<![CDATA[The Wide-Awakeness Project ]]>https://katiesteedlycurling.substack.comhttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!TXuw!,w_256,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6c9e1002-1965-4a79-ab40-caaf430b7de9_1280x1280.pngThe Wide-Awakeness Project https://katiesteedlycurling.substack.comSubstackThu, 03 Sep 2026 06:28:50 GMT<![CDATA[Living the Comma #44]]>https://katiesteedlycurling.substack.com/p/living-the-comma-44https://katiesteedlycurling.substack.com/p/living-the-comma-44Mon, 31 Aug 2026 20:43:53 GMT

What will happen at Living the Comma this year?

We are at the beginning of our continuing writing adventure. I have listened to conversations I have had with writing group members and made a few changes to this year’s process. To tie the weekly Living the Comma newsletter with monthly meetings on the first Tuesday of each month, each month will have a theme, and each theme will be explored in each newsletter and meeting. The hope being that each newsletter and meeting tie together and encourage connection.

Dates and Themes: September 1 — Beginning. October 6 — Imagination. November 3 — Gratitude. December 1 — Joy. January 5 — Winter. February 2 — Love. March 2 — Grace. April 6 — Breath. May 4 — Finishing.

A weekly Writer’s Hour will be from 12:00 to 1:00 EST every Monday beginning September 14th (after Labor Day.) The Writer's Hour will be an hour to gather weekly and write quietly together on an individual creative project.

A Writing Prompt

We will be writing about this prompt in our meeting on Tuesday.

I Begin Again, by Aura Brickler from The Book of Alchemy

Have you been bracing yourself for a new beginning? Perhaps one that is daunting yet inevitable, or maybe one that you’ve been hoping for and dreaming about. What will it take for you to get there? Who will be with you? What will it feel like when you get to the other side? If you’d like, use the refrain, “I will begin again as ...”

The text of the Begin Again prompt.

Beginning from Stitches

We will be walking through these passages at our meeting on Tuesday.

I don’t know Who - or what - put the question, I don’t know when it was put. I don’t even remember answering. But at some moment I did answer Yes to Someone - or Something - and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefor, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal. — Dag Hammerskjold, Markings

I heard Anne LaMott speak a few years ago during her book tour for the release of Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope, and Repair. I bought a signed copy of Stitches that night. I have gazed past the book for years on my bookshelf, always having something else to do or read. I turned to it recently in my search for meaning, hope, and repair.

Lamott starts, “Beginnings,” the first chapter of Stitches, with a question.

She asks, “Where is meaning in the meteoric passage of time, the speed in which our lives are spent? Where is meaning in the pits? In the suffering? I think these questions are worth asking?”

She then discusses finding meaning in specific crises — the list we all carry on our communal heart — and quotes a friend who says he has not yet found meaning. I live in the realm of not yet. I do not yet understand so many things right now. Full stop. I do not yet understand rejection of facts and science. Full stop. I do not yet understand a love of guns. Full stop. I do not yet understand why rich people must be so rich when that stratification of wealth leads to tremendous pain and suffering. Full stop.

Lamott shines light on our darkness.

“The equation is life, death, resurrection, hope. The hour is real, and so you make casseroles for your neighbor, organize an overseas clothing drive, and do your laundry. You can also offer to do other people’s laundry, if they have had any random babies or surgeries.”

It is comforting to me to think of life as this simple equation. Like falling apart and coming together, there is constant movement. Birth. Death. Rebirth. Perpetual spring on a personal scale.

I want to suggest Lamott thinks about the not yet on a personal scale. Within existential philosophy, there is an understanding that we are all not yet. Existentialists claim, “I am not yet.” We are all in the process of doing and becoming. Of blooming and shedding. Of opening and closing. Of starting and stopping. We are all not yet. We do everything we can do to ease suffering amidst it all. Perhaps casseroles and clothing drives are part of living the not yet. Perhaps birthday messages and phone calls are part of living the not yet. Perhaps holding doors for strangers and tipping at restaurants are part of living the not yet. Perhaps paying attention and telling stories are part of living the not yet. Perhaps forgiving and listening are part of living the not yet.

Shitty First Drafts

We will be walking through these passages at our meeting on Tuesday. Answer the questions in the comments section. We will share answers on Tuesday.

“E.L. Doctorow said once said that 'Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.' You don't have to see where you're going, you don't have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice on writing, or life, I have ever heard.” ― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

  1. You are the parent of teenager. What advice would you offer as they are learning to drive at night and how might that advice connect with building a writing practice?

  2. In what ways does beginning rely on seeing two or three feet ahead? (Stated another way, can beginning happen if we can’t see two or three feet ahead of us?)

“Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It's like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can't stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.” ― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

  1. Do you agree or disagree with the idea that writing and reading decrease isolation, restore buoyancy, and allow us to clap along with life’s absurdity?

  2. I have felt extremely isolated the last few years and have sought to create ships in rough seas through hosting a monthly supper club, starting Living the Comma, and being active at Virginia Highland Church. How do you handle isolation?

“You are lucky to be one of those people who wishes to build sand castles with words, who is willing to create a place where your imagination can wander. We build this place with the sand of memories; these castles are our memories and inventiveness made tangible. So part of us believes that when the tide starts coming in, we won't really have lost anything, because actually only a symbol of it was there in the sand. Another part of us thinks we'll figure out a way to divert the ocean. This is what separates artists from ordinary people: the belief, deep in our hearts, that if we build our castles well enough, somehow the ocean won't wash them away. I think this is a wonderful kind of person to be.” ― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

  1. What is the relationship between optimism and beginning? Between hope and beginning?

  2. How do we protect our artist’s belief that if we build our castles well enough the ocean won’t wash us away?

The text of “Shitty First Drafts,” Bird by Bird.

Looking forward to beginning a new year together. This newsletter will guide tomorrow’s discussion. Check out the prompt and “Shitty First Drafts” text. See you tomorrow.

From the heart of the comma,

Katie

Thanks for reading Living the Comma. Join our community and write and connect together.

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]]><![CDATA[The Unknowable Beginning]]>https://katiesteedlycurling.substack.com/p/the-unknowable-beginninghttps://katiesteedlycurling.substack.com/p/the-unknowable-beginningFri, 28 Aug 2026 10:00:00 GMT

I thought I knew myself when I quit my dream job — the job that had been my answer to the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” for many years. I laid on the couch eating ramen and cereal for a few days before I cleaned out my classroom during Christmas break. I smelled failure’s stench as I took down the posters and boxed up books. I tasted anger’s tears as I dropped my keys off at a colleague’s home before I left town. So broken I could barely breathe.

But I was wrong. Beneath the weight of exhaustion. Behind the shadow of daily evaluations that slowly tore me limb from limb. Seared by the “work smarter not harder” mantra that I detest to this day. Isolated from creativity’s life-giving force. Drenched in a shower of painful choices. I moved forward into the shape of a life that felt destroyed. A cross-country move, a flea infestation, a graduate school application, a car wreck, snow-capped mountains, an unsuccessful teaching license transfer, beach glass, belongings lost by a moving company somewhere in Nebraska, the refuge of a quiet movie theatre, a lost stop gap job at a pediatrician’s office, and invaluable mentors taught me a few things.

Packing up. I was not sure. Driving 2300 miles. I was not sure. Test after test. I was not sure. Life unfolded slowly. Like a flower blooming. Like a river flowing. Like a Phoenix rising. Like sunrise and sunset. When life happened, I learned to breathe. I made decisions. I breathed some more. I reached out. I breathed some more. I paid attention. I breathed some more. I changed my mind. I breathed some more. I changed my mind, again. I breathed some more. I fell apart and back together. I breathed some more.

Still, something in me began. I began to understand that I am stardust and scar tissue and steel. I began to understand the courage required to show up. I began to understand that being stuck is more painful than failing. I began to understand what it means to lean into the questions. I began to understand we often find what we seek. (That is particularly true for finding sweetness and resolve and joy and center and light.) I began to understand that imagination does reality’s heavy lifting. The unknowable continues every day.

Thanks for reading about my Miracle Project. Subscribe to the Wide-Awakeness Project to read about paying attention, unknowable beginnings, and miracles.

]]><![CDATA[Living the Comma #43]]>https://katiesteedlycurling.substack.com/p/living-the-comma-43https://katiesteedlycurling.substack.com/p/living-the-comma-43Tue, 18 Aug 2026 14:33:12 GMT

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”― Raíner María Rilke

I am not a patient person. I close my eyes and ears. I clinch my jaw and fists. I hold my breath. I move too fast. Hustle is my rhythm. I live between focus and distraction. Presence and overwhelm. Peace and Anxiety. Loving the questions wears me out. Living everything is exhausting. Especially, right now. I want the answers, now.

