WANTED WEEK 6

[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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WANTED WEEK 6

Exploring the Living Hope

I live between acute and chronic. Between part and whole. Between silence and singing. Between science and story. Between worried and blessed. Between mess and miracle. Between secret and publication. Between creating and crying. Between constellation and darkness. Between vigilance and release. Between root and bud.

I admit I never really left. But, geography is bigger than place. I do not know how I am in and of. But here I am wrong, it all runs through it all. I am always seeking home.

My heart breaks with each story. Bulls crashing. Horses thrashing. Bombs exploding. Bodies breaking. Limbs flailing. Faces ripping. Tears falling. A community mourning. The certainty of black and white paints terror in stark relief to justice, peace, and love. A cubist sensibility made sense of senselessness. The darkness shakes my 16-year-old self. I am forever changed.

In that moment, I moved away from the pain of rejection and loss. I strove and failed and chose surrender. I desired and sought another way. I guess there are many paths to desire. I learned that life is not linear or binary or comfortable. Many years after I quit, I looked at the school’s website. There was an arts section that had a listing of the school’s theatrical production history. The years I was there had no mention of the shows on which we worked. Erasure stings like a Key West sunburn. I chose myself and my desire over the drama-teacher-romance my young self believed. I am thankful that I have dreams and desires. I am thankful that I believe in miracles and awe. I am thankful that I thrash and wail and breathe and sing, walking away was my effort to protect all that.

The helicopter landed on Fox Glacier’s ice. I wanted my Christmas card picture that year to be of my arms raised and eyes to heaven in victory and awe. In grace and beauty. In perfect time and joy. In breath and pause. In song and prayer. In “Hell, Yes!” In I am and as if and not yet. The bluest blue and solid flow. The crunch and glare. The thin air and close sky. The arrival and destination. The dream and experience. The ascension and the stretch. If I stepped out of my body I would break into a million pieces.

Thank you for reading the 6th week of Writing in the Dark WANTED. Join to read more about dreams and desires and wide-awakeness free to receive new posts and support my work.