[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!
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.
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.
I had planned on running for Hope Scarves for the third year in a row at the Kentucky Derby mini-Marathon this April, but like so many things the race was canceled. Unlike the mini, hope was not cancelled. As I train for the marathon I will run in January of 2021, I still want to outrun cancer.
Hope Scarves is nonprofit organization established in Louisville, Kentucky in 2012 to provide hope, comfort, and strength to women living with breast cancer. They do this through sharing scarves and stories, and raising research funds. Their mission is exactly what I support. The founder, Lara MacGregor spork with me about gratitude in 2018. Read our conversation here. She is a force of love and light in this world.
I am running for Hope Scarves because I am committed to catching gratitude on fire. Hope Scarves’ work is gratitude on fire. Lara talks about gratitude as a verb – as something we can do – a muscle that we can strengthen with each decision. Hope saves lives. Sharing our stories saves lives. Research saves lives. That is fire.
Lara talks about facing cancer rather than fighting cancer. Listening to her, I learn that facing cancer leaves room for running wild and free. There is wisdom in the idea that when we face things, rather than fight them, we open ourselves to joy. We must help people face cancer at the individual and institutional level – in our living rooms and research labs, in our conversations and medical treatments, in our running shoes and our stories. Facing things feels like the slow burn of fire to me.
In the spirit of love. In the knowledge we will cure breast cancer. In the hope of catching gratitude on fire.