Writing changes everything. I write because I genuinely, deep down, love the questions. I write to unlock rooms and learn foreign tongues. I write to shift and change and grow. I write to slow down and recollect and celebrate. I write to notice and get unstuck and attend. I write to live into the answers.

As we prepare to begin the second year of Living the Comma, I want us to consider the thought that living everything is the heart of a writing practice. Practicing the patience of falling in love (and staying in love) with words. Exploring the root systems of stories. Planting the seeds of thought and empathy. Excavating the unsolved like hidden gems.

A Living the Comma Writing Group Update

Conversations with Authors — Raíner María Rilke

Letters to A Young Poet — One

"You are looking outward, and that above all you should not do now. Nobody can advise or help you, nobody. There is only one single way. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.” — Raíner María Rilke

Read letter one here.

Rilke’s Letter to a Young Poet — A Post by Austin Kleon

The letters aren’t really letters, they’re diaries. Rilke saw himself in Kappus, and so they’re written from Rilke to Rilke—both to his past and his present. They begin with a description of Rilke’s current setting (various cities across Europe) and continue into the subject of how to live and how to create. Each is a map of where he’s been and where he needs to go.

There’s so much to take away from the ten letters, but here’s a short-list of questions a young writer might ask, with Rilke’s responses. — Austin Kleon

Read post here.

Joanna Macy, In Memoriam: Beauty and Wisdom and Courage (and Rilke) to Sustain Us

If you have listened to On Being for any period of time, you have probably heard me invoke Rainer Maria Rilke. His works of prose and poetry are enduringly beloved — the Sonnets to Orpheus; the Duino Elegies; the Book of Hours. But none of his words have carried more persistently across time than his Letters to a Young Poet. It’s a small volume of ten letters Rilke wrote between 1903 and 1908 to a young military cadet and would-be poet, named Franz Kappus. Kappus reached out to Rilke, full of anguish about life, about love, about adulthood. But Rilke’s way of addressing these questions from an ordinary life touched on the enduring dramas of creating our lives — prophetic musings about solitude and relationship, humanity and the natural world, even gender and human wholeness.

And now, for us, there is a new translation. What a joy it is to delve into Rilke’s voice freshly rendered, with the translators, themselves prophetic humans: the wise psychologist and poet Anita Barrows and the incomparable Buddhist philosopher of ecology, Joanna Macy. — Krista Tippett

Listen to the On Being Conversation here.

A Writing Prompt —

This week’s structured exercise plays with the concept of the question. Not only will you be guided to “live into the questions,” as Rilke suggests we do, but also to construct and use specific questions as portals to your most elusive material—the stories, essays, and poems that shy from you and hide in shadowed corners.

For this week’s exercise, you’ll begin by writing a list of questions. One way to approach this is to try to begin each question with a different questioning word. Also, be highly concrete, as if you are genuinely asking the question to someone real and specific, who could actually answer it. But also be open to fabulism and nonsense.

Here’s an example of such a list from Sing Me the Creation: How did you get here? Can you really trust snowmen? What color is Tuesday? Or should I take up midwifery instead? When did you realize the full horror of the situation? Where have you hidden my puncture outfit? Who are you anyway? Will you marry me? Have you ordered the deathbed? Which birthmark are you referring to? Why are you tearing up that bus ticket? Do my ears deceive me? Would you kindly restrain your mongoose? Shall I show you my X-rays before or after supper? Did moths make these star-shaped holes in my blanket?

***

After you’ve listed about ten or so very open ended, imagistic questions rich with imagination, go through your list and star two or three of your favorite questions—the ones that might lend themselves to further exploration, as with the tiny question-based essay on the nature of life by Piaget’s daughter. — Jeannine Ouellette, in Writing in the Dark

Please consider this a heartfelt invitation to join Living the Comma. It promises to be a creative space where we will write, read, and connect. It is a space for the dedicated writer and the writing-curious. It is a space for the published memoirist and the shower-tuned opera singer. It is a space for the true book believers and the library-resistant. It is a space to explore faith and desire and joy and hope and community and gratitude and creativity. Join us.

From the heart of the comma,

Katie

Thank you for Living the Comma with me. Subscribe to the Wide-Awakeness Project and share your light. It has never been more important.

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]]><![CDATA[Taking A Walk #20]]>https://katiesteedlycurling.substack.com/p/taking-a-walk-20https://katiesteedlycurling.substack.com/p/taking-a-walk-20Thu, 13 Aug 2026 10:00:00 GMT

Conscious Being: Wisdom of Joanna Macy

Joanna Macy’s work offers a profound connectedness to the world, a mystical nature to life, and a radical notion of self as expansive and always in relation to everything else. — Naropa University

Listen to Conscious Being: Wisdom of Joanna Macy

An On Being Conversation with Joanna Macy

A Wild Love for the World

A Buddhist philosopher of ecology, Joanna Macy says we are at a pivotal moment in history with the possibility to unravel or create a life-sustaining human society. Now entering her 90s, Macy has lived adventurously by any definition. She worked with the CIA in Cold War Europe and the Peace Corps in post-colonial India and was an early environmental activist. She brings a poetic and spiritual sensibility to her work that’s reflected in her translations of the early-20th-century poet Rainer Maria Rilke. We take that poetry as a lens on her wisdom on the great dramas of our time: ecological, political, personal. — On Being

Listen to A Wild Love for the World

On Being — Joanna Macy Hope Portal, Episode 5

Our teacher and inspiration for this session is Joanna Macy. What she embodies is a wild love for the world and a fierce hope that rises irrepressible from that. And she carries and lives an important reminder to us that when we love, we will also know pain, and we will know grief that can feel too awful to bear. When we talk about the muscle of hope being reality-based, that means that it does not call us to be brimming with optimism where that is not warranted. What we’re called to do is stay present. And when you’re present, there will be grieving to do, but that this — strangely, interestingly, kind of miraculously — increases our capacity to love this world. And it unleashes intelligence and ingenuity to sustain that love across a lifetime, as Joanna Macy has. — On Being

Listen to Hope Portal Episode

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Thanks for taking a walk with me. Subscribe to the Wide-Awakeness Project for more walking and connecting and awakeness.

]]><![CDATA[Living the Comma #42]]>https://katiesteedlycurling.substack.com/p/living-the-comma-42https://katiesteedlycurling.substack.com/p/living-the-comma-42Wed, 12 Aug 2026 14:33:17 GMT

“When I think of the wisest people I know, they share one defining trait: curiosity. They turn away from the minutiae of their lives-and focus on the world around them. They are motivated by the desire to explore the unfamiliar. They are drawn toward what they don't understand.” ― Dani Shapiro

There is a connection between wisdom and curiosity. Paying attention to the world. Exploring the unfamiliar. Being drawn toward things we don’t understand. Creating is a path to all that. Writing is a path to all that, too. Peace felt in presence. Comfort found in details. Life built between the center and the edge.

I have always seemed to know this. Writing as imagination. Writing as way. Writing as the as if. Writing as the not yet. Writing as the I am. Writing as thinking. Writing as chewing. Writing as digesting. Writing as breathing.

I remember writing a paper about Shirley Chisholm in high school. I followed my curiosity, and the suggestion of my English teacher mother, to learn about this courageous political leader. I tasted the power of storytelling. I felt the pen between my fingers exploring the possible. I let my mind connect dots, create a narrative, get knee deep in gender and race and politics. Chisholm asked why not? That question still haunts me today. Writing lets me explore the elastic relationship between what is and what can be, which might be the point of curiosity.

A Living the Comma Writing Group Update

What? The group is a journal club, reading group, and writers community seeking to connect people with a creative process, a writing practice, and a spiritual path.

Where? We will meet in-person at Virginia Highland Church (a link will be provided for each meeting so people can join us virtually, too.)

When? We will meet the first Tuesday of the month. We will meet from 6:30 — 8:30 for food, community, and writing.

Dates: September 1, October 6, November 3, December 1, January 5, February 2, March 2, April 6, and May 4.

Who? No writing experience is necessary. All are welcome.

** First Meeting Tuesday, September 1st at Virginia Highland Church at 6:30 **

Conversations with Authors — Dani Shapiro

Totally Booked — A Conversation with Dani Shapiro

A writer is writing at the height of her ability it has to do with having found that place like the essential authentic place from which the work Springs as a teacher I mean I can certainly offer my students a lot of tools there definitely is a whole big box full of tools in terms of craft but the the truly gifted writer never thinks about tools and that’s a paradox right. — Dani Shapiro

Listen to the conversation.

Save Nothing

I believed the page, above all, to be the locus of my self-knowledge. In book after book, whether fiction or memoir, I had followed the line of words, Annie Dillard’s beautiful phrase, like a trail of breadcrumbs, trusting, or at least attempting to trust, the capacity of the unconscious to reveal itself through pattern, image, language, character, and metaphor. Stick with the page long enough, stumble bravely along, and eventually a coherent narrative will reveal itself. — Dani Shapiro

Read the entire essay here.

