[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
Enter your email here to receive Weekly Wide-Awake
back
Gratitude and Creativity: Creativity As Love Letter
To be creative is to be in love with life.
Osho
Creativity has saved my life on several occasions. When I think back over performing in casts, singing in choirs, writing books, directing shows – and studying, watching, and learning about all that – creativity is at the top of my personal gratitude list. Creativity has delivered me from darkness. Creativity has surrounded me in love. Creativity has shown me my truth. When I started my gratitude journey, I was not sure that other people shared my feelings about creativity. Would others view creativity as a foundational thing for which to be grateful? Would anyone even care? Having spent many years working to make the power and necessity of creativity real across all hearts and minds, making the gratitude and creativity connection is not always a slam dunk. As the conversations unfolded I learned I was not alone. Somewhere in a world of expression, presence, connection, and movement lives my love for creativity.
Being grateful for creativity looks like many things. Creativity is experience that is benevolent, abundant, fresh, inspirational, and everything else we can describe as more from less. Creativity is breath from lungs in the healthiest human body. Creativity is thinking from a hard drive in the most powerful computer. Creativity is wisdom passed down from generations. Creativity is the celebration of all that is unique and beautiful. Creativity is curiosity and experimentation and diligence.
If creativity is being in love with life, as Osho suggests and I whole heartedly agree, then connecting gratitude and creativity makes sense. It is a profound thank you for all that is and all that might become. It is the tears we shed that allows all tears to flow together. It is the laughter we share to remind us what laughter sounds like. Creativity is our love letter to the world.
Read Gratitude Conversations Volume IV – Gratitude and Creativity
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.
