The Story Behind the Poem Have you ever been found out? It's an awful feeling. Heart in throat. Can't eat. Breathe. Get out of bed. There's a process that starts with shame and ends with grace. If you know that feeling, you'll understand this poem. The Colors of Humility by Sarah Steele August 2014 Humility [...]
The Story Behind the Poem My husband gave me an hour (a whole glorious hour!) when our first two children were 22 months and 2 months old. I biked down to a coffee shop and sat outside, just soaking up the quiet. Even with the bustle of the farmer's market around me, I was alone [...]
The Story Behind the Writing For my 30th birthday, I knew I wanted to do something crazy, do something out-of-the-ordinary (for me), do something edgy. So. I got a tattoo. (All right, don't roll your eyes, all you crazy people out there.) It was a stalk of wheat and the word dayenu. The wheat represents [...]
The Story Behind the Poem This poem was to help me get over the embarrassment of ruining a main part of our first meal hosted as a married couple. (Note that I wrote it nearly 4 years after it happened. That's something pretty rough denial.) My cooking skills have vastly improved since then, but I'm still a [...]
The Story Behind the Poem The first three years of our marriage, we washed our clothes at a laundromat. Sometimes I'd bring a book to read, find the Sunday comics there, or paint my nails. Sometimes I'd go before work (5:30am!). Sometimes we went together. It was mostly...a good experience to be able to speak [...]
This poem is from the end of my first semester, freshman year of college. Being the oldest of ten kids had its crazies...and its lovelies. It took me a few months to come down from the high of Doing Whatever I Want, but I finally realized I reeeeeally missed my family. (My youngest sibling was [...]
I love the simplicity of such a short poem. I wrote the first one in high school and the second in college. As a high schooler, I felt quite scandalous using the word "naked" in my writing. But the second one rhymes, which you KNOW I love. Do you prefer one over the other? The [...]
Every week or two, I'll be sharing a little peek into my writer's journal. Poems or short stories. From high school or yesterday. Deeply personal or generic. Familiar or new. I'd like to kick off with an oldie I wrote early in our marriage, inspired by George Ella Lyon's poem. I wrote this as part [...]