Piano

My piano lesson was the punctuation—a comma, perhaps, or better yet a semicolon-in the middle of my week. The rest of life paused on either side of it. Mr. Tipton was passionate, exacting, wounded if a student came to a lesson unprepared. He had bright red hair and a ruddy face, as did Mrs. Tipton, and they had a brood of red-headed Tiptons. I cared a lot about what Mr. Tipton thought, and I tried never to be unprepared. When I practiced piano, my usual fears and anxieties fell away. Did Sol Kimpinski really have a crush on me? Did I have a crush on him? Had I studied enough for my American history exam? Was my father—so pale, so overweight, so unhappy-about to have a heart attack and die? — Dani Shapiro

Read the entire essay here.

A Writing Prompt —

When you have written something—whether part of a story, a poem, an essay, an opening for a longer piece, anything that feels like it might be a keeper-listen to it. What does it sound like? Read your words aloud. Even if you look like a crazy person, it doesn’t matter. No one’s watching. Pay attention to the way the language moves. Is it creating the effect you’re after? I think of some of Nabokov’s sentences, or the end of Delmore Schwartz’s “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities.” Fluid sentence-rivers, carrying us along on a current of commas, faster, faster until we are nearly breathless. Or the atonal juxtapositions of Don DeLillo’s. Or the clean, staccato beats of Hemingway, a period like a knife jab in the gut. What instrument does your language call to mind? A cello? An electric guitar? An oboe? Are you writing a concerto? A symphony? A lullaby? Listen and you will begin to hear the rhythms of your own voice. — Dani Shapiro

In her beautiful book about writing, Still Writing, Shapiro explains, “If we are artists- hell, whether or not we're artists— it is our job, our responsibility, perhaps even our sacred calling, to take whatever life has handed us and make something new, something that wouldn't have existed if not for the fire, the genetic mutation, the sick baby, the accident.” She reminds me to approach creativity as sacred work. To see creativity as a divine purpose. To be changed by the new every day.

From the heart of the comma,

Katie

Thank you for Living the Comma with me. Subscribe to the Wide-Awakeness Project and share your light. It has never been more important.

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]]><![CDATA[Batman and My Foot Surgeon's Shoes]]>https://katiesteedlycurling.substack.com/p/batman-and-my-foot-surgeons-shoeshttps://katiesteedlycurling.substack.com/p/batman-and-my-foot-surgeons-shoesWed, 12 Aug 2026 10:00:00 GMT

Today, I am admiring the fancy leather shoes on my foot surgeon's feet. Fancy leather shoes are a delight. If I was smarter about shoes I would probably know if they are Armani, Dolce & Gabbana, or Prada. I try not to stare at them during my appointment. They are a comforting brown like milk chocolate, elegantly soft like the bathrobe at the Michelin-rated hotel we stayed at in Dublin this summer, the one with High Tea and a breathtaking art collection. His Batman socks — revealed when he leans back to answer my questions after having leaned forward and listened intently to my situation — soothe my frazzled-surgery-anticipating-anxious nerves.

If you look for heroes, too. Subscribe to the Wide-Awakeness Project and we can remember we are heroes together

Today, I learned that I look for heroes. I look for people to heal me. I look for people to save me. I look for people to love me. (In the case of my foot surgeon, it makes sense. He is supposed to heroically use his superpowers to repair the torn tendon in my left foot.) I really hate to admit that I look for heroes. I hate to acknowledge I look outside myself for the things I seek. It is very unDorothy, who learns along the yellow brick road that she has had the power she seeks all along. I am scared and sad and angry right now. The list of what makes me cry is long. I believe in most of my mind and body that I am whole and was made for this very moment, which is why it irks me that I look outside myself for heroes. I want to think I want to kick my own asses and take my own names.

I think about Batman. The anti-superhero. He does not scale tall buildings or turn green and break things. He does not have x-ray vision or come from another planet. He is simply stinking wealthy and uses his wealth for good. He even brings his do-gooder friends along to right the world's wrongs. He is the kind of hero I can get behind. He is the kind of hero we all have inside. Though it's so much more than.

Thanks for reading about my search for heroes. If you like this, and can relate to the tension between wanting to kick ass and take names, right after taking a bubble bath, subscribe to the Wide-Awakeness Project

]]><![CDATA[The Amen Corner]]>https://katiesteedlycurling.substack.com/p/the-amen-cornerhttps://katiesteedlycurling.substack.com/p/the-amen-cornerWed, 12 Aug 2026 10:00:00 GMT

I delivered a eulogy at my grandmother’s funeral. Standing in front of those gathered to celebrate and remember her, I recollected that she always made my brother and I — her grandchildren — feel like we hung the moon and the stars. She loved us deeply. She was part of my Amen Corner. An Amen Corner, loosely understood, is a corner in a church reserved for the most fervent praise. The kind of praise that starts in your bones and must be shouted. The kind of praise that is the heart’s exclamation point. The kind of praise that propels prayers directly to God or Allah or Source or Love. I want to suggest there are Amen Corners (or at least I hope there are) throughout and around and within and above the corners of our lives. Let me explain. Think of the people (and may there be many) who get your back. Think of the people who are the cheerleaders at your football game, the ovation at your opera, the lawyer in your court. Your ride or die. Your hill to die on. Your moon and stars. (It occurs to me there is a reciprocity to Amen Corners that I need to think more about.) That is your Amen Corner.

If you hear the song from your Amen Corner. If your ties that bind run deep. Subscribe to the Wide-Awakeness Project.

I remember when I learned I mattered in this world — when I first felt seen and loved. Feeling seen and loved might be the biggest gift we are ever given. Somewhere in the gift of feeling seen and loved is my Amen Corner. Nights reading and endless rides to lessons of all sorts. Homework sessions and proofreading. Jigsaw puzzles and tending the garden. Dance recitals and musical performances. Church. Twenty years of all that taught me I matter. Twenty years of all that taught me, “You are loved. Now don’t be a jerk.” Twenty years of all that taught me the meaning of pay it forward. In a world that does not do a great job of teaching us about love above and beyond transactional relationships, I want to nod to a different world. A world of generosity and abundance. A world of paying it forward. A world of being seen and loved. A world of safety and comfort. A world of Amen Corners.

Thank you for reading about my Amen Corner. May you know your Amen Corner in deep and real ways. Subscribe to the Wide-Awakeness Project to think more about Amen Corners and we are seen and loved.

]]><![CDATA[WANTED WEEK 6]]>https://katiesteedlycurling.substack.com/p/wanted-week-6https://katiesteedlycurling.substack.com/p/wanted-week-6Mon, 03 Aug 2026 19:00:07 GMT

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 surrendered. 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.

]]><![CDATA[Living the Comma #41]]>https://katiesteedlycurling.substack.com/p/living-the-comma-41https://katiesteedlycurling.substack.com/p/living-the-comma-41Mon, 03 Aug 2026 17:18:00 GMT

“The timeline of your life is not a straight line, after all; it is a series of ebbs and flows, backs and forths, heres and theres. You are nowhere and everywhere all at once, and that means that most of the time, the best you can do is be present to the moment, be open to the unlearning and the learning, and trust that you’re doing the work of Love.” ― Kaitlin Curtice, Living Resistance: An Indigenous Vision for Seeking Wholeness Every Day

Hello Writing Friends,

I know life is not a straight line. I know life is a series of ebbs and flows, backs and forths, and heres and theres. I know we are all nowhere and everywhere, and tasked with presence and attention and openness. I know we are called to do the work of Love. I know these things way down deep in the places where my synapses fire and my soul burns.

I ask myself, “What does it mean to do the work of Love?” How do I show up for myself and others? (What does showing up even really mean?) How do I pay attention to what matters and ignore what does not? How do find deep joy in the midst of the chaotic, the cruel, the isolated, the hopeless? I have come to the conclusion that the writing path is the work of Love. The writing path is the place where I slow down and breathe, stay soft and remain open, sift and sort, build and repair, mend and heal, tend and care, imagine and create.

A Living the Comma Writing Group Update

What? The group is a journal club, reading group, and writers community seeking to connect people with a creative process, a writing practice, and a spiritual path.

Where? We will meet in-person at Virginia Highland Church (a link will be provided for each meeting so people can join us virtually, too.)

When? We will meet the first Tuesday of the month. We will meet from 6:30 — 8:30 for food, community, and writing.

Dates: September 1, October 6, November 3, December 1, January 5, February 2, March 2, April 6, and May 4.

Who? No writing experience is necessary. All are welcome.

