WANTED: Week One

[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 One

Turner syndrome: What I want to say about chronic conditions and longing and betweenness and brokenness.

I first heard your name when I was 15.

My first longing — for the knifelike abdominal pain to end. My second longing — for the languages of endocrinology, cardiology, and rheumatology to remain foreign languages. My third longing — for the definitions of normal and healthy and invincible to include me.

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

You broke me open long ago. My skin splits at each wound where puss and scar tissue meet. My hands hold tight to truths that were never mine. My breath moves up and down, up and down, up and down. My eyes see through diagnoses and daydreams. I always wanted the same God that guided my improbable birth to reveal my magic. I always wanted to ignore finitude. I always wanted to be whole.