[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: How to Miracle
People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child—our own two eyes. All is a miracle.
― Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation
Miracles are real. My life is a miracle. Our lives are miracles. This week I explore my experience living with Turner syndrome as evidence of miracles. Statistically speaking, my birth was improbable. Turner syndrome often leads to miscarriage or stillbirth. Since my diagnosis at 15, I have felt deeply connected to miracles. Not just big miracles but little miracles, too. I genuinely understand Hanh’s thought that simply walking on earth is a miracle. Let me explain. I believe paying attention is a sacred act. Paying attention is essential to being awake. Being awake is vital to experiencing miracles. We must be awake to it all to experience miracles. My Turner syndrome diagnosis invited/challenged me to find miracles every day. My wide-awakeness journey, which probably began in a church choir or dance lessons or around the kitchen table or the cherry tree in front of the house, became much more deliberate the day I got the Turner syndrome news.
What does it mean to miracle? What does it mean to say, “I am going to miracle the heck out of this [insert length of time].” (Why can’t we turn miracle into a verb?)To miracle means we pay attention. We pay attention to everything from breath and thoughts to work and play. To miracle means we are grateful from the place that knows practicing gratitude brings us back to ourselves when we get lost in the everyday. To miracle means to see the worm on the Beltline, to smell the pumpkin bread as it comes out of the oven, and to share in conversations with dear friends. To miracle means to cry when we feel deeply, to tell the truth even when it is hard, to greet the morning with grace.
About Katie
From 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.