** First Meeting Tuesday, September 1st at Virginia Highland Church at 6:30 **

Conversations with Authors: Kaitlin Curtice

A Ritual for Living Resistance, an excerpt from Living Resistance: An Indigenous Vision for Seeking Wholeness Every Day.

Since my earliest years, I have been a very ritualistic person. Whether I understood it as ritual or not, I enjoyed having space to honor things in myself and around me. The more I became embedded in the Southern Baptist tradition of the faith I was raised in, the more I wandered from that ritualistic way of being. Ritual is allowed in the church but only in ways that fit, that are part of the atonement process to cleanse our souls from sin and embrace a certain kind of community. As much as I wanted to be close to God, I also lacked that closeness because I knew only a colonized version of God that did not value all of my questions or the nonlinear way I wanted to understand the world around me. — Kaitlin Curtis

Read the entire essay.

A Slow and Steady Surrender, an On Being essay

There is something called blood memory, this marvel that you have a DNA connection to your ancestors that calls you back to your identity throughout your life. I found myself longing for a connection to the Potawatomi ways that seemed to be calling me back to childhood memories and back to a place of belonging. — Kaitlin Curtis

Read the entire essay.

Kaitlin Curtice Author of “Everything is a Story” — Richard’s Rohr Daily Meditations

What if I could use the life cycle of an oak tree? I really love oak trees. I really have a special relationship to acorns. And so I thought, what if what if I could explore the life cycle of a story with the life cycle of an oak tree. … Oak trees are such a universal symbol of strength and power. Acorns and the oak tree literally have provided for people all over the world across history, across the centuries we have used oak trees. We have used oak gall for ink. We have used acorn meal to eat. We’ve used oak to build things with. It is such a universal symbol and it’s in so many myths and stories around the world that I thought it was just a really great way to explore that. So you know oak trees start from the very tiny acorn the seed and stories also start as a seed. They are sort of born at one point and then grow. I wanted to find a way to move them together. I really enjoyed using that metaphor and pairing these things together that people might not have considered and thought that maybe that would be a fun way to explore storytelling. — Kaitlin Curtis

Listen to the conversation here.

A Writing Prompt

We may be storytellers, but we are always inheriting stories— from Segmekwe (Mother Earth), from the trees and the waters, the ants and the coneflowers, and, yes, of course, the oak trees.

Consider the story of your own birth. Who was there? What happened? What were the conditions of your coming into the world? We honor one another with birthday parties and gifts every year, but do we thoughtfully reflect on that moment when the world shifted a little, simply because we were in it?

The world also shifts with a story’s birth, with a story’s beginning.

Here’s another question to consider: Is any story completely new and unique? Our birth stories as humans are unique to a point, but we are still human. Acorns fall to the ground and go on their own journey, but they are still acorns. So, what makes a story magical? I’d say it’s the journey that a story takes—who the story encounters, how they are shaped, and where they end up.

We are told so many stories throughout our lives, stories in childhood and as adults, stories as we age into the last stages of these human-body lives. We are told stories about creation, about life and death, about family, about friends and enemies, about what we should believe. Sometimes these stories give us room to breathe and grow, and sometimes they suffocate us. — Taken from ‘Everything is a Story’ by Kaitlin B. Curtice, ©2025. Used by permission of Brazos Press.

Journaling Prompt: Focus on a story you’ve inherited in your life. Consider this story as a living, breathing being. How do you interact with this story? And in what ways do you think you might change your interaction with this story?

Poetry prompt: Set a timer for 10 minutes and write a poem based on the word “birth”

Stories are the work of Love. Collecting stories. Telling stories. Sharing stories. Writing stories. I look forward to another year of writing together.

From the heart of the coma,

Katie

Thank you for Living the Comma with me. Subscribe to the Wide-Awakeness Project and share your light. It has never been more important.

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]]><![CDATA[Empathy]]>https://katiesteedlycurling.substack.com/p/empathyhttps://katiesteedlycurling.substack.com/p/empathyMon, 03 Aug 2026 12:52:00 GMT

My ministers have been encouraging us to think about empathy lately. At a monthly Bible study. In sermons on Sundays. During casual conversations. I hate to admit this. There might be a significant possible crack in my knowledge and practice of empathy. I don’t want to seek first to understand cruelty. I don’t want to extend a hand to those who hate. I don’t want to turn the other cheek when our world burns. I don’t want to forgive evil even one time. I especially don’t want to talk about empathy when powerful people declare empathy as Western Civilization’s fundamental weakness. Truth. Full Stop.

I am angry. I am pissed. I am hurt. I weep for our world. I want to pull out my hair, throw up, and move somewhere far away, but I am old enough and have run enough to know there are no geographical fixes. Plus, my country is my home. Empathy feels so 2008 — when Hope and Change won, speaking to the better angels of the country I deeply love. It was all so much easier then. Beautiful certainty danced alongside privilege and years of social justice progress. A constitution secured at least an amalgam of institutional empathy. I could rent empathy rather than buy it. I could rely on something/someone outside of myself — the rule of law, the powerful and connected — to quiet any dissonance I felt when I looked out my window or rolled up my sleeves.

It’s different now. I take a deep breath and unclench my fists and open my heart. My ministers are right. Now is the exact moment I need to practice empathy. Empathy that connects us all, holds our hurting, and feeds our hungry, realizing we are all connected, hurting, and hungry. Empathy that reaches out one heart at a time, to every heart, and simply loves. Empathy that imagines and builds and creates the beloved community. Remember, I could still spit nails. I do not condone where we are or fully understand how we got here. I don’t have to. I will not drink the poison. I must have somewhere to channel my anger. It makes sense that channeling it toward empathy is a net positive for me and my world. Like heart calisthenics that build big love. Like the river on which I grew up — powerful, abiding, beautiful flow that carries us to a peaceful edge. Like the tree roots that connect beneath the surface, securing life itself.

Think more about heart calisthenics, the river’s flow, and trees roots. Subscribe to the Wide-Awakeness Project

]]><![CDATA[Weekly Wide-Awake #65]]>https://katiesteedlycurling.substack.com/p/weekly-wide-awake-65https://katiesteedlycurling.substack.com/p/weekly-wide-awake-65Wed, 29 Jul 2026 08:00:00 GMT

Nature promotes mutualism. The flower nourishes the bee. The river waters quench the thirst of all living beings. And trees provide a welcoming home to so many birds and animals. There is a rhythm to this togetherness. — Ram Nath Kovind

I am thinking about the togetherness of bees. Let me explain. I believe in mutualism, oneness, and the wholeness of things. I find hope, faith, and optimism there. There is something deep down awesome about a healthy hive. Faith bursts from a flower’s blossom. That is the sweetness of honey. That is the rhythm of optimism. Everything and everyone has a role to play. There is beauty. There is urgency. There is interdependence.

That makes sense to me in the way idle time is alive with possibility’s buzz.

I draw lessons from the bees. Bees make the most of life’s brevity and purpose. Bees are builders and creators. Bees rely on one another.

I want to celebrate togetherness—togetherness that connects and creates, togetherness that nourishes and sustains, togetherness that breathes and grows, togetherness as big as oceans and mountains, togetherness as strong as scar tissue and stars, togetherness that pollinates loving kindness.

Living the Comma #39

Good Shit. Grace. Nadia Bolz-Weber.

Suleika Jaouad — “If you could offer one permission slip to everyone in the thick of it, what would it be?”

Nadia Bolz-Weber — “You have permission to experience joy right now. It’s ok. I know all the stuff. I know all of it is happening, but you have permission to notice whimsy. To experience joy. Its ok. Despair’s not gonna fucking save our asses, but joy might. Insisting on beauty and joy might.”

Hello Writer Friends,

I participated in Nadia Bolz-Weber’s project, 40 Days of Good Shit (a lenten discipline for cranky people.) She describes the Good Shit Project saying,

“Each day in Lent (which starts Wednesday, Feb 18th), I’ll either: Take one photo of something beautiful I notice in my day—like how the light comes through our front room in the afternoon, or Write one sentence about a warm interaction with a stranger—like the guy in the hospital elevator who asked which floor I was going to and pushed the button for me, or Post something helpful someone said to me that day—like the six-word prayer my friend Jackie just shared: I can’t. You can. Please do.”

We are living through a tough time for so many reasons. This project was a daily deep breath. It was a lesson in finding what we seek. It was a way into paying attention to life’s fullness. The humor. The details. The cracks. The tenderness. The sweetness. The brokenness. The wholeness. The curiosities.

Lent ended and I have not been as diligent in finding “good shit.” I feel a little less anchored. It is such a simple exercise. Taking pictures. Posting notes. Pausing in the midst of hurry. Listening in the midst of noise. Creating in the midst of destruction. Hope in the midst of fear.

I have an opportunity to write about Nadia Bolz-Weber for a women’s group of which I am a member. I am going to write more about Bolz-Weber next week.

