[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 #25

Suns. Dinner Parties. New Worlds.

MONDAYS ARE FREE 086 — 090

Poetry. Bragging. Spaceships. Suns.

EXERCISE 089: SAVE THE SUN

haul the sun up

The sun might not come up tomorrow! Write an urgent note of at least 100 words to all your friends with a plan to haul the sun up over the horizon in the morning.

A 5-Step Plan to Haul Up the Sun In the Morning

Right now, hauling up the sun up over the horizon might seem too heavy a lift. Hope might seem too much to hold. Empathy might seem too weak. Grace is no longer amazing and day just might break us.

We need a plan.

Step one in a plan to haul up the sun — breathe again and again and again. There is no strength without breath. Step two in a plan to haul up the sun — be like plants. Hauling up the sun requires we head to the light like plants growing toward the sun. Step three in a plan to haul up the sun — decide toward morning again and again and again. Hauling up the sun requires decision muscle exercise. Every. Day. Like working out in the gym. That requires strength, too. Step four in a plan to haul up the sun — celebrate light and dark. Hauling up the sun requires moving between light and dark. Hauling up the sun requires living through light and dark. Hauling up the sun requires thriving in the light and dark. Step five in a plan to haul up the sun — fall apart and back together. Falling apart and back together — invoking the work of Pema Chōdrōn — is the heart of the haul. Mornings are series of aparts and back togethers, pushing the boundaries of light and dark to a next level experience of choosing breath and tomorrow and life.

Read the entire post here.

When the Impossible Reminds Me

Throwing a cosmic dinner party

Begin with the impossible.

I never thought it could happen, but … I was able to host a cosmic dinner party with Emily Dickinson, Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, bell hooks, Empress Wu Zetian, Indira Gandhi, Cleopatra, Lady MacBeth, Princess Leia, Eleven, and Dorothy Gale.

Read the entire post here.

Taking A Walk #28

Taking A Walk with Martha Beck

Wild New World

I took a writing class with writer, psychologist, and coach Martha Beck, Wild New World. As Beck explains, “All of us have patterns where we’re trying to live our best lives and we make the same mistakes over and over. Wild New World is about changing that.” Broadly understood, the Wild New World moves between our inward and outward self, our left and right brain, our thought and action toward our best lives. This class was about practicing the principles of wordlessness, oneness, imagination, and forming in the pursuit of thriving in the Wild New World.

Read the entire post here.

Gratitude Conversations #2

Mary Lee Webeck, Debora Wisneski, Ferial Pearson

Why Gratitude?

In 2017, heartbroken and eyeballs deep in despair, I started searching for things for which to be grateful. I asked myself the question asked by poet Katie Farris

“Why write love poetry in a burning world? To train myself, in the midst of a burning world, to offer poems of love to a burning world.”

I reached out to people who — in the way in which they live — write love poems to our burning world. I cast my net far and wide amongst my heroes — those I knew personally and those who teach us all by their example. I invited artists, philosophers, psychologists, politicians, professors, yogis, writers, clergy, and others into a dialogue about gratitude. I am deeply grateful to those who said yes. Read more about my gratitude project methodology here.

Read the entire post here.

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