My Stroke of Insight

[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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We are the life-force power of the universe, with manual dexterity and two cognitive minds. And we have the power to choose, moment by moment, who and how we want to be in the world.
From Jill Bolte Taylor’s TED Talk, “My Stroke of Insight“

I have been fascinated by the brain for many years. Immediately after graduate school, where my research agenda focused on a philosophical argument for educating our entire brains, the organization for whom I worked funded research into arts education and the brain. Specifically, looking at the relationship between the arts and neural plasticity was included in the work. Having known prominent educational theories — such as Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences Theory — had their genesis in studying the brains of people who had suffered traumatic brain injury, Bolte Taylor’s talk struck a visceral chord.

In a world that privileges the left side of the brain, articulating the power of the entire brain is radical. It calls for an entire rethinking of how we educate and live. It calls for assessing our decisions and choices in new ways. It calls for a complete reconfiguration of how we connect with one another. It calls for a wild new world.

Bolte Taylor’s courage and capacity and willingness to share her journey, invites us to a new conversation. I am struck by the vastness of her story. By that I mean, while her world was falling apart she was falling together. Her physical, social, cognitive, and academic identities collided and became something more. The notion that, from there, she wanted to share her insight with others so that others may understand and live in whole brain joy is truly beautiful.

I am learning that wild new world magic means we fully embrace our whole selves — including our brains — in complete integrity and love. It asks us to intentionally practice wordlessness and oneness and imagination.

Thank you Jill Bolte Taylor.