Read entire post here.

MONDAYS ARE FREE EXERCISES 251-255

Peaches. Sunshine. Birds. Armadillos. Magenta.

EXERCISES 252: REVISE WITH REARRANGEMENT

the order of things

Find a draft that you’re interested in shaking up and change the order of things. Maybe you make what is first last, or what is last first. Maybe it’s several stanzas, and you switch them around a few times to see what happens, to see what it shows you.

EXERCISE 089: SAVE THE SUN
haul the sun up

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

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. 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 one in a plan to haul up the sun — breathe again and again and again. There is no strength without breath. 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 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.

WANTED WEEK 5

Reasons for Voyaging

The sculpture in the front of the Christchurch Art Gallery is called Reasons for Voyaging. I possess a traveler’s heart. I am the stone with no moss. I am the star bouncing across the sky. I am the shipwreck in which coral thrives. I have always had my reasons for voyaging.

It all started with an invitation to New Zealand from a handsome Kiwi sheep herder after a conversation at LAX. Treks and whales and Sauvignon Blanc and young travelers on holiday. Hostels and sailing and lamb and jet boats. Fjords and Maori dance and the Southern Cross and glaciers.

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.

Thanks for reading Weekly Wide-Awake. Subscribe to the Wide-Awakeness Project to explore writing, pay attention, and build community.

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]]><![CDATA[Living the Comma #40]]>https://katiesteedlycurling.substack.com/p/living-the-comma-40https://katiesteedlycurling.substack.com/p/living-the-comma-40Tue, 28 Jul 2026 20:47:15 GMT

Hello Writing Friends,

As August approaches, I am turning my attention to planning for the start of the second year of the Living the Comma Writing Group. I will be available to talk about the group at Community Day at Virginia Highland Church this Sunday after church. The group is a journal club, reading group, and writers community seeking to connect people with a creative process, a writing practice, and a spiritual path. We will meet — beginning in September — once a month, in-person at Virginia Highland Church (a link is also provided for each meeting, so people can join us virtually, too.) No writing experience is necessary. All are welcome.

Conversations with Authors — Nadia Bolz-Weber, Part II

Building on last week’s Living the Comma newsletter, I wrote a study guide for Chapter 5, “Thanks, ELCA!” from Nadia Bolz-Weber’s PASTRIX. Take a look at the text, excerpts, and questions based on text.

Excerpt 1 —

• God’s grace is a gift that is freely given to us. We don’t earn a thing when it comes to God’s love, and we only try to live in response to the gift.

• No one is climbing the spiritual ladder. We don’t continually improve until we are so spiritual we no longer need God. We die and are made new, but that’s different from spiritual self-improvement.

• We are simultaneously sinner and saint, 100 percent of both, all the time.

• The Bible is not God. The Bible is simply the cradle that holds Christ. Anything in the Bible that does not hold up to the Gospel of Jesus Christ simply does not have the same authority.

• The movement in our relationship to God is always from God to us. Always. We can’t, through our piety or goodness, move closer to God. God is always coming near to us. Most especially in the Eucharist and in the stranger.

(Write out these bullet points, memorize them, and you could save a lot of money not going to Lutheran seminary. — Tenants of Lutheran faith taught by Paster Ross Merkle in Bolz-Weber’s adult confirmation class — NBW, p.49

Bolz-Weber explains, “I have been a Lutheran since then [confirmation class] because the Lutheran church is the only place that has given me language for what I have experienced to be true in my life, which is why I now call Pastor Ross Merkle the Vampire Who Turned Me.” — NBW, p.49

· Do any of these faith tenants particularly resonant with you?
· Do you have any faith tenant/”language for what I have experienced to be true” outside of this list?

Excerpt 2 —

“I had never experienced liturgy before. But here the congregation said things together during the service. And they did stuff: stood, sat, knelt, crossed themselves, went up to the altar for communion, like choreographed sacredness.” — NBW, p.46

· What aspects of liturgy do you find most grace-full?
· Bolz-Weber writes about the unfathomable mercy of God tapping us on the shoulder. Could liturgy — in text and form and structure — be God tapping us on the shoulder? Why or Why Not?
· In what ways can/does liturgy show up in our everyday lives?

Excerpt 3 —

“What happens in the Kingdom of God parable I was given is that a landowner goes out and hires laborers in the morning and agrees to pay them the daily wage. But then every few hours he goes and finds more workers and brings them in. In the afternoon he goes again to the marketplace and sees folks standing around and is like, “Why aren’t you working?” and they say, “Because no one would hire us,” and he sends them into his vineyard to work the last two hours of the day. When the work is done, he pays everyone the same thing, which pisses off the upstanding early risers who worked all day in the scorching heat because he has made the slept-till-noon new hires equal to them. The land owner is like, ’Seriously? You’re angry because I am generous?’ and then the final line of the parable is ‘The last shall be first and the first shall be last.’ This is exactly, when it comes down to it, why most people do not believe in grace. It is fucking offensive.” — NBW, p. 56

· Do you agree with Bolz-Weber that most people do not believe in grace?
· What is the relationship between grace and greed? Grace and doubt? Grace and indifference?

A Writing Prompt

During the month of July, Bolz-Weber has had friends offer weekly 15-minute “pep talks.” They have discussed life’s ebbs and flows and favorite books and grief and tubas and needlepoint, to name a few things. This week, write about a pep talk you have either given or received. Describe the context? Who is involved? What wisdom is shared? In what ways is the pep talk comforting, inspiring, healing, and loving?

Welcome August. Welcome a new year of writing together. Welcome imagining and creating. Welcome deepening and strengthening. Welcome to building community.

From the heart of the comma,

Katie

Thank you for Living the Comma with me. Subscribe to the Wide-Awakeness Project and share your light. It has never been more important.

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]]><![CDATA[WANTED WEEK 5]]>https://katiesteedlycurling.substack.com/p/wanted-week-5https://katiesteedlycurling.substack.com/p/wanted-week-5Mon, 27 Jul 2026 09:00:00 GMT

The sculpture in the front of the Christchurch Art Gallery is called Reasons for Voyaging. I possess a traveler’s heart. I am the stone with no moss. I am the star bouncing across the sky. I am the shipwreck in which coral thrives. I have always had my reasons for voyaging.

It all started with an invitation to New Zealand from a handsome Kiwi sheep herder after a conversation at LAX. Treks and whales and Sauvignon Blanc and young travelers on holiday. Hostels and sailing and lamb and jet boats. Fjords and Maori dance and the Southern Cross and glaciers.

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 “Hell, Yes!” In I am and as if and not yet. In song and prayer. 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 5th Week of Writing in the Dark WANTED. Join to read more about dreams and desires and wide-awakeness.

]]><![CDATA[MONDAYS ARE FREE EXERCISES 251-255]]>https://katiesteedlycurling.substack.com/p/mondays-are-free-exercises-251-255https://katiesteedlycurling.substack.com/p/mondays-are-free-exercises-251-255Fri, 24 Jul 2026 16:30:12 GMT

EXERCISE 251: REVISE WITH A FEW ASSOCIATIVE LEAPS

trespass, maraud, masquerade, mangle.

Find a draft that you’re interested in shaking up, and for every verb in the piece make a list of 5-10 alternative verbs. Let most of them be in the synonymy ballpark but let a few wander off. For instance, if your verb is walk, you might try amble, mosey, gallivant, traipse, trespass, maraud, masquerade, mangle. You might even (as I just did) allow your verb choice to be guided as much by sound (maybe alliteration, maybe rhyme, maybe meter) as “meaning.” See where that takes you.

EXERCISE 002: WHISPER IN THE ARCHIVES
Someone is studying

I watch peaches grow in a small orchard in Piedmont Park during the spring and summer near my house. The orchard lives in the heart of the park next to the popular dog park. It holds sacred space for me. Until I started moving through the park, past the orchard, I had no relationship with peaches beyond a summer love affair. I had no idea how long it takes for peaches to become peaches or even if peaches grew on trees. Today, the orchard is refuge. It is dawn and dusk. It is inhale and exhale. It is where I leave noise and fear behind alongside the constancy and confidence of nature.

It seems to me an archive of the 21st century must record that nature is still nature, perfect time is still perfect time, and sweetness is still sweetness. Today, when so much is upside down and sideways — and just plain painful — peaches are still peaches.

EXERCISES 252: REVISE WITH REARRANGEMENT

the order of things

Find a draft that you’re interested in shaking up and change the order of things. Maybe you make what is first last, or what is last first. Maybe it’s several stanzas, and you switch them around a few times to see what happens, to see what it shows you.

EXERCISE 089: SAVE THE SUN
haul the sun up

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

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. 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 one in a plan to haul up the sun — breathe again and again and again. There is no strength without breath. 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 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.

