Week Wide-Awake: Wintering In The Sun

[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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Week Wide-Awake: Wintering In The Sun

This is the solstice, the still point of the sun, its cusp and midnight, the year’s threshold and unlocking, where the past lets go of and becomes the future; the place of caught breath, the door of a vanished house left ajar.
Margaret Atwood

This week was the Winter solstice. The point in the year where the sun slowly emerges. I think about possibility, surrender, and balance. I think about forgiveness, vulnerability, and heart. I think about way, path, and opening. There is something incredibly hopeful about the Winter solstice. I can embrace it as an invitation to the I am, the as if, and the not yet.

The new year feels like an embrace, today. The past is more the past, today. The future is filled with new light, today. The world feels a bit softer and gentler, today. I am overwhelmed with nature’s rhythm — the ebb and flow, the lessons learned, the falling apart and coming together. The bigness of it all turns my thoughts toward oneness.

There is a deep connection between the Winter solstice and the holidays of this time of year. Celebrations of birth and light. Celebrations of kindness and generosity. Celebrations that open our hearts and make us believe in miracles. That all seems solsticey in the way that stars and tides and glaciers are vast, wise, and powerful.

Habit Tracking

I am seeking to build positive habits in three areas of my life — health, work, and spirit. Of course they are all interrelated, but I have separated them out to keep track. This week, we decided to calibrate/recalibrate our habit contracts. This was my third week of taking stock, my accountability experiment in preparation for the new year — it has felt like being a a dressing room of a store and seeing what articles of clothing fit. Each week has provided clarity and focus around what habits I will build in the new year. The contracts that will begin January 1, 2024.

Paying Attention

In alignment with — and in preparation for — my 2024 Word of the Year — presence, I am establishing a habit of pointing out a few things to which I have paid attention. I could also call this a gratitude list. I could also call this a list of common everyday miracles. I could call this a list of things that make me think. Things will include books, podcasts, music, art, poetry, and other stuff that catches my eye.