[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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Misery
If peace comes from seeing the whole, then misery comes from the loss of perspective. – Mark Nepo
Dear Misery,
I need to make a few things clear.
I do not appreciate the way you expect me to get immediate results and break my heart when results don’t happen. I do not appreciate the way I have to hold your hand and be nice for a while before I can make you leave me alone. I do not appreciate the length of your visits, your mind numbing demands, and your lack of sensitivity. I do not appreciate the slow ache you bring that separates me from peace. I don’t appreciate the way you poison my perspective. I do not appreciate the way I am attracted to your dark, dramatic, smokey-eyed, poetic appeal. If pain is necessary and you are optional, I want to stop choosing you. All that being said, after 47 years, I want to wave a white flag. I want to sign a peace accord.
Can you help me?
Can you help me focus on what matters rather than what does not? Can you help me shift my perspective? Can you help me move through pain? Can you help me find wisdom? Can you help me mean it when I say, “It’s the journey, not the destination”? Can you help me turn corners, build bridges, and make amends? Having you as a partner as I learn these things makes sense to me.
What do you get out of helping me?
You get a guest who knows when she has overstayed her welcome and will leave. You will get a partner who appreciates your power but does not rely on it to escape, deny, or reject a path forward. You get a friend who can commiserate but will stop before spiraling. You will get a sounding board who will listen with compassion. You will get a coach with just the right balance of motivation and energy.
Thank you.
Thank you for all you have given me in my life. I really mean it. Thank you for giving me Turner syndrome, for without it life would be far less miraculous. Thank you for giving me several painful failures, for without them my successes would not taste as sweet. Thank you for connecting me with honest (not superficial-syrupy-sweet-not-invested-walls-up-say-what-I-want-to-hear) relationships, for without them my world would be a lonely place. Thank you for showing up when things matter, because that is how I know I am real and have the capacity to love.
In hope and kindness,
Katie
https://kitt.global/february-16-misery-mark-nepo-the-book-of-awakening/
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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.
As I get older I depend on misery leaving more quickly. I find that with some visits of misery I am actually calling or projecting that state I can do the same with hope, gratitude or acceptance. I need to remember that