[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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Hammer and Nail
“You gotta tend the earth if you want a rose.”
From “Hammer and Nail” by the Indigo Girls
I am thinking about tending. We tend ourselves, our relationships, our earth, our loves. What is on our minds that keeps us from tending, keeps us from peace. Whatever is on our muscles that keeps us from tending, keeps us from health. What is on our hearts that keeps us from tending, keeps us from love. When it all feels too much to tend, remember we don’t have to carry the weight alone. Share. Allow. Invite.
It is easy to notice roses. Pay attention to them. Pay attention to it all. Paying attention is tending in the way that noticing and savoring allow beauty and light to shine through. Feeling silk, a cat’s purr, and wet grass is tending. Savoring, smelling, seeing is tending. Building, creating, discovering is tending.
Tending makes sense to me. It is something I can do. It is something I can do with others. It is a spark that gets a fire going. It is the small act of kindness we can do again, and again, and again. It is arms open wide, palms turned toward the sun, chest full of breath and hope. It is the earth, the root, and the bud.
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.