EXERCISE 253: REVISE WITH A NEW FORM

never written

Find a draft that you’re interested in shaking up. Put it into (this probably means “revise it into”) a form in which you have never written. Maybe it’s a sonnet or a ghazal or a pantoum or a villanelle or a gigan (Ruth Ellen Kocher) or a duplex (Jericho Brown).

EXERCISE 036: BEGIN WITH THE END
Cirrus whispering
Anadiplosis is the rhetorical and poetic device in which words at the end of a line are in some way taken up at the beginning of the following line./ Write a poem of no more than twenty lines that uses anadiplosis, has four instances of end-rhyme, two birds you know the name of but couldn’t identify if you saw them, and some lyrics from a hymn.

Birds

Like some Exclamatory Paradise-Whydah, I set out to find heaven./ I traveled between oceans and up mountaintops./ Jumped through hoops and pulled out stops./ I waded in water. I measured my steps. I searched for great faithfulness./ I heard the sound of one voice. I felt amazing grace.

Oh, King-of-Saxony Bird-of-Paradise. Oh, Invisible Rail./ Your majesties carry me to heaven./ Your bread knows sacred leaven./ You stitch and soar. You are anchor and oar./

Oh, Tinkling Cisticola. Oh, Sandy Gallito./ Your majesties ground me in heaven on earth./ Precious birds take my hands./ Soar skies and build nests./ Guide dreams and quests.

Oh, Fluffy-backed Tit-Babbler. Oh, Kori Bustard. We will know heaven by our love. By our love./ Love divine./ All loves excelling./ On wings of angels we tell./ Abide we me.

EXERCISE 254: REVISE WITH GARDEN SHEARS

start cutting

Find a draft that you’re interested in shaking up. Take out your scalpel and start cutting. No, let’s say your garden shears. Yeah, take out garden shears or (and!) pruners and start cutting anything that seems extraneous, or, to keep the garden/pruning metaphor going, like it’s interfering with the growth of the tree or shrub or whatever you’re trying to make most beautiful/fruitful/bird-friendly, etc.

EXERCISE 059: HONOR THE ANIMAL
a critter you find
Think of an animal or critter you find off-putting, even repulsive, one that you do not particularly want to look at or touch, or perhaps one you find plain dull. Pay that animal or critter 100 compliments.

Armadillos

Bony plate superheroes. Little armored one. Poor eyesight. Keen smell.

Birth to four identical quadruplets. You are used to study leprosy because you are the only mammal, other the humans, that can contract it. You can hold your breath for up to six minutes.

Bony plate superheroes. Little armored one. Poor eyesight. Keen smell.

Your ancestors, as big as Volkswagen Beetles, once roamed across the Americas beginning around 20 million years ago. Your outer shell is composed of ossified dermal scutes covered by non overlapping, keratinized epidermal scales, which are connected by flexible bands of skin. You possess the teeth typical of all sloths and anteaters.

Bony plate superheroes. Little armored one. Poor eyesight. Keen smell.

A compliment poem woven from Wikipedia, Natural Geographic, and the National Wildlife Federation.

EXERCISE 255: REVISE WITH AN ILLUSTRATION

a curious juxtaposition

Find a draft that you’ve been wanting to revise. Add an image. You can sketch a quick line drawing, pull a meme from the internet, or paste a photo from an old newspaper onto the page. The image may directly illustrate the text, if that is to your liking. Or make it wholly irrelevant for a curious juxtaposition.

EXERCISE 057: HONOR THE BLOOM

you encounter today

Magenta sunshine heart burst blessing blue green sea./ You listen to the music of waves crashing and light house horns singing and children dancing./ You laugh with the wind over jagged ancient rocks that tell the story of the earth before time./ You write tomes about cold winters and early mornings and ship wrecks and vacation yachts./ You tell earth, air, and sea secrets./ You know perfect time. Blooming is perfect time. Beyond pain. Beyond silence. Beyond death./ You know beauty. That beauty grows in the cracks. That beauty heads toward the sun. That beauty that lingers, softens, and survives./ You know breath. Salt air. Deep roots. Petals touch the sky.

Thank you for reading MONDAYS ARE FREE. These exercises are explorations of poetry and language and joy. Subscribe to the Wide-Awakeness Project to share this journey.

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]]><![CDATA[Living the Comma #39]]>https://katiesteedlycurling.substack.com/p/living-the-comma-39https://katiesteedlycurling.substack.com/p/living-the-comma-39Tue, 21 Jul 2026 15:22:48 GMT

Suleika Jaouad — “If you could offer one permission slip to everyone in the thick of it, what would it be?”

Nadia Bolz-Weber — “You have permission to experience joy right now. It’s ok. I know all the stuff. I know all of it is happening, but you have permission to notice whimsy. To experience joy. Its ok. Despair’s not gonna fucking save our asses, but joy might. Insisting on beauty and joy might.”

Hello Writer Friends,

I participated in Nadia Bolz-Weber’s project, 40 Days of Good Shit (a lenten discipline for cranky people.) She describes the Good Shit Project saying,

“Each day in Lent (which starts Wednesday, Feb 18th), I’ll either: Take one photo of something beautiful I notice in my day—like how the light comes through our front room in the afternoon, or Write one sentence about a warm interaction with a stranger—like the guy in the hospital elevator who asked which floor I was going to and pushed the button for me, or Post something helpful someone said to me that day—like the six-word prayer my friend Jackie just shared: I can’t. You can. Please do.”

We are living through a tough time for so many reasons. This project was a daily deep breath. It was a lesson in finding what we seek. It was a way into paying attention to life’s fullness. The humor. The details. The cracks. The tenderness. The sweetness. The brokenness. The wholeness. The curiosities.

Lent ended and I have not been as diligent in finding “good shit.” I feel a little less anchored. It is such a simple exercise. Taking pictures. Posting notes. Pausing in the midst of hurry. Listening in the midst of noise. Creating in the midst of destruction. Hope in the midst of fear.

I have an opportunity to write about Nadia Bolz-Weber for a women’s group of which I am a member. I am going to take the next few weeks and share what I am learning as I write my piece.

Conversations With Authors: Nadia Bolz-Weber, Part I

Craft Advice with Nadia Bolz-Weber

On finding the one thing that needs to be said, letting go of attachments, writing to break your heart, writing from our wounds, laying yourself bare, writing about other people, and getting unstuck.

“I’ve been told I wasn’t the first person to say this, but I don’t know who was: I try to preach from my scars and not my wounds. But I have amended it, I actually can preach from my wounds. I just don’t ever preach about my wounds. If you’re going be self-revealing, you have to understand why you’re doing it. If I’m doing it just because it feels therapeutic to do it, that’s a journal. And that’s fine, but I’m not journaling.

I have to do it because I’m hoping it creates a space around me that other people can step into to consider what that honest thing about them might be. It’s that form of leadership I’ve always called “screw it. I’ll go first.” I want people to have a response about themselves. If what they have instead is a reaction about me, I might not have done it right.” - Nadia Bolz-Weber

Read the entire Jane Ratcliffe’s Beyond interview.

Does Religion Still Matter? Nadia Bolz-Weber on Faith & Forgiveness | Soul Boom with Rainn Wilson

“The point of gravity in modern spirituality is grace.” — Nadia Bolz-Weber

Listen to the conversation here.

When Shit Hits the Fan: A Conversation with Suleika Jaouad & Nadia Bolz-Weber

“Sometimes we need a dark sky to remind us that we are small, that time is deep, and that wonder does not need us to manufacture it.” — Nadia Bolz-Weber

Listen to the conversation here.

A Writing Prompt

Jane Ratcliffe — “A lot of writers read Beyond. Is there a writing prompt you could offer that you find helpful?”

Nadia Bolz-Weber — “It depends on what kind of writing you’re trying to do. But if I get really stuck, I will write a letter to a friend of mine about how frustrated I am about not being able to write this thing, and how I want to write it. I will write a complaint addressed to another person in order to trick myself out of being stuck.”

I am going to trick myself into finding “good shit” again. I am going to examine how grace might enter my everyday. I am going to read and write toward humor and love.

Come along with me.

From the heart of the comma,

Katie

Thank you for Living the Comma with me. Face-to-Face meetings resume in September. Stay tuned. Subscribe to the Wide-Awakeness Project and share your light. It has never been more important.

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]]><![CDATA[WANTED Week 4]]>https://katiesteedlycurling.substack.com/p/wanted-week-4https://katiesteedlycurling.substack.com/p/wanted-week-4Mon, 20 Jul 2026 09:00:00 GMT

In January of 1998, after only 1 and a half years, I left my dream job teaching high school Drama. I grew up performing in Equity dinner theatre and being a “theatre kid.” Theatre was joy and lifeblood. Theatre was light shining through the cracks and the gold holden me together. Theatre was belonging and quiet. Despite all that, leaving my dream job was the safer thing. Dreams are tender and must be held. Sewn thread by thread by thread. Detailed with Chantilly lace and sequence and a hundred beaded buttons that stretched from hips to neck. Tailored to fit. Precious beyond repair. Beautifully fragile and strong.

