These Are the Signs

[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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Pain is often a sign that something has to change. – Mark Nepo

Listening to pain.

The difference between pain and misery.

I have heard that pain is necessary and misery is optional. I am not sure what that means. I understand pain is necessary, but moving through misery does not really seem optional. Just as change happens constantly, and we change as surely as we live and breath, we flow through misery. Moving through misery seems deeply connected to our capacity to feel through the pain, reach out to others, listen, and grow.

Pain whispers and screams.

Sometimes pain whispers. A quiet knowing in the pit of my stomach. The slow-ache-thoughts in the middle of the night. That moment when I hear a story and connect with a familiar pain. Those moments are pain whispering. Pain screams when I force difficult conversations in unproductive ways. Pain screams when I treat my body poorly, or ignore body whispers too long. Pain screams during the repetition of insanity that expects different results from the same actions. Pain screams when something we love dies. Working through whispers and screams, through the heart of all that is, that is deeply felt healing and growth.

Embracing pain.

Several of my favorite writers write about writing from the scar. I think there is a bit of embracing pain that happens when we write from our scars. Perhaps scars are the living evidence of change. What if we live from our scars? Is living from our scars – our tomes of experience and memories framed in love and compassion -rather than our raw wounds of loss, anger, sadness, betrayal even possible? Can pain be our passenger? Can we invite pain on our journey as a gift of being human and alive? Fundamentally, embracing pain is about embracing change.

https://kitt.global/june-9-these-are-the-signs-mark-nepo-the-book-of-awakening/