[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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Weekly Wide-Awake: In Praise of Thanks
If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.
Meister Eckhart
I am generally a thankful person. I am not one to wait until I sit around the Thanksgiving table to count my blessings. That being said, I have to stop and remember to bow in deep gratitude for things both big and small. That is a practice. Like noticing the sound of silence on a morning walk in the woods, or the cardinal that watches me when I take a deep breath, or the feel of a pebble in my shoe that brings me back into my body as I go through the motions of forgetting it. Thankfulness is all around me all the time if I choose to hold it close.
It is hard to be both thankful and afraid. It is hard to be both thankful and anxious. It is hard to be both thankful and angry. Those truths make me seek abiding thankfulness even more.
This is a season when it is easy to forget to be thankful. Busy schedules, deep pressures, old hurts, new anxieties, and constant hungers are exacerbated by the speed of it all. Our breath is lost to memory and scars. Standing here we can give thanks. Look around and give thanks. Knowing that thankfulness can heal, give thanks. Looking toward the hope of a new year, give thanks. Counting our blessings, one-by-one, give thanks.
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.