I don’t remember having a choice. The decision to leave was weirdly easy. Because it was my dream, staying would have meant slow death and I did not want to die. I knew that like I knew I wanted to be a teacher in the first place. The fabric had worn bare. I was willing to leave my students and teacher friends. (I still have a hard time with that part of the decision.) I had taken 4 years to prepare to teach and now I was done. I began to make plans. I consulted lawyers on how to get out of my contract. A friend helped me clean out my room over Christmas vacation. My heart broke. I left.

I was lying in a fetal position crying on the couch when I knew. (Tears might not indicate an easy decision, but clarity carries a certain amount of ease.) I told myself — while eating boxes and boxes of Honey Nut Cheerios drowned in whole milk — my reasons for quitting (before they could officially fire me, which the administration telegraphed time and again through relentless evaluation and granular feedback focused on an outdated fire drill sign and standing outside my classroom door at 6:45 to make sure I was there for Success Period which started at 7:00) were valid. I was crushed under the weight of hypocrisy that told my first year drama teacher self that extracurricular contracts can’t be changed when she had seen the wrestling coach’s extracurricular contract changed. I failed to be the drama teacher I wanted to be on the stage and in the classroom and told “work smarter not harder” by an administration that did not care, they simply wanted to have someone there to open the auditorium doors and run the light board for the community fashion show.

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 page 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.

Thank you for reading the 4th Week of Writing in the Dark WANTED. Join to read more about dreams and desires and wide-awakeness.

]]><![CDATA[Weekly Wide-Awake #64]]>https://katiesteedlycurling.substack.com/p/weekly-wide-awake-64https://katiesteedlycurling.substack.com/p/weekly-wide-awake-64Wed, 15 Jul 2026 14:00:57 GMT

Resistance here doesn’t mean revolution. It doesn’t mean storming the barricades. Resistance means using art for the things that it does best, which is to create human portraits and communicate ideas and forge a climate where people of different races or classes are known to you because they make themselves known. In the simplest terms, art humanizes. It opens the circuit of empathy. And once that process happens, it’s that much harder to think of people as part of a policy or a statistic. Art reverses the alienation that can creep into society. — Questlove

Summer of Soul

I want to think about the connection between art and freedom, between empathy and freedom, between love and freedom. The list of all that is wrong right now breaks my heart. I know that if some are not free, all are not free.

I seek solace in the thought that art humanizes. I write because I have no choice. My voice trembles, but I still write. Through writing, I make my voice heard. I join a chorus of artists who make themselves known and, in so doing, soften hearts and open spaces that isolation, alienation, and cruelty destroy. I have always felt safe and beautiful singing in a chorus. Ideas like peace, justice, and love are big ideas, and art is big enough for all that and more.

As I think about freedom, I want look forward. I want to pay attention to the beauty and pain of the past, look honestly at the present situation, and create a future where the as if, not yet, and I am dance. A future better than any past we have ever known, worthy of generations.

Read/Listen to Sam Sanders’ NPR Interview, “Questlove’s ‘Summer of Soul’ brings lost music back to life”\

Read Carol Cooper’s NPR story, "After A Violent Winter, The 'Summer Of Soul' Was A Musical Moment Of Healing"

Living the Comma #38

Nature. Power. Emerson.

“The law of nature is: Do the thing, and you shall have the power, but they who do not the thing have not the power.”― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Dear Writer Friends,

I recently spent a weekend inside Acadia National Park. Climbing stone stairs. Walking carriage paths. Listening to rushing water. Combing rocky beaches. Breathing ocean breezes. Noticing granite boulders. Learning about moss and ferns. I am convinced that Nature has the power. Nature does the thing. Nature does not have to be reminded to do the thing. Nature roots and blooms. Nature ebbs and flows. Nature lives and dies.

Writing does the thing. Writers and poets understand this. The slowing down. The paying attention. The finding awe. The telling about it, as Mary Oliver instructs. Writing brings me a bit closer to the thing. Writing brings me a bit closer to the power.

Read entire post here.

WANTED WEEK 4

Notes From A Failed High School Drama Teacher

In January of 1998, after only 1 and a half years, I left my dream job — teaching high school Drama. I grew up performing in Equity dinner theatre and being a “theatre kid.” Theatre was joy and lifeblood. Theatre was light shining through the cracks. Theatre was belonging and quiet. Despite all that, leaving my dream job was the safer thing. Dreams are tender and must be held. Sewn thread by thread by thread. Detailed with Chantilly lace and sequence and a hundred beaded buttons that stretched from hips to neck. Tailored to fit. Precious beyond repair. Beautifully fragile and strong.

Read entire post here.

My Mother’s Guitar

A Gratitude Conversation With Roxanne Schroeder-Arce

Roxanne Schroeder-Arce is a teacher, scholar, administrator, arts advocate, playwright, and director. She has was named Dean of the Chaddock + Morrow College of Fine Arts and Professor at Ohio University in 2025. Before OHIO, she was Associate Dean of UTeach Fine Arts and Associate Professor of Theatre Education at the University of Texas at Austin. Her theatre practice is integral to her pedagogy. Schroeder-Arce’s bilingual plays have been presented to children and families in theatres around the United States. Her plays Señora Tortuga, Legend of the Poinsettia, Sangre de un Ángel, Mariachi Girl and Yana Wana’s Legend of the Bluebonnet (co-authored with María F. Rocha) are available through Dramatic Publishing. Her newest work, Lyric and the Keys, with music and lyrics by Jenn Hartmann Luck, premiered at the Magik Theatre in September, 2024. Professor Schroeder-Arce’s research interests include culturally responsive theatre education and Latino/a/x theatre for young audiences related to teacher training. She has published articles in journals such as Youth Theatre Journal, TYA Today, Theatre Topics, and Gestos. She has taught workshops on issues of diversity in theatre for young audiences and culturally responsive teaching artistry throughout the Americas and beyond. — Roxanne’s Website

Read more about Roxanne here.

Read my gratitude conversation with Roxanne here.

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]]><![CDATA[My Mother’s Guitar]]>https://katiesteedlycurling.substack.com/p/my-mothers-guitarhttps://katiesteedlycurling.substack.com/p/my-mothers-guitarTue, 14 Jul 2026 20:17:55 GMT

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.

Roxanne Schroeder-Arce

Roxanne Schroeder-Arce is a teacher, scholar, administrator, arts advocate, playwright, and director. She has was named Dean of the Chaddock + Morrow College of Fine Arts and Professor at Ohio University in 2025. Before OHIO, she was Associate Dean of UTeach Fine Arts and Associate Professor of Theatre Education at the University of Texas at Austin. Her theatre practice is integral to her pedagogy. Schroeder-Arce’s bilingual plays have been presented to children and families in theatres around the United States. Her plays Señora Tortuga, Legend of the Poinsettia, Sangre de un Ángel, Mariachi Girl and Yana Wana’s Legend of the Bluebonnet (co-authored with María F. Rocha) are available through Dramatic Publishing. Her newest work, Lyric and the Keys, with music and lyrics by Jenn Hartmann Luck, premiered at the Magik Theatre in September, 2024. Professor Schroeder-Arce’s research interests include culturally responsive theatre education and Latino/a/x theatre for young audiences related to teacher training. She has published articles in journals such as Youth Theatre Journal, TYA Today, Theatre Topics, and Gestos. She has taught workshops on issues of diversity in theatre for young audiences and culturally responsive teaching artistry throughout the Americas and beyond. — Roxanne’s Website

Read more about Roxanne here.

Our Gratitude Conversation

KSC: What role does gratitude play in your day-to-day life?

RSA: So much of what I do, I am aware of how I got to be in a position to do it. I am a teacher. I am a professor. I get in my car every day and love what I do. Being a child from a family that had very little means–at least money–from a single mom, I am often thinking about people, like Upward Bound students. Upward Bound provided me access to education because my family couldn’t. My family did not understand how someone gets to college. My family did not think it was possible for me.

I am constantly aware of my responsibility to give back to others. I work to help others have access to education in many ways. I am already at a university, and my students are already university students, but they have to stay here. I have students who need to feel that they belong here. They are first-time college students themselves. It is hard to feel like you belong somewhere when the narrative of others around you is so different. While I am white, many of my students who are entrusted to me are students of color, specifically Latino students. I speak Spanish. I focus on Latino identity. I share that story of being a first-generation college student readily with intention. They know there is a professor who might understand what it is like to be in this space. Sometimes it is subconscious. I don’t realize what I am doing. I feel a great need to give back, or to give others what I feel I have received.

