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The Wide-Awakeness Project
“Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”
Mary Oliver
Wide-Awakeness Project Overview
The Wide-Awakeness Project seeks to create a world of fierce love, deep connection, and infinite gratitude. Its work has included: writing grants for under-resourced non-profits, conducting program evaluation for large and small organizations, creating arts-based curricula for cultural organizations, and writing about about living a wide-awake life.
Wide-Awakeness Project History
My wide-awakeness project began when I was diagnosed with Turner syndrome at the age of 15 – a genetic condition which is a leading cause of miscarriages, also often resulting in short stature, infertility, heart and kidney issues, and cognitive and social difficulties. At that point, I was faced with several existential questions: Why did I survive? If my life was going to be different, how could it still be meaningful? And finally, How could I pay this gift of life forward? I began to live what I would later learn to describe as an examined life – travel, education, creating, and serving others. My wide-awakeness project continued when I participated in a study at the National Institutes of Health and my big questions were responded to by facts – facts that frame how I understand myself and my approach to living life.
The fundamental inspiration for founding The Wide-Awakeness Project was my dissertation exploring the concept of wide-awakeness. After a brief public high school teaching experience, I wanted to understand how public high school teachers, in this environment of testing and “accountability,” manage to create powerful encounters with the arts. I am the daughter of educators. I wanted to be a high school drama teacher from the moment I seriously considered what I wanted to be when I grew up. Though the blood of teaching high school drama coursed through my veins, I could not survive as a high school drama teacher and I wanted to know why. For me, this centered on making an unapologetic philosophical case for arts education – a case that could provide language to explain the inherent value of arts education for our children, communities, and world. In many ways, the research agenda that guided my dissertation fuels my work today as I walk the path of a wide-awake life – as I do philosophy.
Gratitude Conversations
Gratitude Conversations serves as an entry point to the direction and potential of the Wide-Awakeness Project. I published the first Gratitude Conversation in October of 2016 in an effort: to establish a grounded theory of grateful living; to make gratitude tangible through story; to work alongside others to place gratitude front and center in our current zeitgeist; and to contribute to the ongoing conversation about gratitude. Toward achieving those goals, I have facilitated over forty hours of gratitude conversations, including interviews with an Air Force Colonel, a best-selling author, a diplomat, a Cirque Du Soleil performer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, gratitude researchers, entrepreneurs, nonprofit leaders, and many others. Interviews have been transcribed, edited, and posted. There have been 6 volumes of Gratitude Conversations published to date.
Weekly Wide-Awake
I began publishing Weekly Wide-Awake in April of 2020 in an effort to connect with a world that had been shut down. In 2020, Weekly Wide-Awake is a combination of daily posts about writing of interest, general life reflections, and poetry that moves my spirit. As the name suggests, I publish Weekly Wide-Awake every week. To date, I have highlighted works by Anne Lamott, Parker Palmer, Gretchen Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Pema Chodron, Oliver Sacks, Susan Sontag, James Baldwin, Sue Bender, Wole Soyinka, and Glennon Doyle, to name a few. In 2021, Weekly Wide-Awake will grow to include sharing inspiring resources that I come across such as talks, essays, new books, and podcasts, in addition to personal reflections.
About Katie
Born in 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.