveals itself as it is worn. That sounds like intimacy that is somehow both natural and hard won. Soft edges exist around it all.

We are asked to breathe into the widening circles. We are asked to reach out into the widening circles. We are asked to pay attention to the widening circles. We are asked to move through the widening circles. We are asked to hold the widening circles. We are asked to dance in our widening circles. We must give ourselves to widening circles.