KSC: I think people come to gratitude in lots of different ways, and gratitude looks different to people, and manifests differently. I hear you connecting your understanding of gratitude with your personal mission. It is not so much a list of things, but it is how you walk your walk. It is your mission.

KSC: What are a few things for which you are grateful?

RSA: I am grateful for opportunity. If you gave me a million dollars, I would think of all the places I could travel, all the experiences I could have, and all the people I could have visit me. It is awesome to live in a world where I am constantly overwhelmed with what I have, rather than living in a world where I am constantly wishing I had more.

RSA: There are possessions for which I am grateful. My mom died eight years ago. I got many gifts from her: music, a witty sense of humor, and a carefree sort of attitude about things. I also now have her instruments in my house. When you walk into my house, the first thing you see is an entryway. That is our music room. Carlos has his drums. We have a piano that was given to us by our neighbors. We have my mom’s instruments. I play each. We have her guitar and her bass guitar. I learned to play bass guitar since I got her bass. We have people over and we play music. When she passed, she did not have much. She still lived in the trailer park in which I grew up. She did not have a lot of things that were of value except for these instruments. My family members wanted me to have them. I treasure them for a variety of reasons. I keep playing them, and feel close to her. I am grateful for that.

KSC: When I think about you, I think about music. You are music. If you were going to put a gratitude playlist together of songs for which you are grateful, or make you think of gratitude, what would your gratitude playlist be?

RSA: “You Are My Sunshine.” That is a song I sang at my mom’s celebration of life. The words. You are honoring what someone else brings into your world. That is definitely gratitude. “Tu Solo Tu.” I sang it to Carlos around the time we were getting married. It makes me think of Carlos, and how dedicated he is to me. “She’ll Be Coming Around the Mountain” has to be there. “The Joker.” That song makes me think of my sister. There is a song the kids sing in the summer at our indigenous cultures camp, and it is called “Na Ham Kaum.” It is about water. It is in Coahuiltecan, which is an indigenous language. It is about sacred springs. The water is sacred to our people. You appreciate the water. You take care of the water. We are all responsible for that. That song makes me think about being grateful for what we are given, and that cycle of ‘we take care of something because it takes care of us.’

KSC: Do you connect your gratitude with your creative process?

RSA: The different hats I wear, as teacher, artist, even researcher, it is not easy to divide them. I operate similarly in all of those spaces. I think that the characters that come out and say they want me to write them as a playwright are often this idea of access. Always in my work, appreciation for what you have is huge. Which is gratitude. Specifically, in Senora Tortuga, the mom says to the boy, to her son Pedro, “You have to appreciate what you have.” “What, like a barn, and beans and rice?” “Well we could be living in a box somewhere.” I think that the mother is really trying to inspire a sense of gratitude in her children.

That is the way I look at life. I appreciate what I have. I see my colleagues sometimes be frustrated with who has more, and how it is inequitable, and it is true. It is inequitable, and I fight for equity for others, but in my own life I can’t even believe what I have. It is just absurd. I don’t need any more. I think that is what that mother is saying to her son. So thematically, certainly [gratitude] is in my work.

RSA: This new play that I am writing, The Legend of the Bluebonnets, is just an honor to get to write. Do you know the book, The Legend of the Bluebonnets? It is an old legend. I am writing the play on the legend.

In the play, there is a little girl who has trouble at school. It is Native American Month. They are going to do a play, The Legend of the Bluebonnets. She goes and spends time with her grandmother who says, “Well actually there is a different story. That is not our version. That is the white person’s version of our native story.” The girl learns she needs to be telling her own stories.

The legend goes, that there was a little girl. There was a drought. The tribe was told, “You need to put forward your most valuable possessions, as a community, and then there will be rain.” The Creator said this to the people. The little girl had received this little doll from her grandmother before she died. She just knew that was her most prized possession. It was the only thing she had. She loved the doll. At night, she threw the doll onto the fire. As the fire turned blue, everyone went to sleep. No one saw her do this except for the chief who is watching from the hillside. In the morning, all of the rain is coming down. Her brother wakes her up, and they look outside. There is rain, and the bluebonnets just spread across the land.

I get to write this play. They are going to put this play in front of all these people. Specifically, brown children who need to see this play. I am just so lucky. How often do you get to do that? I am the luckiest person in the world, and so grateful for that opportunity. In that play, what draws me to it, is this idea that this child understands that what she has isn’t the doll. She has this connection to her grandmother. That is what she is valuing. That is the most critical. She realizes that the doll represents that, and she is still going to have that. She releases that, and then she still has it. It is not the doll. It is a beautiful connection. I think that speaks to me because it is about the idea of value. What do we value? What is important? What is important to me? If my mother’s guitar goes away, I have her music.

]]><![CDATA[Living the Comma #38]]>https://katiesteedlycurling.substack.com/p/living-the-comma-38https://katiesteedlycurling.substack.com/p/living-the-comma-38Mon, 13 Jul 2026 18:15:54 GMT

“The law of nature is: Do the thing, and you shall have the power, but they who do not the thing have not the power.”― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Dear Writer Friends,

I recently spent a weekend inside Acadia National Park. Climbing stone stairs. Walking carriage paths. Listening to rushing water. Combing rocky beaches. Breathing ocean breezes. Noticing granite boulders. Learning about moss and ferns. I am convinced that Nature has the power. Nature does the thing. Nature does not have to be reminded to do the thing. Nature roots and blooms. Nature ebbs and flows. Nature lives and dies.

Writing does the thing. Writers and poets understand this. The slowing down. The paying attention. The finding awe. The telling about it, as Mary Oliver instructs. Writing brings me a bit closer to the thing. Writing brings me a bit closer to the power.

Conversations with Authors — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Essays Explained — Why Self-Reliance Matters Today — Harvard Classics Series

“O friend, never strike sail to a fear. Come in to port greatly, or sail with God the seas.” — Emerson

Listen to the series here. [28 minutes]

Nature — Chapter 1

“There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, — no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.” — Emerson

Read Nature, Chapter 1 here.

Compensation

“There is no penalty to virtue; no penalty to wisdom; hey are proper additions of being. In a virtuous action I properly am; in a virtuoso act I add to the world; I plant into deserts conquered from Chaos and Nothing and see in the darkness receding on the limits of the horizon.” — Emerson

Read the entire essay, “Compensation” here.

A Writing Prompt —

“This week we take our cue from Jedidiah Jenkins, whose letter reminds us that achieving our aspirations doesn’t bring automatic wholeness. Instead, he says, ‘This is the invitation of love: perform wonder. Perform surprise. Perform desire.’ And endeavor to find delight in the color in the flower in the ditch in the road. Please join me today in posing this question: Dear Love, what would you have me know about striving” — from Elizabeth Gilbert’s Letter’s from Love Substack Community

Do the thing this week. Have the power. Strike sail to a fear. Let Nature repair. Plant in deserts. See darkness recede on the limits of the horizon.

From the heart of the comma,

Katie

Thank you for Living the Comma with me. Face-to-Face meetings resume in September. Stay tuned. Subscribe to the Wide-Awakeness Project and share your light. It has never been more important.

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]]><![CDATA[WANTED Week Three]]>https://katiesteedlycurling.substack.com/p/wanted-week-threehttps://katiesteedlycurling.substack.com/p/wanted-week-threeMon, 13 Jul 2026 09:00:00 GMT

I am always seeking home.

I was born and raised on the Ohio River at Louisville, Kentucky. Speed boats and rope swings and King Fish. Generations and Derbies and Cardinals. Calliopes and Barges and Fossil Beds. Ohio River Valley allergies never bothered me. I drove along the River to my high school. I know upriver and downriver in my bones.

I am always seeking home.

The Ohio River is a 981-mile-long waterway flowing from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Cairo, Illinois, where it meets the Mississippi River. The River runs through Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois — faster in the spring as the snow melts from the Appalachian Mountains in the East.

I am always seeking home.

The name stems from the Iroquoian word Ohi:yo’ — “great river” or “beautiful river”. For thousands of years, Native Americans used the River as a major trade and transportation route. The Falls of the Ohio, a fossil bed at the McAlpin Locks where the River turns toward St. Louis nods to life before and beyond the life we know.

I am always seeking home.

To this day, I return to the River. I drove along the River to the Obama field office in 2008 during his election listening to an NPR Toni Morrison interview where she talked about A Mercy. I lived on the River at Cincinnati, Ohio — two hours from Louisville — for 5 years in my 30s and 40s, returning closer to home after living all around the United States.

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.

Thank you for reading the 3rd Week of Writing in the Dark WANTED. Join to read more about dreams and desires and wide-awakeness.

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