[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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Weekly Wide-Awake: The Long View
“We need to be determined to achieve positive change, but also need to be able to take a long view of what needs to be done.”
Dalai Lama
This week I have been thinking about the long view. Ancient hearts. 80 years of love and work. Summer vacations. Gratitude and change. Hope as gratitude on fire. Meditation to lighten up and loosen my grip. How do I see beyond the daily deluge of chaos and not completely check out? So much is at stake right now. Personally and collectively. Taking the long view, when I manage it, helps work through it all. Personally, I recall moments when I have faced struggles and challenges and come out on the other side. (I am old enough to know that there have been many struggles and challenges over the years.) I taste fear. I hear failure. I see regret. I touch uncertainty. I get through it. Collectively, the decisions we make right now are enormous. Caring for others, both our neighbors and descendants, must frame our actions. From voting and making sure voting rights are secured and maintained, to wearing a mask, to writing our elected legislators, to supporting minority-owned businesses, to educating ourselves about science, that is acting on collective responsibility. Both the personal and the collective are part of the long view.
My husband and I have a special hand clap we do before we run. The hand clap brings us from our short view before a run to a long view. This might seem silly, but it is an example from my everyday life of my long view – of moving beyond the noisy thoughts of paralyzed negativity to something else. I have come to understand our health goals are part of big picture determination to live our long view. The simple clap is motion toward positive change.
It is hard to take the long view right now. I am learning that the long view is not separate from what is right in front of me. The long view is the wisdom of the past, meeting present actions, with a consideration for the future.
Read Gratitude Conversations Volume V – Gratitude and Change here.
Support Hope Is Not Cancelled and outrun cancer with Hope Scarves here.
About Katie
Born in 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.
