Being Sad

[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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The best thing for being sad, replied Merlin, is to learn something. – T.H. White

I have known sadness in my life.

The kind of sadness in which tears flow, my breathing speeds up, and my head hurts. Sadness can fall like a dark cloud, crash like a car into a concrete barrier, or slither like a snake moving toward its prey. Sadness can connect us with one another, invite us to heal, and be an integral part to life’s ebbs and flows.

I don’t consider myself a sad person, in general.

Serious. Yes. Sad. No. When I am sadder than a general malaise or low grade ache, I do a few things: I create something (a meal, a blog post, a flower arrangement). I make a gratitude list (refocusing my thoughts on the positives in my life). I get outdoors (there is something calming there). I connect with someone I have not talked to for a while (connecting alway helps). Finding order helps, too (cleaning, clearing, making space in closets). I am not exactly sure of the connection between this actions and seeing me through sadness. Maybe it has to do with the salve for my soul that all those things are.

I have learned a great deal from letting myself just simply be sad sometimes.

I have learned that fighting or faking my way through sadness does not help me find happiness. It takes as long as it takes. I have learned there is a difference between sadness and misery. Sadness feels necessary. Misery feels optional. Mark Nepo suggests we can use sadness as paint to color the canvas of our lives. I am learning that sadness and joy and anger and excitement and all of it are meant to color the canvas of our lives: the beautiful picture of what it means to be human.