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.
In recognition of receiving the Dateline Award for the Washingtonian Magazine essay, The Unspeakable Gift.
Enter your email here to receive Weekly Wide-Awake
Weekly Wide-Awake: Object Permanence

Oh, how we entertain the angels/ with our brief animation.
Nicole Sealey
I am interested in the relationship between impermanence and permanence, birth and death, light and dark, truth and fiction, happiness and sadness, brevity and length. Where do we find angels and how do we make them laugh and cry? In the midst of it all, it seems like love is the point of our brief animation. If life is our brief animation and love is the point — and object permanence, which is the understanding that something exists, whether or not we can touch, taste, see, or feel, it — how do we build in our hearts and minds the experience of love so deeply that it transcends it all? Holding it fiercely and gently and closely and permanently while we live.
I call it permanent love. Permanent love is honest, reciprocal, abiding, sacred, and deep. It is occasionally joyous and always present. It pays attention. It breathes. It grows toward the sun. That is how it survives. It is not concerned with judging and keeping score and scorched earth — those are not permanent. Permanent love is not for the faint of heart. Demands within permanent love soften into boundaries. Expectations within permanent sound like clarity. Edges within permanent love look like kindness. Failure within permanent love is concerned with forgiveness and healing and trust. We know permanent love when we feel it. We know permanent love when we share it.
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.